The Apotheosis; Saint Sebastian Carried to Heaven by Three Angels(Giovanni Lanfranco)
This powerful baroque painting was almost certainly commissioned in the early 1630s by the Barberini (the family of the reigning pope, Urban VIII). It is first mentioned in an inventory made in April 1644 by order of Cardinal Antonio Barberini of the paintings and sculpture in the Palazzo alle Quattro Fontane in Rome. At this time the pope was ill; he subsequently died in July of that same year. It seems unlikely that Lanfranco would have executed this painting during his Neapolitan period (1634-36), although he attempted to obtain Roman commission while in Naples . It seems probable that the picture dates from the period prior to his departure for Naples in early 1634, probably from his last Roman years in 1632 and 1633.
The painting shows Lanfranco’s mature, baroque style which he developed after 1624. The putti are closer in type and modelling to those in his altarpiece in San Domenico in Perugia (1632) and those in his altarpiece in Saint Leodegar in Lucerne (1633-34). The facial type of the saint foreshadows that of certain youths depicted in the scenes from Roman history, which he painted for the Conde de Monterrey and the king of Spain during his first Neapolitan years (for instance the Banquet Scene, Madrid, Museo del Prado).
This proposed dating is also confirmed by the style of two preliminary black-and-white chalk drawings, which were identified by Erich Schleier among the Lanfranco drawings in the Galleria Nazionale di Capodimonte in Naples . In both drawings only the saint’s body is sketched with rapid black chalk hatching which achieves a rough, chiaroscuro modelling. In the first drawing the artist was mainly interested in shaping the huge right leg and the position of the extended left arm; the head is only roughly indicated, while the left side of the body, where the angel was to be placed, is left empty. In the second drawing, the folds of the garments have been defined more elaborately and the modelling of the leg is more detailed, while in the lower left Lanfranco has drawn a very loosely modelled, yet firm study of the saint’s head.
The subject of Saint Sebastian in Glory on clouds supported and led to heaven by angels is certainly unusual, if not virtually unique. But an exception is Domenico Parodi’s fresco in one of the domes of the left aisle of Santa Maria dell’Orto in Rome, significantly a ceiling painting. In early seventeenth-century paintings the saint was usually depicted in the scene of the finding and the tending of the body (by Saint Irene or angels), or as a standing figure tied to the tree, alone or mocked by soldiers. Less frequently than in the early fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Sebastian was occasionally depicted as the target of the Roman archers.
The Barberini Chapel in SantAndrea della Valle was commissioned by Monsignor Maffeo Barberini, later Pope Urban VIII and erected in 1603-16. The church stands near the site of the former church of San Sebastianello, where according to legend, Lucina had saved the saint’s body from the Cloaca Maxima. In fact, attached to the main Barberini Chapel is a smaller chapel dedicated to Saint Sebastian. It is not known whether there is any connection with the Barberini commission and this painting of Saint Sebastian carried to Heaven.
In 1644 the picture hung as an overdoor in the room next to the salone of the Barberini palace. But it remains uncertain whether it was conceived as such or, as appears more probable from the composition and foreshortening, as a ceiling painting. It is also uncertain whether it was commissioned by Cardinal Antonio or by another member of the family. When Cardinal Antonio the younger returned to Rome from his exile in Paris, he settled in the Palazzo ai Giubbonari near the Campo dei Fiori. There the picture is listed in t
he inventory made at the cardinal’s death in 1671. He left it to his elder brother, Cardinal Francesco Barberini. By the end of the seventeenth century the picture was back in the Palazzo alle Quattro Fontane. It is described in the inventory of the belongings of Cardinal Carlo Barberini (written 1692-1704) and mentioned in many Roman guidebooks, such as that of de Rossi (1697), as well as Rossini’s Mercuno errante and others up to Vasi (1804), President de Brosses (1739-40) and French travellers such as Lalande (1769).
In 1812 part of the Barberini collection was inherited by Maffeo Sciarra (grandson of Cornelia Barberini and Guido Cesare Colonna di Sciarra) and transferred to the Sciarra palace on the Corso. Among the 191 paintings listed in the 1818 inventory there were two by Lanfranco, the Saint Sebastian and a Death of Cleopatra. While the Cleopatra, now in private collection (and also dating from the same years 1632-33) was installed in the Galleria Sciarra and described by Roman nineteenth-century guidebooks, such as Melchiorri and Pistolesi, this was not the case with the Saint Sebastian. Its location during the nineteenth-century is unclear. When Prince Colonna di Sciarra was in serious financial difficulties in the early 1890s, he began to sell paintings illegally from the Fidecommesso collection. Before the palace was sold in 1898, he offered a large portion of the collection (126 pictures) to four major creditors, among them Edoardo Almagià, who bought 36 paintings from the Sciarra collection, most of them prior to the 1899 sale. Among them was the Saint Sebastian, not, however, the Cleopatra. The Saint Sebastian apparently never hung in the Palazzo Ottoboni-FianoAlmagià, which Edoardo Almagià bought in 1898. It was installed in the Almagià Villino in via Scialoja on a ceiling with a stuccoed frame. This made additions necessary to the originally rectangular canvas on all four corners and to the left and right sides. When the Villino was destroyed some decades ago, the picture disappeared until its re-emergence in 1979. A photograph of the painting, in an old Almagià album, taken when it was installed in the ceiling, was published by both Schleier and Spear.
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