Saint Sebastian
This impressive work by the Milanese painter Bernardino Luini provides an important key in understanding the artist's early artistic career. The attribution to Luini, which had previously been accepted by all scholars but one, is indisputable in light of the presence of his signature and date; something which had been previously ignored in all the literature as the signature only recently emerged after cleaning. The discovery of the artist's signature is extremely important in shedding light on Luini's early artistic development, particularly in the light of the paucity of documentary evidence covering this period. Until now scholars had found it extremely difficult to establish an early chronology for Luini’s oeuvre and indeed for anything prior to his first securely datable commission, the frescoes of 1512 in the Abbey of Chiaravalle, near Milan. The authorship of the Saint Sebastian is closely linked to that of a panel showing The Madonna and Child with Saints Augustine, Margaret and two music-making angels in the Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris, and it thus provides an important stepping stone between the Paris picture and later works given to Luini.1 The Paris panel is signed and dated Bernardino Mediolanensis Faciebat MDVII (1507); its form of signature denoting the emphasis the artist has placed on his town of origin (‘Mediolanensis’ meaning Milanese). It has been plausibly argued that he would only have done so if executing the panel away from Milan, and Luini’s possible absence from the city during the first decade of the 16th century seems corroborated by the few documents that have come to light. Luini’s uncle Pietro de Scapis is recorded as acting on his nephew’s behalf in two documents of 1504 and 1507, suggesting that Luini may indeed have been absent from Milan in these years.2 The panel’s early provenance from the Manfrin collection in Venice has led scholars to presume Luini visited that city and, at first glance, the painting in the Musée Jacquemart-André does indeed appear extremely Venetic. The ‘sacra conversazione’ format and figure-types are reminiscent of Giovanni Bellini and, in particular, of Cima da Conegliano, but the painting’s Lombard roots are equally in evidence: as Giulio Bora has observed, the influence of Andrea Solario and Ambrogio Bergognone is apparent in the figures of the angels and in the execution of details such as their hair.3 There is no doubt that artists active during the first quarter of the 16th century in Lombardy and the Veneto were closely linked: Bartolomeo Veneto, Marco Marziale and Gian Francesco Caroto all worked in both regions, and thus the idea that Luini may have travelled there is by no means implausible.
At first glance the Saint Sebastian also appears to be rooted in the Venetian tradition, particularly with its use of a polychromed architectural setting, but the influence of the Lombard High Renaissance painters is also marked and, as Franco Moro has pointed out, that of Bramantino in particular. The manner in which the light plays over the saint’s torso, although normally associated with Venetian painting, is (as Bayer points out) ‘a fundamental descriptive tool... also an important element of the Lombard tradition, beginning with Vincenzo Foppa and then reinforced and elaborated by Leonardo’s example’.4
The Saint Sebastian has been correctly associated, first by Anna Ottino Della Chiesa and later by Bernard Berenson, with three other panels of similar dimensions representing Saint Peter, Saint Martha and A Bishop Saint in the Borromeo collection on the Isola Bella (Novara).5 It has been convincingly argued that all three panels once formed part of a single polyptych: indeed they each represent a saint, shown from a low viewpoint and standing full-length before a niche, holding his or her attribute. Sebastian’s pose echoes that of Peter; their feet are in exactly the same position (one seen frontally and the other in profile) and their bodies are placed just left of centre, pointing right, thus indicating that they must have originally stood to the left of the altarpiece’s main axis. Martha, on the other hand, stands just right of centre and her body points slightly to the left, thus indicating that her original position was most likely on the other side. All three saints have points in common with the figures in Luini's Lamentation in the Szépmüvészeti Múzeum, Budapest, and the clothed figures of Peter and Martha are generically similar to those gathered around the Dead Christ in Luini's later Lamentation, painted for the church of San Giorgio, Milan, in 1516. The fact that the Saint Sebastian is the only signed and dated panel from the group is important, not only in securing 1510 as the date of execution for the entire polyptych but also for confirming beyond any doubt the three panels’ authorship. It was not until the second decade of the 16th century that Luini’s style developed recognisably into his own, somewhat formulaic on the one hand but deeply influenced by Raphael and Leonardo on the other. Indeed one should assume that Luini’s style entered into its more ‘Leonardesque’ phase only after Leonardo’s second Milanese sojourn, which took place from 1508 to 1513.
