by Tom Gurney
Tom Gurney BSc (Hons) is an art history expert with over 20 years experience
Published on June 19, 2020 / Updated on October 15, 2026
Email: tomgurney1@gmail.com / Phone: +44 7429 011000
Titian's Studies of Saint Sebastian in Berlin: Introduction
Titian's Berlin Studies of Saint Sebastian is a small, crowded sheet of pen drawings made while he developed the saint for the Averoldi Polyptych in Brescia. Six versions of a twisting, bound body share the paper with a separate early idea for the Virgin and Child. The Staatliche Museen zu Berlin catalogues it as KdZ 5962, dates it to 1520 and records brown pen on paper, 16.2 centimetres high by 13.6 wide. It is one of the rare Titian drawings whose attribution and approximate date the museum regards as unusually secure.[1]
The title can mislead if it evokes a finished devotional picture. This is a working surface. Two substantial Sebastian trials occupy much of its upper half; smaller figures, the seated mother and child, letters, numbers and hatching fill the spaces left around them. Its value is the chance to see alternatives close together. The drawing belongs to the design of the Sebastian side panel, not the central risen Christ, and it is physically different from the more developed Saint Sebastian sheet at Frankfurt's Städel Museum.[1][2]
At a Glance
- WorkStudies of Saint Sebastian
- Research recordsearch.smb.museum
Annotated details from Studies of Saint Sebastian
Select a numbered area to find its detail below. Open a detail image to view it larger.
Details from STUDIES OF SAINT SEBASTIAN
A standing Sebastian and marginal lines
Sebastian pose studies beside the tree
The small Madonna and Child study
Photo: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin / Dietmar Katz. Public Domain Mark 1.0. Resized and cropped for the splash and details. Image source · Reuse licence
Contents
- Reading the crowded page
- The Averoldi Polyptych as destination
- A Madonna and Child in the lower left
- Are the numbers and letters Titian's?
- Berlin and Frankfurt are different drawings
- Attribution and collection
Reading the crowded page
In the left and middle studies, Sebastian stretches an arm above his head toward a vertical support. His torso turns, one leg pushes forward and drapery streams across the lower body. The repetition is not mechanical. The leg changes its position and the weight seems to fall differently as Titian shifts line and shadow. At the upper right another figure is more abbreviated, and further trials run across the lower part of the sheet. They let a viewer compare how one altered limb changes the effect of an entire body.[1]
The Berlin catalogue describes the main problem as a tension between strong torsion and a severe, almost Z-shaped movement. A figure twists enough to bring different body surfaces into one view while the limbs and support pull the eye across abrupt angles. The language is an art-historical reading of the marks, but the sheet supplies the evidence: several related bodies make the changing arrangement visible. The darkest pen strokes establish volume and emphasis, while quick light lines leave open other possible positions.[1]
The leftmost large figure and the one beside it are close enough to invite a search for “the final version.” That is not necessarily how the sheet should be read. A sketch can test balance, pressure, gesture or shadow separately; it need not be a complete small copy of the painting to come. Berlin says the advanced leg and areas of shading receive slight but consequential adjustments. The repeated trials show Titian investigating a difficult pose rather than tracing a single settled design six times.[1]
The vertical supports are important. They give the saint's lifted arm a point of resistance and make the torso's arch intelligible. In an altarpiece, Sebastian's martyrdom needed to be recognised within a multi-panel structure, but the body also had to hold its own at a distance. The drawing experiments with how strongly it could twist without losing coherence. That is why the sheet is more than a collection of anatomical fragments: its trials concern the figure as a whole.[1][2]
The two enlarged details below make pen pressure and overlapping lines easier to inspect, but the complete sheet should come first. A crop of one figure can hide the comparison that gives the page meaning; a crop of the Madonna and Child can make a secondary idea look like the entire subject.[1]
The Averoldi Polyptych as destination
