Poccetti was one of the leading Florentine painters of the early seventeenth century. Largely thanks to his youthful association with the group of painters around Santi di Tito, Poccetti soon began to practice a more naturalistic style of painting, which was in reaction to the then prevailing style of Mannerism. Not long after his visit to Rome in 1578-1580, he began work for the Oratorio della Compagnia della S. Annunziata in Florence, decorating the chapel with two stories from the Life of the Virgin as well as other frescoes. These are datable on stylistic grounds around 1585 or shortly before. Of the fourteen lunettes in the nearby cloister, six are by Poccetti, one of them representing the Martyrdom of St. Judas Taddeus. The dating of Poccetti´s lunette frescoes in the cloister is not straightforward, but it seems that they were carried out in the period 1585-1590. The apostle and martyr St. Judas Taddeus, whom John (XIV, 22) cites as "the other Judas, not Iscariot", was the brother of James the Less. Together with Simon Zelotes, he spent his ministry in Persia, where he was martyred with a club, halberd or lance, any of which may be adopted as his attribute. In the drawing, one of his tormentors points a halberd at the saint´s neck, as he falls to the ground, while at the same time, the surrounding buildings collapse in an earthquake (Text drawn from Turner, N.: From Michelangelo to Annibale Carracci. A century of Italian drawings from the Prado, Art Services International-Museo Nacional del Prado, 2008, p. 146).