MASP

Pietro Perugino

St. Sebastian at the Column, 1500-10

  • Author:
    Pietro Perugino
  • Bio:
    Città della Pieve, Itália, 1446-Perugia, Itália ,1524
  • Title:
    St. Sebastian at the Column
  • Date:
    1500-10
  • Medium:
    Óleo sobre tela
  • Dimensions:
    177 x 120 x 3 cm
  • Credit line:
    Doação Companhia Antarctica Paulista S.A., 1947
  • Object type:
    Pintura
  • Inventory number:
    MASP.00013
  • Photography credits:
    João Musa

TEXTS



Perugino, born Pietro Vannucci, was both a painter and drawer, and made numerous works in several Italian cities, especially Perugia, Florence, and Rome. The painter, who was probably a disciple of Piero della Francesca (circa 1415-1492) and Andrea del Verrocchio (1435-1488), collaborated with several artists of that period, such as Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510) and Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449-1494), with whom he worked on the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel, in Vatican. Although he is more known nowadays as the tutor of Raphael (1483-1520), Perugino left his mark in the history of Italian art by blending the compositional model of Florence, characterized by figuration with precise outlines, to the pictorial style prevalent in Umbria, distinguished by the structuring of space in relation to architecture. Such elements can be observed in the painting of the MASP collection, Saint Sebastian at the Column, in which the human figure, represented quite clearly and outlined, is centralized, while the proportion is constructed from the overlapping of columns, arches, and the geometric patterns on the floor. According to Christian tradition, Saint Sebastian was a Roman official condemned to death by arrow shots after converting himself to Catholicism. The naked, hairless body, along with the face painted with delicate features, suggested a homoerotic reading of his image by artists of the 20th century, such as Pierre et Gilles (1950 and 1953, respectively), Leonilson (1957-1993), and Derek Jarman (1942-1994).]

