''St. Sebastian'' is a painting of
the eponymous Christian saint by the
Italian Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...
painter
Sandro Botticelli, executed before January 1474 when it was endowed to the Church of
Santa Maria Maggiore, Florence
Santa Maria Maggiore di Firenze is a Romanesque and Gothic-style, Roman Catholic church in Florence, region of Tuscany, Italy. This is among the oldest extant churches in Florence.
History
The church was originally constructed in the 11th cent ...
. 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 largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...
.
Criticism and influence
Kenneth Clark considered this picture remarkable for its closeness to the spirit of harmonious repose found in
classical sculpture
Classical sculpture (usually with a lower case "c") refers generally to sculpture from Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, as well as the Hellenized and Romanized civilizations under their rule or influence, from about 500 BC to around 200 AD. It ma ...
:
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
René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke (4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926), shortened to Rainer Maria Rilke (), was an Austrian poet and novelist. He has been acclaimed as an idiosyncratic and expressive poet, and is widely recogni ...
'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
Notes
{{DEFAULTSORT:Saint Sebastian (Botticelli)
1474 paintings
Paintings by Sandro Botticelli
Paintings in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin
Botticelli
Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi ( – May 17, 1510), known as Sandro Botticelli (, ), was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance. Botticelli's posthumous reputation suffered until the late 19th century, when he was rediscovered ...
Torture in art