Bernardino Luini Dumenza Luino circa 1480 - 1532 Milan

Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi collection, Florence, by whom acquired on the New York art market in 1929;
Acquired from the Contini Bonacossi family in 1967 by Wildenstein & Co., New York;
Acquired from the above by the present owner.

Milan, Palazzo dell'Arte, Mostra di Leonardo da Vinci, 9 May - 30 September 1939, p. 208 in the catalogue;
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Painters of Reality. The Legacy of Leonardo and Caravaggio in Lombardy, 27 May - 15 August 2004, no. 4.

W. Suida, "La scuola di Leonardo", in Leonardo da Vinci, Novara 1939, p. 332, reproduced;
A. Ottino Della Chiesa, Bernardino Luini, Novara 1956, pp. 13-15, p. 76, cat. no. 52, and p. 78, under cat. no. 61, reproduced fig. 4;
B. Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Central Italian and North Italian Schools, London 1968, vol. I, p. 228 (as an early work by Luini);
M. Natale, in Museo Poldi Pezzoli. Dipinti, Milan 1982, p. 92, under no. 42 (as by Luini);
F. Moro, "Il polittico di Maggianico e gli esordi di Bernardino Luini", in Archivi di Lecco, no. 1, January - March 1986, p. 132, and p. 166, foonote 17, reproduced fig. 4;
M.T. Binaghi Olivari, in Pinacoteca di Brera. Scuole lombarda e piemontese 1300-1535, Milan 1988, pp. 213-14, under no. 125 l (as possibly by Gian Francesco Caroto);
A. Bayer, in Pittori della realtà. Le ragioni di una Rivoluzione da Foppa e Leonardo a Caravaggio e Ceruti, exhibition catalogue, Cremona, Museo Civico Ala Ponzone, 14 February - 2 May 2004, p. 100, reproduced in colour (as by Luini);
A. Bayer, in Painters of Reality. The Legacy of Leonardo and Caravaggio in Lombardy, exhibition catalogue, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 27 May - 15 August 2004, pp. 76-77, cat. no. 4, reproduced in colour (as by Luini and datable to circa 1512, omitting any mention of the signature and date).

"The following condition report has been provided by Sarah Walden, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting has been recently thinned and backed, perhaps marouflaged, and cradled. There are not in fact dramatic signs of past cracking or flaking, but one fairly long crack running up the right leg from the base to the knee, and one or two short cracks from the base further to the right, with a fine slight line in the other leg. In the right knee there is a patch of wider retouching and also a small patch of retouching in the stomach. The redder marble along the base and up the architecture on the left has a certain amount of surface retouching, and there are other small cosmetic touches in the background. The figure is in generally beautiful condition, especially the head which seems to be perfectly intact, as is the throat. The main lighter parts of the body are all in good condition with a fine craquelure and only occasional minute touches. The shadowy side of the body has fairly consistent frequent little retouchings, also down the shadowy edges of the legs and the shadow on the arms, where the original paint was naturally thinner and more vulnerable. The arrow seems to have been removed at some time, then uncovered in the recent restoration, with some of the drops of blood that were once painted below both wounds, and traces of red pigment are still visible under magnification. Overall however the figure is finely preserved, with the head is in exceptionally beautiful condition, and the crisp detail of the marbling and distinctive incised lines of the architecture are also well preserved. This report was not done under laboratory conditions."
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

