Full title | Saint Sebastian |
---|---|
Artist | Giovanni Battista Cima da Conegliano |
Artist dates | about 1459/60 - about 1517/18 |
Series | Two Panels from the S. Maria dei Crociferi Altarpiece |
Date made | about 1500 |
Medium and support | Oil on wood |
Dimensions | 103.2 x 40.6 cm |
Acquisition credit | Mond Bequest, 1924; entered the Collection in 1938 |
Inventory number | NG4946 |
Location | Not on display |
Collection | Main Collection |
A pale young man stands in a stone niche, almost naked and seemingly unaware of the arrows in his arm and leg. This is Saint Sebastian, a Roman soldier who secretly converted to Christianity. When his faith was discovered, he was shot with arrows but miraculously survived.
Here, the saint seems more like a classical statue than a living figure. Cima must have been aware of Tullio Lombardo’s famous Adam (made around 1490–5), the first nude marble statue sculpted since antiquity; he has replicated the figure’s stance, curly hair and slightly vacant expression almost precisely.
This painting is one of two in the National Gallery’s collection which must have formed the side panels of a multi-panelled altarpiece, but we are not sure when they were made, or where for.
A pale young man, naked but for a loincloth, stands in a stone niche, seemingly unaware of the arrows in his arm and leg. This is Saint Sebastian, a Roman soldier who secretly converted to Christianity. When his faith was discovered, he was shot with arrows but miraculously survived.
Here, the saint seems more like a classical statue than a living figure. Cima must have been aware of Tullio Lombardo’s famous Adam (about 1490–9), the first nude marble statue sculpted since antiquity; he reproduces the figure’s stance, curly hair and slightly vacant expression almost precisely.
Saint Sebastian was enormously popular in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. He was thought to provide protection from the plague, which repeatedly ravaged central Italy in the fifteenth century: his arrow wounds were thought to be like the swellings it caused. He is often shown tied to a tree, as in The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian; the tree is missing here, but he still has his hands behind his back.
This painting is one of two panels from the S. Maria dei Crociferi Altarpiece. They must have formed the side panels of a triptych or polyptych, but we are not sure exactly when they were made, or where for.
Cima da Conegliano made a number of pictures of Saint Sebastian, beginning with the side panels of two large altarpieces, painted in around 1486–8. One is still in the parish church at Olera, near Bergamo; the other was from Oderzo, in the Venetian territories on the mainland. The series culminates in the figure of the saint in the side panel of the altarpiece for San Rocco, painted in about 1500–2, in Mestre, also on the Venetian mainland. Our panel probably comes towards the end of the series. In the earliest examples, the saint stands against a burnished gold background, as in medieval altarpieces, while the stone niche in our panel is much more Renaissance in style.
Like many Renaissance artists, Cima sped up the production process for altarpieces by reusing designs for different commissions. The saint in our panel is based on his figure in the so-called Dragan Altarpiece (Galleria dell'Accademia, Venice), commissioned in about 1499 by Venetian shipowner Giorgio Dragan for his family chapel in Santa Maria della Carita, Venice. Another painting of the saint (Berenson Collection, Villa I Tatti, Settignano) also followed the same design.
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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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