St. Sebastian
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Authors
Leonardo del Tasso and Chimenti del Tasso (sculpting) and attributed to Filippino Lippi (painting)
Date
Type
image
Language
Keyword
St. Sebastian , tomb
Alternative Title
Abstract
Leonardo del Tasso sculpted this statue of St. Sebastian for the family tomb in Sant'Ambrogio, in Florence, just before he died in 1500 (possibly of the plague, which would explain the choice of St. Sebastian). The del Tasso family were renowned as woodcarvers, and so even though Leonardo was adept at working in various media, including stone, this work is made of wood. The statue, the tree to which the figure is tied, and the classical niche in which it stands are all carved from limewood. His father, Chimenti del Tasso, a specialist in carving frames and wooden architectural ornament, may have created the niche. The sculpture was badly damaged in the flood of 1966. Thirty pieces were recovered that had to be reassembled. The architectural framing, now bare wood, was originally painted white to imitate marble with gilded details. Discolouration reveals where a cloth loincloth covered the genitals of the statue. Enough pigment remains, however, to give the effect of the fleshy saint, who despite his bondage seems to step forward out of the fictive marble and porphyry niche, crowned by grisaille angels (painted in the style of Filippino Lippi, by a member of his workshop or perhaps by the master himself). Scholars have noted the debt to Benedetto da Maiano's marble St. Sebastian in the Oratorio della Misericordia in Florence. Both show Sebastian as young, clean-shaven, and beautiful, as was traditional in this period in Florence, despite the descriptions in the Golden Legend and other sources of Sebastian as being an old hardened warrior with a beard, who was shot with so many arrows that he looked like a porcupine. Leonardo's work is stiffer than Benedetto's, less sinuously bending, but also was given a new life through the polychrome surface, including three-dimensional drips of blood and body hair. In an inscription (no longer extant, but recorded as being on the monument in the seventeenth century) Leonardo del Tasso is hailed as being the "fictor" of the St. Sebastian, an unusual word choice, as "fictor" more often refers to a sculptor who models clay or another malleable medium, rather than a carver of wood or stone. The word, which shares a root with "fiction," can also refer to a teller of tales, a clever inventor -- Leonardo seems to claim status both as an expert woodcarver and as just such a witty artist in this, his final artistic testament. Photograph(s) licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Description
Sant'Ambrogio, Florence
Citation
Alfredo Bellandi, Leonardo del Tasso: Scultore fiorentino del rinascimento (Paris: Mizen, 2016), 189-227 and cat. I.10, p. 239.