St Sebastian

Cosimo Tura's Saint Sebastian at the Gemäldegalerie Berlin, painted around 1484, depicts the Roman soldier and Christian martyr in the tense, anguished manner characteristic of Ferrara's most innovative and original painter. Tura was the founding figure of the Ferrarese school, serving as court painter to Borso d'Este and Ercole I d'Este and creating an entirely personal style of extraordinary intensity — figures of metallic hardness with tortured gestures, set in rocky landscapes of hostile crystalline beauty. His Saint Sebastian is not the typically serene Renaissance nude contemplating his wounds but a figure of active physical and spiritual distress, the arrows penetrating a body that resists rather than accepts its fate. Tura's influence on Ferrarese painting was profound, his manner inherited and developed by Ercole de' Roberti and Francesco del Cossa, the three painters together constituting the distinctive Ferrarese contribution to the Italian Renaissance. The Gemäldegalerie Berlin holds one of the world's finest collections of European Old Masters, and this Tura panel represents the extraordinary achievement of a provincial Italian court school that matched Florence and Venice in ambition while developing an entirely independent vision.

Tempera and oil on panel demonstrating the techniques characteristic of Early Renaissance painting. The work shows competent handling of its subject matter within established artistic conventions.