The representation of the martyrdom of Saint Fermin in Spain and Navarre is not frequent. This is not the case in France, where there are temples dedicated to him in which the cycle of his life has been narrated since medieval times, especially in the cathedral of Amiens.

The important presence of Navarrese artists in Latin America meant that the topic was treated by masters from those lands with the characteristics of colonial painting.

The narration of the martyrdom for most of the representations of topic had oral or textual references. Preachers and books were its sources. Among the latter we have to consider two publications. On the one hand, the Vida y martirio de los santos patronos de la ciudad de Pamplona San Saturnino y San Fermín, work of Ignacio Andueza, which has Pamplona editions of 1609 and 1656 and, on the other hand, the Libro de las milagrosas vidas y gloriosos triunfos de las dos apostólicas columnas de el augusto Reino de Navarra San Saturnino y San Fermín (1693). Both books are previous to the edition of the conference proceedings sinceras, published by Father José de Maceda, in 1798.

Those texts referred to the interrogation of Fermin before the governor Sebastian, who, at the request of the priests of the official Roman cult, had moved from Trier to Amiens. The bishop responded publicly to the accusations to the admiration and sympathy of the people. Sebastian, fearful of a possible popular reaction in favor of the prelate, decided, with dissimulation, to let him go free, while he secretly ordered the soldiers to arrest and imprison him at night. In compliance with the order, Fermín was confined in a dungeon of the gloomy jail. During the following night, while the people of Amiens slept, the bishop observed the presence of armed people in the prison and, considering his death imminent, he prepared himself by praying. One of the soldiers drew his sword and killed him.

It is necessary, at this point, to make some clarifications regarding the iconography. Traditionally, his execution has been represented by decapitation. This is how it appears in the sculptural group of reliefs located in the backchamber of the cathedral of Amiens, made between 1490 and 1530. Other examples, in different arts, have embodied this tradition, supported by documentary or literary testimonies, apart from its intrinsic historical value. Regarding the scene and time of the martyrdom, it has been considered with the aggravating circumstance of nighttime and in the solitude of a dungeon. Sometimes, the sword of decapitation is replaced by a sharp knife and the beheading of the saint. A detail that does not present unanimity is the one related to the mitre, sometimes on the head of the saint, while in others it appears deposited on the floor.     

The Pamplona City Hall houses a large canvas, signed in 1687 by the famous painter of the Madrid school, José Ximénez Donoso, in the same year that he signed other canvases for the Benedictine Sisters of Lumbier, today in Alzuza. However, the piece arrived in the Navarrese capital later, specifically in 1960, when it was acquired in Madrid, when Miguel Javier Urmeneta was mayor.

Ximénez Donoso composed the scene in a theatrical manner, which takes place on an architectural scaffold of marble ashlars. The prisoner offers no resistance to his executioner's weapon, and appears kneeling from a low point of view against a background of colorful architecture. The thick links of a chain hold the victim. Fully baroque, the composition is articulated in different open diagonals. It is worth noting the theoretical line that links the arm and the knife of the executioner with the gaze of the character in charge of supervising the torture who, in an instinctive gesture of his hand, half-hiding his face, accentuates the pathos of the moment. A registration written in Latin, with capital letters reads: PRA(E)SULIS EN CAPUT, FERMINI PAMPILONENSIS (Here is the head of the Bishop, the Pamplonian Fermin). Over a blue sky, with clouds characteristic of the Madrid school, two angels are placed with the crown of immortality and the palm of martyrdom.

In the Royal Congregation of San Fermín de los Navarros in Madrid there is another painting of the saint by José Ximénez Donoso, in subject of great episcopal figure, dated in 1685, made by devotional order of the Navarrese José Aguerri, secretary of the king, and his son Félix, viscount of Torrecilla Peñatajada. On one side, in great chiaroscuro, the martyrdom of the bishop is represented with a sketchy character. As J. L. Molins has observed, both paintings by Donoso coincide in the choice of the elevated architectural plane as a support for the scene, either in the form of a plinth or a grandstand. The posture of the bishop, the imminence of the execution, the approach of the executioner from behind -with the intention of beheading, not decapitating- as well as a contrasting figure on the right, holding a torch in his hand, to illuminate the nocturnal episode of the gloomy dungeon, also coincide. On both occasions and as in other cases, the saint receives from above the imperishable crown of glory, earned by martyrdom.

