The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, oil on canvas, 88.9 x 45.7 cm, framed

Provenance:
M. Rothschild, London, by 1925 (according to an inscription on a photographic mount, Witt Library, London);
with Thomas Agnew & Sons Ltd, by 1950;
European private collection;
Anonymous sale, Christie’s, London, 14 April 2011, lot 90 as “Circle of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo”.

Literature: B. L. Brown, Giambattista Tiepolo: The Master of the Oil Sketch, Fort Worth, 1993, p.195 under no.19, note no.9 (as a “replica”)

We are grateful to Dr. George Knox and Dr. Beverly Louise Brown for confirming the attribution to Giambattista Tiepolo for the present work.

In 1739, Tiepolo completed an altarpiece, The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, for the Augustinian priory in Diessen, Germany. A smaller oil sketch for that composition, now in the Cleveland Museum, was also formerly owned by the priory in Diessen (where it remained until 1850), and was evidently dispatched from Venice by Tiepolo for his client’s approval.

Commenting on the present painting following its recent cleaning, Knox observed: “The circumstances and date of the commission are quite obscure, but the sketches and the final picture were painted in Venice. Tiepolo does not appear to have been informed at first about the shape and proportions of the desired altarpiece, which is approximately a double square with a curvilinear top. The Cleveland sketch has the proportions 5:3. The present sketch observes the correct proportions of the double square. Neither displays the shaped top of the altarpiece itself. Given the evident quality of both sketches, one may suggest that the Cleveland sketch is an earlier bozzetto for the commission, which was followed by the present version as a more formal modello for presentation to the patron.”

While Knox further suggests that the artist may have sent both sketches to Diessen for approval, an alternative possibility is that he retained the present more detailed modello in Venice in order to create the final altarpiece from its design, and therefore ultimately considered the Cleveland bozzetto sufficient for his client’s approval. Brown, who has confirmed the attribution to Giambattista Tiepolo following first hand inspection in June 2011, has suggested as a further possibility that this work may be an autograph ricordo of Tiepolo’s altarpiece. Careful comparison of the present picture with the Cleveland bozzetto reveals numerous improvements and amendments. This is most noticeable in the anatomy of the putti’s legs and feet at upper left (which in the Cleveland version are somewhat ‘wooden’) and in the quality and clarity of the group of heads at the far centre right. Numerous other small differences are apparent, for example the modelling of Saint Sebastian’s torso (where the chiaroscuro is more complex in the present painting) and the feather in the archer’s headband at lower right, which appears somewhat less well understood in the Cleveland version.

As Brown points out, the torsion of Sebastian’s body recalls Titian’s famous version of the saint from the Averoldi altarpiece (Santi Nazaro e Celso, Brescia). Both images depict Sebastian bound to a tree, torso twisted and arms and legs contorted, but the saint’s head in Tiepolo’s work is lifted heavenwards.

In addition to the smaller bozzetto in Cleveland, four preparatory drawings exist for the commission: a full compositional study formerly in the collection of Archbishop Széptychki (Lemberg), depicting the saint turned more towards the right; a pen and ink figure study of Saint Sebastian in the Szépmüvészeti Müseum (Budapest); a red chalk version of the whole composition, but without the figure in the left foreground, in the Martin von Wagner Museum (Würzburg); and a pen and brown ink study, with some changes to the altarpiece version, formerly in the Guggenheim collection, Venice.