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Sep 15, 2010

Feb 7, 2012

Saint Sebastian

c. 1493

Perugino

(Italian, c. 1450/55–1523)

Italy, 15th century

Metalpoint

Support: Laid paper prepared with gray ground, lined with beige(1) laid paper (with additional residual layers partially removed)

Sheet: 25.6 x 14.6 cm (10 1/16 x 5 3/4 in.)

Dudley P. Allen Fund 1958.411

Location

not on view

Did you know?

The elegant pose of Saint Sebastian here was used by the artist in at least two finished paintings of the saint.

Description

The Florentine painter Perugino made drawings to record figural types and poses that could be repeated throughout his finished paintings. He used the elegant, graceful figure seen here, with its soft athletic body and upwardly turned gaze, in at least two paintings of the 3rd-century martyr Saint Sebastian (the related paintings are now in the collection of the Galleria degli Uffizi, and the Louvre). Sebastian was shot with arrows after being exposed as a Christian convert; he was particularly revered during the Renaissance as a protector against illness such as the plague. Portrayal of the saint required Perugino to express his knowledge of human anatomy, while evoking the gentle s-curve associated with classical sculpture. Drawn with metalpoint, a typical drawing medium in the 1400s, the reinforced lines along the contour of the figure indicate that it was probably used by the artist or by one of his many studio assistants to transfer the design to another sheet.

Provenance

?-?

Possibly Comte Josef von Fries, Vienna

around 1820?

Comte Moriz von Fries, Vienna, 1777-1826 (Lugt 2903)

1889

Possibly A. Ritter von Franck, Vienna, 1808-1884 (his sale, 4-5 December, 1889)

?-?

Princes of Liechtenstein, Vaduz

?-1958

Private collection, London

1958

with Herbert N. Bier, London

1958-

The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH

Citations

Marle, Raimond van, and Charlotte van Marle. The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting. The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1923. vol 14, pp. 396, 538

Lee, Sherman E. "Year in Review." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 46, no. 10 (1959): 210-31. Mentioned: pp. 231-32; Reproduced: p. 232 www.jstor.org

"Accessions of American and Canadian Museums, July-September, 1959," Art Quarterly XXII, no. 4 (Winter, 1959): pp. 385-394. Mentioned: p. 296

Moskowitz, Ira, and Victoria Thorson. Great Drawings of All Time. New York: Shorewood Publishers, 1962. vol 1, no. 241

Richards, Louise S. "Three Early Italian Drawings." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 49, no. 7 (1962): 167-74. Mentioned and Reproduced: pp. 170-72 www.jstor.org

Cleveland Museum of Art, “Two Italian Drawings,” August 20, 1962, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives. archive.org

The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966. Reproduced: p. 83 archive.org

Selected Works: Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966. Mentioned and Reproduced: no. 123

The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1969. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1969. Reproduced: p. 83 archive.org

L'opera Completa Del Perugino; Presentazione Di Carlo Castellaneta; Apparati Critici E Filologici Di Ettore Camesasca. Milan: Rizzoli, 1969. Mentioned and Reproduced: p. 124

Aymar, Brandt. The Young Male Figure: In Paintings, Sculptures, and Drawings, from Ancient Egypt to the Present. New York: Crown Publishers, 1970. Mentioned and Reproduced: p. 56

Pillsbury, Edmund P. Florence and the Arts; Five Centuries of Patronage. 1971. Mentioned and Reproduced: no. 53

The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978. Reproduced: p. 95 archive.org

Johnson, Mark M. Idea to Image: Preparatory Studies from the Renaissance to Impressionism. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1980. Mentioned and Reproduced: pp. 33-35, fig. 28

Scarpellini, Pietro. Perugino. Milano: Electa, 1984. Mentioned and Reproduced: p. 87

Dunbar, Burton L., and Edward J. Olszewski. Drawings in Midwestern Collections: A Corpus. Vol 1. The Early Works. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1996. Mentioned and Reproduced: no. 17, pp. 84-90

Becherer, Joseph Antenucci, and Katherine R. Smith Abbott. Pietro Perugino: Master of the Italian Renaissance. New York: Rizzoli International, 1997. Mentioned and Reproduced: no. 4, pp. 149-151, pp. 240-43

DeGrazia, Diane and Carter E. Foster. Master Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art in association with Rizzoli International Publications, New York, 2000. Mentioned: cat. no. 3, pp. 24-25, p. 283; Reproduced: p. 25

Exhibition history

Drawings from the Museum Collection: 15th-17th Centuries. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (May 18-October 11, 1960).

Art and Humanism in the Renaissance. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 23-February 25, 1962).

Drawings. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 11-September 10, 1963).

Old Master Drawings. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (March 10-31, 1964).

Prints and Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art Collection. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (May 6-September 9, 1965).

Old Master Prints and Drawings. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (July 29, 1966-February 28, 1967).

Drawings from the Museum Collection. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 9, 1967-January 1, 1968).

Florence and the Arts: Five Centuries of Patronage. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (July 13-September 19, 1971).

Italian Drawings with von Hirsh Acquisitions. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (September 15-December 4, 1978).

Idea to Image: Preparatory Studies from the Renaissance to Impressionism. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (February 19-March 23, 1980).

Connoisseurship in Italian Figural Compositions. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 21, 1980-February 15, 1981).

National Schools of Style. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 14-September 18, 1983).

Italian Drawings from the Permanent Collection. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (December 16, 1986-March 1, 1987).

Perugino: Master of the Italian Renaissance. Grand Rapids Art Museum, Grand Rapids, MI (organizer) (November 16, 1997-February 1, 1998).

Master Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (August 27-October 17, 2000); The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, NY (May 23-August 19, 2001); Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Houston, TX (October 14, 2001-January 6, 2002).

Michelangelo: Mind of the Master. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (September 22, 2019-January 5, 2020).

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{{cite web|title=Saint Sebastian|url=https://clevelandart.org/art/1958.411|author=Perugino|year=c. 1493|access-date=02 November 2023|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

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