Polyptych, consisting of 5 parts: “Ascension of Christ” – 278X122; “Bishop Averoldo with Saints Nazarene and Celsius” and “St. Sebastian” – 169X65 each; “Archangel Gabriel” and “Virgin Mary” – 79X65 each The inscription on the column under the foot of St. Sebastian: TITIAN F AS I U AT MDXII Brescia, the church of Santi Nadzaro e Celsi Polyptych was commissioned by the bishop of Brescia Altobello Averoldo, the papal legate in Venice.
In 1520, judging by the letter of J. Tebaldi Alfonso d’Este, the figure of St. Sebastian was already finished and Tebaldi urged the Ferrara Duke to buy her. Brescian polyptych with its night lighting effects, using the complex language of dynamic poses, foreshortenings, counterposts marks a new stage in Titian’s creativity.
The figure of St. Sebastian, which aroused the admiration of contemporaries, is in this sense programmatic – not without reason Titian executed for her a number of preparatory drawings. This is one of the first evidence of Titian’s conversion to the language of gestures and gestures developed by the Roman school, to the language he took in the works of his future rival Froulant Pordenone