Saint Sebastian
Tanzio da Varallo·c. 1620/1630
Historical Context
Tanzio da Varallo painted this powerful Saint Sebastian around 1620-30, one of the most viscerally compelling treatments of this martyrdom subject in Italian Baroque art. Tanzio, deeply influenced by Caravaggio's dramatic naturalism during a Roman sojourn, brought an almost confrontational intensity to religious subjects. Working primarily in Piedmont and Lombardy, he created altarpieces of startling emotional power that rank among the most expressive works of the Italian Seicento.
Technical Analysis
Tanzio's Saint Sebastian demonstrates his characteristic combination of Caravaggesque lighting with intense, almost expressionistic figure painting. The raw, physical suffering of the saint is rendered with unflinching naturalism, the strong raking light emphasizing the muscular anatomy and the arrows' wounds.
Provenance
(Tomei, Milan, 1916).[1] Achillito Chiesa, Milan, by 1922 until at least 1924.[2] (Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi, Florence); purchased 1935 by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[3] gift 1939 to NGA. [1] Roberto Longhi, _Scritti giovanili_, 2 vols., Florence, 1961: 511, took credit for changing the attribution from Rubens to Tanzio in 1916 when the painting was owned by "l'antiquario Tomei." [2] Listed as the owner in the 1922 Palazzo Pitti catalogue; following Chiesa's bankruptcy, the collection was dissolved at several sales in New York and Europe beginning in 1924: see Wesley Towner, _The Elegant Auctioneers_, New York, 1970: 382-383, 412- 414. The painting does not appear in the New York sale catalogues. [3] According to Fern Rusk Shapley, _Paintings in the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools XVI-XVIII Century_, London, 1973: 81, and Fern Rusk Shapley, _Catalogue of Italian Paintings_, 2 vols., Washington, D.C., 1979: 1:439. See also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/1894.
