It is a “Saint Sebastian,” an early work commissioned in 1618 by Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini. Probably, through complex hereditary ways, it passed from Rome to a small French church near Versailles, where it has been attested since 1836
article published in the Art Newspaper
Art historian Maichol Clemente (Udine, 1985), our contributor and author of the column “The Stone Convitee” in the “Opinions” section, is the author of a rare and sensational discovery: a “Saint Sebastian,” an early work by Gian Lorenzo Bernini.
How did this finding come about?
About a year ago I was engaged in a project funded by Venetian Heritage on the Venetian activity of the Genoese sculptor Filippo Parodi.
Among his artists of reference was the Frenchman Pierre Puget, from whom Parodi was also inspired for one of his works in the Basilica del Santo in Padua.
Well, rereading a few articles on Puget, one of his works, a “Saint Sebastian,” was being reported in a small French church in a small village not far from Versailles, in Jouy-en-Josas.
Out of sheer curiosity (always to be indulged!) I therefore went looking for a photograph.
Thus the investigation began.
How did he come to the certainty that the “Saint Sebastian” is by Gian Lorenzo Bernini?
Fortunately, there was an inescapable trace: an article published in 2001 in the “Bollettino d’Arte” in which Laura Testa published unpublished documents about Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini’s request to Bernini for a statue depicting precisely Saint Sebastian.
We are at the end of 1618 and this is the first known commission directed to Gian Lorenzo alone, that is, where his name no longer appears side by side with that of his father Pietro, also a sculptor, within whose workshop he had trained.
I decided to delve into that precise turn of years, thus narrowing down by no small amount the amount of material to read, reread and verify.
The initial caution within a few months thus turned into evidence.
So the sculpture is definitely the Aldobrandini sculpture?
The Aldobrandini papers (and with them the Borghese and Doria Pamphilj papers) are very clear.
It seems to me that the “Saint Sebastian” kept in the Church of Saint Martin in Jouy-en-Josas corresponds almost perfectly to the one described in them: “A marble Saint Sebastian tied to a trunk with armor about eight palms high with its pedestal of white wood with a gilt frame.” ..