1 FRANCESCO LAURANA
Dalmatian (active in Naples,
Sicily, and Provence), 1420-
Saint Cyricus, circa 1470-
Marble
49.5cm(19^1 /2in.)
96.SA.
Neither a bust nor a full figure, this work depicts the half-length image of an infant
who holds a palm and a laurel branch, symbols respectively of martyrdom and of
victory over death. The high oval base—with its scored, roughened areas meant to
be covered with stucco and painted—is unusual and is particular to the works of
Francesco Laurana. Born in Dalmatia, Laurana was an itinerant artist who worked in
Italy and in southern France (Provence); he remains an enigmatic figure whose work
ranges widely in quality but includes a series of idealized female portrait busts that are
among the most sublimely beautiful sculptures produced in the fifteenth century.
Laurana's Saint Cyricus is a recent discovery that expands the previously established
parameters of fifteenth-century sculpture. It is the only known half-length figure in
the round with its own base carved from the same block of marble. In it, Laurana
combines elements from other types of religious sculpture that contribute to its air
of sanctity. The startling eyes raised to heaven are found in earlier images of saints
and the suffering Christ. The combination of a high base and a horizontally truncated
figure recalls reliquary busts, and the figure's half-length is previously found in the
depiction of saints, the Virgin, and the Annunciate Angel.
According to legend, Saint Cyricus was martyred in circa 304 for refusing to pray
to false idols. Various accounts provide a panoply of tortures to which the child was
subjected, and some of these are evoked by the Getty marble. That he is shown half-
length probably alludes to his having been cut in half (he became the patron saint of
both sawyers and children). His torso is set inside, rather than on top of, the oval base,
thus referring to the tradition that he was immersed in a boiling cauldron. The skull
like quality of his cranium probably recalls the legend that the skin was peeled back
from his head. While the work conveys these gruesome elements, the artist has at
the same time exploited the shape of the infant's cranium (surely based on direct
observations from life) to create a beautiful abstract form that gives the sculpture
a strange, otherworldly presence. PFEUROPEAN SCULPTURE 15