(Central Italy and Naples active in the early 16th century)
Saint Peter; and
Saint Sebastian,
oil on panel, each 102.5 x 51 cm, framed, a pair (2)

Provenance:
Given by Pope Innocent XII Pignatelli to the Abbey of Montecalvo, 1689 (according to a label on the reverse of the ‘Saint Sebastian’);
Pignatelli di Montecalvo collection, 19th Century (as Giovanni Bellini, according to a label on the reverse of both panels);
Private collection, Milan

Literature:
A. Ugolini, Per Antonio Rimpatta, in: Paragone. Arte, XLV, 1994, 535-537, mentioned p. 25 (as close to Antonio Rimpatta);
A. G. De Marchi, in: Pittura dal Duecento al primo Cinquecento nelle fotografie di Girolamo Bombelli, Milan 1991, p. 248, no. 520 (as Antonio Rimpatta);
A. Ugolini, Antonio Rimpatta e alcuni comprimari del peruginismo a Bologna, in: Arte Cristiana, 98, 856, January-February 2010, p. 22, p. 26, fig. 6, p. 29, note 20 (as Antonio Rimpatta)

We are grateful to Mauro Lucco for independently confirming the attribution of the present paintings after examination in the original.

The present paintings were almost certainly part of same polyptych by Antonio Rimpatta. Indeed, the two paintings are the same size and depict the same background landscape of hills. The Saint Peter must have been on the left wing, given the saint’s body position, which mirrors that of the Saint Sebastian, which in turn must have been on the right wing. De Marchi (see literature) dated the present works to the first decade of the XVI century, underlining their high quality and their varied compositional sources resulting from the artist’s complex figurative culture.

Antonio Rimpatta was an itinerant artist whose corpus of works is not at present wholly reconstructed. He was probably born in Bologna and was likely trained during the last decade of the 15th century in the Emilia. However, he is documented for the first time in 1501 in Naples where he signed the Mormile Polyptych (currently conserved in the Cenacolo di Fuligno, Florence). Whilst still in Naples between 1509 and 1511, he executed the large altarpiece for the church of San Pietro ad Aram, now in the Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, which formed the centrepiece around which the first attempt to reconstruct the artist’s works was based: this study was undertaken by Federico Zeri, (see F. Zeri, Antonio Rimpatta in: Bollettino d’arte, XLVIII, 1963, pp. 46-49). In Rimpatta’s production elements taken from the works of Francia, Antoniazzo Romano and Perugino are knowledgably blended with Raphaelesque suggestions that may suggest a possible Roman sojourn by the artist.

The present Saint Peter is stylistically comparable to the two Neapolitan works cited above. The saint’s features are particularly similar to those of the same saint in the Capodimonte altarpiece, while the type of footwear recalls the attire of the saints in the lateral panels of the Mormile Polyptych. The Saint Sebastian is comparable to other works of the same subject made by Rimpatta during the early Cinquecento, such as the Saint Sebastian in the Hermitage, Saint Petersburg, and the Saint Sebastian and donors of the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore, which also reveals formal solutions derived from the artistic cultures of Lazio, Umbria and Emilia-Romagna.

We are grateful to Francesca Curti for her help in deciphering the inscriptions on the reverse of the panels.