This impressive work by the Milanese painter Bernardino Luini provides an important key in understanding the artist's early artistic career.  The attribution to Luini, which had previously been accepted by all scholars but one, is indisputable in light of the presence of his signature and date; something which had been previously ignored in all the literature as the signature only recently emerged after cleaning.  The discovery of the artist's signature is extremely important in shedding light on Luini's early artistic development, particularly in the light of the paucity of documentary evidence covering this period.  Until now scholars had found it extremely difficult to establish an early chronology for Luini’s oeuvre and indeed for anything prior to his first securely datable commission, the frescoes of 1512 in the Abbey of Chiaravalle, near Milan.  The authorship of the Saint Sebastian is closely linked to that of a panel showing The Madonna and Child with Saints Augustine, Margaret and two music-making angels in the Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris, and it thus provides an important stepping stone between the Paris picture and later works given to Luini.¹  The Paris panel is signed and dated Bernardino Mediolanensis Faciebat MDVII (1507); its form of signature denoting the emphasis the artist has placed on his town of origin (‘Mediolanensis’ meaning Milanese).  It has been plausibly argued that he would only have done so if executing the panel away from Milan, and Luini’s possible absence from the city during the first decade of the 16th century seems corroborated by the few documents that have come to light.  Luini’s uncle Pietro de Scapis is recorded as acting on his nephew’s behalf in two documents of 1504 and 1507, suggesting that Luini may indeed have been absent from Milan in these years.²  The panel’s early provenance from the Manfrin collection in Venice has led scholars to presume Luini visited that city and, at first glance, the painting in the Musée Jacquemart-André does indeed appear extremely Venetic.  The ‘sacra conversazione’ format and figure-types are reminiscent of Giovanni Bellini and, in particular, of Cima da Conegliano, but the painting’s Lombard roots are equally in evidence: as Giulio Bora has observed, the influence of Andrea Solario and Ambrogio Bergognone is apparent in the figures of the angels and in the execution of details such as their hair.³  There is no doubt that artists active during the first quarter of the 16th century in Lombardy and the Veneto were closely linked: Bartolomeo Veneto, Marco Marziale and Gian Francesco Caroto all worked in both regions, and thus the idea that Luini may have travelled there is by no means implausible.

At first glance the Saint Sebastian also appears to be rooted in the Venetian tradition, particularly with its use of a polychromed architectural setting, but the influence of the Lombard High Renaissance painters is also marked and, as Franco Moro has pointed out, that of Bramantino in particular. The manner in which the light plays over the saint’s torso, although normally associated with Venetian painting, is (as Bayer points out) ‘a fundamental descriptive tool... also an important element of the Lombard tradition, beginning with Vincenzo Foppa and then reinforced and elaborated by Leonardo’s example’.⁴

The Saint Sebastian has been correctly associated, first by Anna Ottino Della Chiesa and later by Bernard Berenson, with three other panels of similar dimensions representing Saint Peter, Saint Martha and A Bishop Saint in the Borromeo collection on the Isola Bella (Novara).⁵  It has been convincingly argued that all three panels once formed part of a single polyptych: indeed they each represent a saint, shown from a low viewpoint and standing full-length before a niche, holding his or her attribute.  Sebastian’s pose echoes that of Peter; their feet are in exactly the same position (one seen frontally and the other in profile) and their bodies are placed just left of centre, pointing right, thus indicating that they must have originally stood to the left of the altarpiece’s main axis.  Martha, on the other hand, stands just right of centre and her body points slightly to the left, thus indicating that her original position was most likely on the other side.  All three saints have points in common with the figures in Luini's Lamentation in the Szépmüvészeti Múzeum, Budapest, and the clothed figures of Peter and Martha are generically similar to those gathered around the Dead Christ in Luini's later Lamentation, painted for the church of San Giorgio, Milan, in 1516.  The fact that the Saint Sebastian is the only signed and dated panel from the group is important, not only in securing 1510 as the date of execution for the entire polyptych but also for confirming beyond any doubt the three panels’ authorship.  It was not until the second decade of the 16th century that Luini’s style developed recognisably into his own, somewhat formulaic on the one hand but deeply influenced by Raphael and Leonardo on the other. Indeed one should assume that Luini’s style entered into its more ‘Leonardesque’ phase only after Leonardo’s second Milanese sojourn, which took place from 1508 to 1513.

1  For the Paris picture see G. Bora, in The Legacy of Leonardo. Painters in Lombardy 1490-1530, Milan 1998, p. 327, reproduced in colour fig. 221. The attribution to Luini for the Jacquemart-André and Saint Sebastian panels is most strongly contested by Maria Teresa Binaghi Olivari, who considers them both to be Veronese and suggests a tentative attribution to Gian Francesco Caroto for the latter; an attribution firmly rejected by Andrea Bayer (see both, under Literature).
2  See Bora, op. cit., p. 326.
3  It is interesting to note that Andrea Solario had also spent time in Venice and signed a painting, now in the Pinacoteca di Brera but formerly in Murano, ‘Andreas Mediolanensis 1495 F’; see Bora, ibid..
4  Bayer, op. cit., p. 77.
5  Each panel measures 105 by 41 cm.: see A. Ottino Della Chiesa, under Literature, p. 77, cat. no. 61, two of the three reproduced as figs. 2 and 3.