Il "Sebastiano" d'Antonello da Messina

Speranza


A human form of Roman mould stands in living relation to the architectural surroundings; and the heroic nude, as a mere volume, is like a ruined column, the rounded arch, or the cubic buildings. Such power of limb, such physical presence, such soft modulations of the flesh with its brilliant light and fleeting shadows were new in Venetian painting of 1476. In this "Christian Apollo" Anontello has endowed his ideal of the classical nude with a lyrical sentiment -- perhaps under the influence of Giovanni Bellini. The powerful frame towers up in the forefront of the picture. Firm, pillar-like, Sebastiano stands on the ground, his heavy limbs of cylindrical mould, dominated by a unifying movement of singular strength and harmony. Behind him stretches a radiant infinity under the intense blueness of the southern sky. Shaded house-fronts in bold foreshortening are thrust into space, contrasted by the ivory whites of the sunlit buildings. Here on carpeted balconies ladies sit and watch. Below on the cool pavement seen in geometrical perspective a soldier lies asleep, while groups of men on either side of the Romanesque archway help to define aerial perspective and space. Thus the vast central mass of the saint, in the swelling volume of body and limb, seems to dwarf the brightly lit buildings around him.