Stoning of Stephen

Uccello's Stoning of Stephen was most likely part of a predella cycle — small narrative panels beneath a main altarpiece — which was his principal format for hagiographic subjects. Stephen was the protomartyr, whose stoning by a crowd outside Jerusalem is recounted in Acts 7, and his cult was important in Florence where his relics at Santo Stefano al Ponte made him a civic as well as ecclesiastical patron. Uccello characteristically uses the narrative to explore crowd dynamics and the geometry of thrown stones rather than emotional response, subordinating pathos to formal interest.

Uccello organises the stoning crowd in a compressed lateral procession, using foreshortened arms and varied figure scales to suggest spatial depth within a shallow pictorial box. His fresco-derived palette — terre verte, ochre, and lead white — gives the panel a cool, graphic clarity.