— MASP Curatorial Team





The picture e Martirydom of St. Sebastian was exhibited at Burlington House, London in 1871 as a Raphael. Attribution to Perugino is due to Roberto Longhi, who saw it in Wigan, near Liverpool. For Longhi, “this is Perugino’s autographed variation of the well-known Louvre painting” (June 20, 1947 letter to P.M. Bardi). The most important literary sources for the legend of St. Sebastian are the Acta Sancti Sebastiani Martyris, attributed to Ambrose and written approximately 150 years aer the saint’s martyrdom, and the Legenda Aurea by the Dominican Jacopo da Voragine, written aer 1267 (Anfossi 1843, pp. 78-79; Wysewa 1960, pp. 15-16; Marques 1987, pp. 257-62). According to the narrative, Sebastian –a knight at the court of Narbonne– became captain of the First Pretorian Cohort then secret adviser to Emperor Diocletian and, later, to Diarchic King Maximian Hercules. When it became known that Sebastian was a Christian, according to Ricci (1924, p. 5), he was tortured as a solemn punishment for betraying the religion of his ancestors. In 303, Diocletian ordered Sebastian to be stripped, bound to a tree and riddled with arrows by the archers of Mauritania with the inscription Sebastianus christianus xed above his head. Later, according to the same legend, a certain Irene took such good care of his wounds that the saint was actually cured. e theme of St. Sebastian being cared for by Irene –which was very common in the 17th century– was taken up by Perugino in parts of the so-called St. Augustine polyptych (1495), now dismembered. The oldest picture of the martyred saint dates back to a low- relief in terra-cotta from the paleo-Christian period found in the graveyard of Priscilla, now lost, but illustrated by Ciampini in Roma Sotterranea by Antonio Bosio (ed. 1632). Contrary to the medieval iconographic tradition, which depicts a bearded and clothed Sebastian, sometimes even wearing armor, the image in the Masp’s picture –naked and beardless young man– began to prevail in the mid-15th century, when Sebastian’s gure tended to become associated with that of a Christian Apollo or Adonis, not without homosexual connotations. For artists such as Antonello da Messina, Foppa, Crivelli, Tura, Mantegna, Bellini, Pollaiolo, and Perugino, many of whom depicted the same theme on several occasions, Sebastian nakedness o­ered a singular occasion to emulate Romain sculpture. Whether due to this association with classical sculpture or because of the symbolism that pervades the saint’s martyrdom and the architectonic context of Antiquity in which he is usually placed, St. Sebastian, as appropriately pointed out by Berbara (1997), was an eminently suitable case for iconographic treatment of the concordantia between pagan culture and Christianity –a favorite Quattrocento theme. Three outstanding works from Perugino’s oeuvre o­er precedents for the Masp painting. e rst is the Sacra Conversazi- one, at the U zi, i.e., the Madonna and Child Enthroned with SS. John the Baptist and Sebastian, dated 1493. Vasari reported that the retable was designed to decorate the church of San Domenico in Fiesole and pointed out that, among the gures represented, St. Sebastian “is highly praised”, which may account for the painter’s frequent return to this same artistic composition, such as in the saint’s torso, possibly a fragment, kept at the Hermitage Museum of St. Petersburg, and especially in the Louvre St. Sebastian, of which the Masp work is a somewhat enlarged replica. A preparatory drawing now at the Cleveland Museum (Camesasca 1969, p. 124; Johnson 1980, p. 35) served as the basis for these three precedents and also for the beautiful fresco of the Martyrdom of the Saint in the church of St. Sebastian at Panicale, near Perugia (1505). It can, therefore, be assumed that Perugino must have oen returned to the same formal solution in other St. Sebastian gures. It should also be mentioned that the great number of representations of this saint is due to St. Sebastian’s apotropaic attributes for warding o­ epidemics (Camesasca 1988, p. 72; Berbara 1997). The Louvre painting, which belonged to Prince Sciarra Colonna of Rome, is wholly by the master’s hands whereas the Masp’s replica denotes the intervention of studio disciples in “the architectonic parts which omit several details of the Parisian version and shows a rather heavy hand in the architectonic ornaments” (Longhi 1947, letter to P.M. Bardi). Camesasca (1959, 1969) accepted Longhi’s hypothesis, but in 1988 put it in more nuanced terms: “après avoir vu l’oeuvre ‘de visu’ (1970), je me rendis compte que, parmis les collaborateurs dans des ‘zones périphériques’ (ar- chitectures etc.), fait habituel aussi chez les maîtres moins chargés de travail que Pérugin, il était possible d’en déceler une qui méritait la plus haute considération, à savoir celle de Raphaël; et ceci, plus particulièrement, dans la facture des jambes, par exemple, si admirablement compacte, tout en étant délicate et précise”. “Aujourd’hui je me borne tout simplement à exprimer le doute, car une connaissance plus approfondie de Pérugin m’a appris à placer son ra nement manuel aux niveaux honorables de la peinture européenne de tous les temps.” Furthermore, for Longhi, “chronological implications may be inferred from the differences in expression and technique between the two paintings. The Paris painting is strictly Quattrocento; in fact, the best critics place it at around 1494. In the later (Masp) painting, however, the merging of the nude with the landscape in the background has a new maturity that is more to the liking of the 16th century. To some extent, this may also explain the excessively ambitious attribution to Raphael during the 19th century; so much so that it was exhibited by Burlington House in 1871 under the name of Raphael. However, as from the Collegio del Cambio frescoes, there is a constant evolution towards 16th-century style underlying all of Perugino’s work; for this reason it would be possible to conclude that Perugino himself may have replicated his well-known work ten or een years later, adapting it to the new trend. So this painting may plausibly be dated from 1505-1510”. Camesasca instead dated it c. 1500. An older copy of this very same composition, which is attributed to Perugino himself, can be seen at Galleria Borghese, Rome (Camesasca 1969, n. 270).

— Unknown authorship, 1998

Source: Luiz Marques (org.), Catalogue of the Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand, São Paulo: MASP, 1998. (new edition, 2008).



Search
the collection

Filter your search