This highly finished drawing depicting the arrest and torture of Florentine Saint Minias (better known by his Italian name, San Miniato) represents two beginnings. A major monument of early Italian draftsmanship, it is one of the very few surviving drawings from the fourteenth century that can be connected to the work of a fresco painter. At the Morgan, moreover, it carries the inventory number I,1, identifying it as the first drawing in the original sequence of inventory numbers for the drawing collection. It was part of the Fairfax-Murray collection of some 1700 sheets bought in 1909, which in one stroke established Pierpont Morgan as a major collector of European drawings.
Attributed to Cenni di Francesco di Ser Cenni, Two Scenes from the Martyrdom of St. Minias, ca. 1390–1410. Pen and brown ink and wash over metalpoint, with white and red opaque watercolor, on paper prepared with brown ground. Purchased by Pierpont Morgan (1837–1913) in 1909, inv. I, 1.