Even rarer is a canvas with the topic of the martyrdom that is preserved in a private Mexican collection. In this regard, it should be remembered that in 1710, in the capital of the viceroyalty of New Spain, the work of the Jesuit and missionary from Sinaloa, Juan Goñi de Peralta, entitled Vida de San Fermín, Bishop and patron saint of Pamplona, was published.

It is a Novo-Hispanic painting from the 18th century, probably paid for by one of the Navarrese who arrived in those lands. It is very well set. The bishop, with tablecloth and muceta, is prepared in the foreground to receive the martyrdom from the hands of an executioner characterized as such, while his breviary, the crosier and mitre are on the ground and an angel appears in the sky, ready to give him the reward of glory through the palm and a laurel wreath, signs of triumph and immortality. In the background we observe solemn architectures that may represent those of the dungeons of the fortress, where the saint was imprisoned at night, or rather those of the residency program of the governor Sebastian in Amiens, who appears on a balcony of his residency program surrounded by soldiers.

With a more popular style and clearly Cuzco character is the one preserved in the Royal Academy of Buenos Aires. It is signed in 1751 by the indigenous or mestizo painter Mauricio García, active in Cuzco between 1747 and 1760. His name appears among the list of "businessmen" painters from Cuzco who directed workshops dedicated to the export of paintings of religious themes of great acceptance, especially to Alto Peru, Chile and present-day Argentina. All the works from his workshop are characterized by the use of small and stereotyped figures and the speed of execution that, in many occasions, is translated in unequal invoices.

The canvas of San Fermín and two others signed between 1751 and 1752 were sent to the wealthy neighbor of Potosí, José Domingo de Zunzunaga y Aramburu. It is a popular representation in accordance with the characteristics of the Cuzco school. The saint is ready to receive martyrdom, kneeling and with the pontifical insignia on the ground. The executioner with unsheathed sword and the governor Sebastian with the baton of command and dressed in armor and helmet are also protagonists of the story. In the background, a cavalry picket and some diachronically surrealist architectures close the composition.

If we order in chronological order the representations of the martyrdom of the saint in Navarre, the first would be the relief of his decapitation of the main altarpiece of the Dominicans of Pamplona, a work made between 1570 and 1574 between Pierres Picart and Juan de Beauves. It is made with great simplicity and with hardly any references, the executioner and the martyr in front of some fortifications, next to an angel that has lost the attributes of glory and triumph, the crown and the palm.

The relief of the attic of the main altarpiece of Reta, of quite popular execution, should be dated to the end of the 17th century or the beginning of the next century. In 1736, the painter Pedro Antonio de Rada made a cycle of paintings for the walls of the saint's chapel, which we know from a drawing of 1797 by Santos Ángel de Ochandátegui. The setting corresponds to the interior of a prison of classical evocations, illuminated at night by a large lantern, in which there is no lack of enormous chains. An executioner with unsheathed sword, three soldiers and the martyr without a miter make up the scene.

Among the cast reliefs of the large eighteenth-century silver-plated pedestal of the saint we find scenes of his imprisonment and martyrdom. This work was designed by the famous engraver and painter from Aragon, Carlos Casanova, and made by the silversmith from Pamplona, Antonio Ripando, in 1736.

In the Pamplona City Hall there is a small canvas, from the beginning of the 19th century, signed with the initials of Miguel Sanz Benito (1795-1860), very sketchy, which copies a seiscentist composition of the martyrdom, with a outline similar to another painting conserved in a Madrid collection, in which also appears Saint Francis Xavier baptizing. The shape of the coat of arms of Navarre is reminiscent of a composition of the co-patrons, painted by Ignacio Abarca y Valdés in 1696. Sanz Benito's canvas appeared in 1920 in the retrospective exhibition of Art of the II congress of programs of study Basques.

This brief enumeration of scenes of martyrdom would close with one of the stained glass windows of the Pamplona chapel of San Fermin, made in 1886 by the Mayer House of London. The saint kneeling and in prayerful attitude, stripped of pontifical insignia, is about to receive martyrdom when an executioner is about to cut off his head before the magistrate and other characters. A lighted torch illuminates the darkness of the dungeon.