Lingchi
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Lingchi, usually translated "slow slicing" or "death by a thousand cuts", is a form of torture and execution that was used in China from c. 900 until it was banned in 1905. It was also used in Vietnam
An 1858 illustration from the French newspaper Le Monde illustré, of the lingchi execution of a French missionary, Auguste Chapdelaine, in China
Execution of Joseph Marchand in Vietnam, 1835
Lingchi execution in Beijing c. April 1905, apparently of Fou-Tchou-Li
Flaying
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Flaying, also known as skinning, is a method of slow torture or execution in which skin is removed from the body.
Lingchi
…does tantalisingly describe a photograph that obsessed the philosopher Georges Bataille, in which a Chinese criminal, while being chopped up and slowly flayed by executioners, rolls his eyes heavenwards in transcendent bliss." Bataille wrote about lingchi in L'expérience intérieure (1943) and in Le coupable…
Michelangelo's The Last Judgment - St Bartholomew holding the knife of his martyrdom and his flayed skin; it is conjectured that Michelangelo included a self-portrait depicting himself as St Bartholomew after he had been flayed alive.
Assyrians flaying their prisoners alive
Shield showing three flaying knives, symbol of Bartholomew the Apostle