The painted destination is the Averoldi Polyptych for the high altar of Santi Nazaro e Celso in Brescia. Visit Brescia describes it as a five-part work of 1520–22: the risen Christ, the Annunciation, Nazaro and Celso with donor Altobello Averoldi, and Sebastian. The Berlin drawing prepares the Sebastian panel. This link is especially important because “study of Saint Sebastian” can refer to many unrelated sheets, including another by Titian.[1][2][3]
Berlin's catalogue reports that Titian received the commission in 1520 and that the finished polyptych bears the date 1522. It also records a useful contemporary observation: on 1 December 1520 Tebaldi, the Duke of Ferrara's Venetian agent, had seen and described the Sebastian panel at least in its design stage. That record helps place the design process within a narrow period. It does not mean the Berlin paper was made on 1 December or that Tebaldi saw the fully completed painted panel that day.[1]
Altobello Averoldi was the patron whose name the ensemble carries. In the church, the Sebastian figure would be read alongside the other saints, the donor and the central resurrection. The study sheet isolates the physical design problem before that larger devotional setting is fully visible. It is therefore useful to move mentally between scales: a 16.2-centimetre paper trial, a more concentrated figure study, and a church altarpiece occupying a high altar.[1][2][3]
The Averoldi Polyptych page covers the ensemble as a whole. This page remains anchored to the Berlin paper. The difference matters because evidence about the completed altarpiece does not automatically tell us which of the six pen figures preceded another, or whether a line was carried directly into paint without further revision.[1][3]
A Madonna and Child in the lower left
The sheet includes a small seated Virgin and Child below the large Sebastian studies. The compact group is a striking change of subject and form. Where Sebastian's extended body opens into angular limbs and a tall support, the two Marian figures fit closely together. Berlin calls this a primo pensiero, a first recorded idea that could develop in several directions. It has not identified one certain finished work for which the sketch was made.[1]
The museum notes possible connections with a lunette fresco in Venice's Palazzo Ducale, dated around 1523, and with a Virgin and Child with Saints associated with about 1520. It also suggests a different reason for the drawing's presence: the closed shape of mother and child might have served as a visual counterpoint to the open Sebastian body. These are proposals, not proof of a second documented commission on the same sheet. The small group may be both a trial in its own right and a useful contrast to the figure studies around it.[1]
The Madonna and Child also resists a tidy story in which every mark belongs to one project. Artists reused available paper for different thoughts. The Berlin catalogue is careful about the limits of identifying this primo pensiero. Presenting the sheet only as “six Sebastian sketches” would omit that second line of invention, but assigning it a firm destination would overstate what is known.[1]
Are the numbers and letters Titian's?
The upper and left margins show marks that do not behave like the principal figure studies. There are small numbers, a large letter resembling an E, stiff parallel hatching and account-like notations. They are part of the surviving sheet's appearance, and the photograph makes them readily visible. Visibility, however, does not establish common authorship.[1]
Berlin doubts whether Titian made these marginal marks. Its catalogue specifically questions the awkward hatching around the letter and the accounting notes near the upper left, suggesting another hand. They should therefore not be turned into a personal message from Titian, an autograph price calculation or a dated record of the commission. They may tell us something about the paper's subsequent handling, but the public record does not identify exactly who made them or when.[1]
The distinction is more than a technical footnote. If every mark is automatically treated as Titian's, the page seems to offer documentary insight that it may not possess. If the uncertain marks are ignored, the physical object becomes tidier than it is. The drawing remains valuable even with those ambiguities: its Sebastian variants are clear, the Madonna group is catalogued, and the later-looking notations remind us that a sheet can have a history after the artist's first use.[1]
Berlin and Frankfurt are different drawings
The Städel Museum owns a separate study for Sebastian, object 5518 Z. At 18.2 by 11.5 centimetres it is taller and narrower than Berlin KdZ 5962. Frankfurt describes brown ink and washes with white heightening on grey-blue laid paper; Berlin specifies brown pen on paper. Frankfurt's sheet also has a study of a head, three feet and a lower leg on the reverse. Those inventory, material and content differences are reliable ways to identify which reproduction a caption shows.[1][2]
