''St. Sebastian'' is a painting of
the eponymous Christian saint by the
Italian
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance language
*** Regional Ita ...
Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history
The history of Europe is traditionally divided into four time periods: prehistoric Europe (prior to about 800 BC), classical antiquity (800 BC to AD ...
painter
Sandro Botticelli
Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi ( – May 17, 1510), known as Sandro Botticelli (, ), was an Italian Renaissance painting, Italian painter of the Early Renaissance. Botticelli's posthumous reputation suffered until the late 19th cent ...
, executed before January 1474 when it was endowed to the Church of
Santa Maria Maggiore, Florence. Today the panel is housed in the
Staatliche Museen
The Berlin State Museums (german: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin) are a group of institutions in Berlin, Germany, comprising seventeen museums in five clusters, several research institutes, libraries, and supporting facilities. They are overseen ...
of
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...
.
Criticism and influence
Kenneth Clark
Kenneth Mackenzie Clark, Baron Clark (13 July 1903 – 21 May 1983) was a British art historian, museum director, and broadcaster. After running two important art galleries in the 1930s and 1940s, he came to wider public notice on television ...
considered this picture remarkable for its closeness to the spirit of harmonious repose found in
classical sculpture:
There are several reasons why for fifty years or more Donatello's ''David'' had no successors... Another is the inherent restlessness of the Florentine temperament. Apollo
Apollo, grc, Ἀπόλλωνος, Apóllōnos, label=genitive , ; , grc-dor, Ἀπέλλων, Apéllōn, ; grc, Ἀπείλων, Apeílōn, label= Arcadocypriot Greek, ; grc-aeo, Ἄπλουν, Áploun, la, Apollō, la, Apollinis, label ...
is static. His gestures are dignified and calm. But the Florentines loved movement, the more violent the better. The two great masters of the nude in the late ''quattrocento'', Pollaiuolo and Botticelli, are concerned with embodiments of energy or ecstatic motion, with a wrestling Hercules or a flying angel, and only once, in Botticelli's ''St. Sebastian'', achieve a satisfactory nude in repose.
Rainer Maria Rilke's poem "Sankt Sebastian" (in ''Neue Gedichte'', 1907) seems to have a close correspondence in description and mood to Botticelli's painting, as Rilke's translator J.B. Leishman and Jane Davidson Reid have observed.
[Jane Davidson Reid, "Rilke's Sebastian and the Painters," ''Art Journal'' 27 (1967), pp. 24-33 + 39.]
See also
*
List of works by Sandro Botticelli
The following is a list of panel paintings, works on canvas and frescoes by the Italian painter Sandro Botticelli.Barbara Deimling. ''Botticelli.'' Taschen. Cologne 2007. The few surviving drawings are excluded. It is not indicated if some works m ...
Notes
{{DEFAULTSORT:Saint Sebastian (Botticelli)
1474 paintings
Paintings by Sandro Botticelli
Paintings in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin
Botticelli
Torture in art