Follower of Castagno, "San Sebastiano" - Metropolitan Museum of Art

Speranza



This painting was acquired in 1948 with the Rogers and Dick funds, as a work by Castagno.

Indeed, the head of Sebastiano, in its form and expression, recalls figures in certain important works by that artist.

The treatment of the light and shadow falling on Sebastiano's body, the type of landscape, and the relation of the figure to the landscape, combine to suggest that this was painted after 1457, the year in which Castagno died.

Although such a representation of Sebastiano standing against the trunk of  a tree, his feet resting on sawed-offstumbes, appears to be derived from a North European prototype, the motive had already been used in Firenze in the late fourteenth century by Giovanni del Biondo and others.

The painting by this follower of Castagno seems to have inspired several other versions of the subject, including the famous panel by Botticelli in the Berlin Museum, painted in 1473, and one by Francesco Botticini in the Uffizi, in which even the motif of the angel bearing the crown is to be found.