Berlin regards the Frankfurt figure as a more advanced step toward a calmer, more settled version of Sebastian. The Städel links its pose to Michelangelo's Rebellious Slave. This is a formal sequence proposed by the museums, not a diary of the exact order in which every mark was made. Indeed, the Städel gives its own study a broad date of about 1519–20, overlapping Berlin's 1520. “More developed in design” can be true even where the available dates cannot prove a day-by-day order.[1][2]
The Frankfurt sheet has its own attribution history: the Städel says it was thought to be by Johann David Passavant when acquired and was recognised as Titian only in the early twentieth century. It now regards that attribution as secure. Those claims belong to Frankfurt 5518 Z. They should not be imported into the Berlin sheet's collection history, which is tied to Adolf von Beckerath's group. Likewise, the Frankfurt verso studies are not hidden on the back of Berlin KdZ 5962 simply because the two objects share a painted destination.[1][2]
The Frankfurt Sebastian study page follows that object independently. Together, the two sheets show related stages in thinking about Sebastian, but their separate physical identities are the basis for any comparison.[1][2]
Attribution and collection
The Berlin museum attributes KdZ 5962 to Titian and describes it as one of the few drawings of this sort that are both undisputed and closely datable. Its reasoning rests on the link to the 1520 Averoldi commission, the 1522 panel and the expressive character of the penwork. The museum acquired the sheet in 1902 with Adolf von Beckerath's collection. That is the documented later ownership point given in its public record; it does not supply a continuous route from Titian's workshop to Beckerath.[1]
The six trials occupy one Berlin sheet, KdZ 5962. Their placement lets the eye move between possible turns of the torso and directions of the limbs before settling on the more resolved painted Sebastian. Keeping the whole sheet in view matters: an enlarged detail can reveal the pressure and speed of a line, but it cannot show how one trial relates spatially to its neighbours. That distinction also prevents the related Frankfurt study from being mistaken for another part of the Berlin paper.[1]
The Titian drawings guide sets this sheet among surviving works on paper. Its particular strength is unusually concrete: six pose trials, a small second subject, disputed marginal marks, a 1902 acquisition record and a documented altarpiece context. The sheet shows Titian trying to make a turning body work, while its catalogue shows why each mark and each comparison needs its own level of certainty.[1][2]
Researched Titian and related works
Frequently Asked Questions
It is in the Kupferstichkabinett of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, inventory KdZ 5962, object 936855.[1]
Berlin dates it to 1520, during preparation for the Averoldi Polyptych. The final altarpiece is dated 1522.[1]
The six studies prepare Saint Sebastian, one of the side figures of the Averoldi Polyptych in Santi Nazaro e Celso, Brescia.[1][2][3]
No precise destination has been established. Berlin calls it a primo pensiero and discusses several possible relationships.[1]
No. Frankfurt's Städel owns the separate, more developed 5518 Z study on grey-blue paper. Berlin's sheet is KdZ 5962 with six Sebastian variants and the small Madonna and Child.[1][2]
The Berlin catalogue doubts that he made the marginal letter, hatching and accounting notes; some may be by another hand.[1]
Discussion
What do you notice when you look closely at Titian's Studies of Saint Sebastian in Berlin?
Share a specific observation or a source that adds context.
Reader Insights
Which detail changes your reading?
How does its original setting affect what we see?
Which part of the evidence remains uncertain?
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References
- Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, “Sechs Skizzen des heiligen Sebastian und eine Madonna mit Kind (Polyptychon Averoldi),” KdZ 5962, with catalogue text by Hein-Th. Schulze Altcappenberg. View source.
- Städel Museum, “Study for St. Sebastian in the high altar of SS. Nazarro e Celso, Brescia,” Frankfurt drawing 5518 Z and related Berlin work. View source.
- Visit Brescia, “Chiesa dei Santi Nazaro e Celso,” description of the Averoldi Polyptych in its church. View source.
