Giovanni Battista Cima da Conegliano, Saint Sebastian
Two Panels from the S. Maria dei Crociferi Altarpiece
Two monumental saints – Mark and Sebastian – stand in niches topped with shell-like arches. They must originally have formed the outer wings of a multi-panelled altarpiece. We don't know where they originally came from, but in the seventeenth century two panels were recorded in the church of the Crociferi, Venice, where they flanked an image of the Annunciation by Cima (State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg). They do not seem to have belonged together, however: the Annunciation is taller, quite different in composition and painted on cloth rather than wood.
It is possible that they came from an altarpiece which was part sculpted and part painted, like the one Cima da Conegliano painted for the parish church of Olera, near Bergamo. Its painted panels show standing saints, and they flank a carved and coloured statue of Saint Bartholomew in a shell-shaped niche.
Two monumental saints – Mark and Sebastian – stand in niches topped with shell-like arches. The panels must once have formed the outer wings of a triptych or polyptych, perhaps in a classical frame, like the altarpieces Cima da Conegliano painted for the parish churches at Ornica and Olera, near Bergamo and Capodistria in Slovenia.
We do not know where they originally came from, but in the seventeenth century two panels were recorded in the church of the Crociferi in Venice, in the chapel of the silk weavers. They flanked an image of the Annunciation signed by Cima and dated 1495 (State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg). They do not seem to have belonged together, however: the Annunciation is taller, quite different in composition and is painted on cloth rather than wood.
The figures seem to stand in front of the narrow niches: their elbows overlap the vertical edges, as if they are three-dimensional sculptures rather than flat, painted images. We see scalloped niches in fifteenth-century Venetian sculpture and painting – in the works of Jacopo Bellini in the 1430s, and behind the statues of saints in the monument to Doge Pietro Mocenigo carved by Pietro Lombardo in the church of SS Giovanni e Paulo. Cima himself painted a large altarpiece for the parish church of Olera, near Bergamo, in which painted panels show standing saints and flank a carved and coloured statue of Saint Bartholomew in a shell-shaped niche. It’s possible that our panels also came from an altarpiece which was part sculpted and part painted.
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