Bernardino Zaganelli, 'Saint Sebastian', 1506

This painting of Saint Sebastian was the central panel of an altarpiece commissioned by the foreign students of Pavia University for their chapel in S. Maria del Carmine, one of the most important churches in Pavia. Founded in 1361, the university attracted many students from across the Alps, especially France.

On 29 September 1505, the students commissioned the Pavian woodcarver Giovanni Formenti to make a ‘magnificent wooden altarpiece’. On 15 June 1506, they signed a contract with Bernardino Zaganelli for the painted elements of the altarpiece. Although Bernardino came from near Ferrara, he had established himself in Pavia and the altarpiece followed the local style. The dominant influence on Bernardino’s Saint Sebastian was the work of Perugino, especially his altarpiece in the nearby Certosa (monastery complex).

According to legend, Saint Sebastian was a captain of the Praetorian Guard, shot with arrows when it was discovered that he was Christian. He survived but was later stoned to death. He became a saint particularly invoked against the plague. He was especially revered in Pavia as the plague that afflicted the city around AD 680 apparently ceased after Bishop Damianus obtained a relic of the saint from Rome and erected an altar dedicated to him in S. Pietro ad Vincula, Pavia. This miracle was retold in the Golden Legend, and was a familiar example of the saint’s protective powers for Renaissance worshippers.

Saint Sebastian stands pierced with arrows and tied to a column made of the pinkish Verona marble local to Pavia. He lifts his tearful eyes to heaven as his executioners, many of them mounted, proceed through the rocky landscape to a fortress. A river winds towards the towers, spires and stepped gables of a pale stone city. The distant blue mountains almost match the colour of the sky high above. Bernardino has signed the painting with an illusionistic trick: his name is written on a cartellino, a piece of paper ‘attached’ to the base of the column with a blob of red wax which shows through the paper.

The altarpiece was a polyptych with several panels. The panels either side of Saint Sebastian represented Saint Nicholas of Bari and Saint Catherine (both now in a private collection) and the three panels of the upper tier, now untraced, depicted the dead Christ with the angel of the Annunciation on one side and the Virgin Mary on the other.

A tablet in the chapel of Saint Sebastian recorded that it was dedicated to Almighty God and Saint Sebastian by foreign students in October 1506 and that the altarpiece was by Bernardino. On 19 January 1520 the students entered into a contract with the friars of the Carmine whereby they made an annual donation of 50 imperial lire, a calf, some wine and a sack of bread in return for masses to be celebrated every Sunday at their altar. The students do not seem to have honoured this agreement for long, as by 1594 the Carmelite friars ceased to allow the burial of the students in the chapel and were unwilling to celebrate masses there.