St Sebastian & the Art of Suffering - Esther

Growing up I would sometimes leaf through a tiny, white, illustrated New Testament I had apparently received as a Christening gift. It was still wrapped in cellophane & housed in a white, lidded box. The pages with text were those almost see-through ones but every so often, there was a bright colour illustration relating to the text. It stayed in the small downstairs bookcase, being too precious to be entrusted to the chaos of my untidy bedroom belongings.

Tony O'Connell

I don’t know what became of the little bible & I may be misremembering that the image was there at all (it makes a better introduction if it was…) but wherever those illustrations were, they included my first sighting of Saint Sebastian in art. I remember finding it extremely difficult to believe that anyone could fire multiple arrows at a person like that & that it seemed a terrifically cruel death & therefore terrifically fascinating. I then read that he recovered from his injuries, got mouthy with the Emperor who ordered he be clubbed to death instead. As one of the early Christian martyrs, Sebastian certainly set the tone for suffering.

Ricardo Motilla

Even as an under-10, I could see that no-one would want to depict this second attack in painting, the result of which has less of the miraculous quality about it anyway. His early death (at 32) gave artists the scope to portray him as a sinewy, slightly camp & definitely youthful (usually considerably younger) sacrificial victim & in modern times, he has been represented as a gay icon.

I can’t for the life of me find a reproduction of the Sebastian I was originally both freaked out & intrigued by but there are dozens of interesting alternatives, old & modern & not just the sensually youthful version. 

Georges de la Tour (1593-1652) was renowned for his mastery of chiaroscuro & his painting of the Saint shows him being treated for his arrow injuries by Saint Irene, shortly before his death by bludgeoning. It’s a surprisingly contemporary representation in the lack of detail in the figure due to the half-light & focuses on the women attending him. 

Surely everyone loves a reliquary? The morbid curiosity that afflicts the majority of humankind started early. This one is purported to have been designed in 1497 by Hans Holbein & after inspection has revealed splinters of wood wrapped in silk, presumably part of an arrow that pierced Saint Sebastian’s flesh. It was commissioned during a plague epidemic & contemplation of the reliquary would have been expected to protect one from the illness as well as diminish the time languishing in purgatory after death.

Never one to create a half-measure type of self-portrait, Egon Schiele (1890-1918) depicted himself as Sebastian for a poster; he’s clothed, somewhat unusually for them both. His expression, the detail in his fingertips, the wounds create a much more visceral version in the image’s black & white form in my opinion, yet the poster must have cut a captivating dash in 1914.

Owe Zerge’s (1894-1983) beautifully hyper-real Sebastian resembles the Sebastian from Brideshead Revisited more than from the early centuries. The work retains a quietly savage quality to the assault however & even the halo is understated. More an immaculate figure-study than half-dead saint he is nevertheless unconscious already…

There is still something to be said for the traditional swooning Sebastian, as in Juan Carreño de Miranda’s (1614-1685) work. It seems as if a single golden arrow is about to do him in, as his eyes roll back in his head from the pain & the scarlet cloth & background predict his end. But as we know there will be brief respite & he’ll have to agonise all over again.

I’ve yet to find a more dismissive & holier-than-thou Sebastian than that of Ángel Zárraga (1886-1946). His expression seems to be one of disdain & he’s barely been touched. He’s a photo shoot Sebastian with his teeny loincloth & fashionable sandals. The woman’s head covering echoes his halo – he ought to be one of us. Yet although his head turns towards her, he doesn’t seem to regard her. Even though we know he’s not dead yet. 

Perhaps the most abstract Sebastian I have happened upon is Bohumil Kubišta’s (1884-1918) Cubist-Expressionist offering. It’s as if Sebastian has twisted to become part of the tree, is still part of the natural world, not yet saintly & even now capable of suffering.

Despite its melodrama, Ricardo Motilla’s (1951-) sculpture is probably the most accurate depiction of a man being stabbed with several arrows at once. He’s an action Sebastian yes, but it’s unlikely that even a sainted martyr would take it as serenely as we are often led to believe. He still has the six pack & wiry quads but he’s believable & obviously in some understandable distress.

Samuel Fosso (1962-) not only casts himself as Saint Sebastian but as Mohammed Ali in a frankly complex photograph. The original Ali portrait (in colour), as a martyr to the anti-draft cause, coupled with his conversion to Islam, was complex enough. Ali was even said to have named each arrow after someone that had thwarted him in his career. Fosso has created a number of self-portraits in the images of iconic historical portraits such as those of Martin Luther King & John Carlos but his straightforward self-portraits were made in part to persuade his grandmother back home that he was alive & well. 

None seems happier at his imminent martyrdom & subsequent canonisation than Ukrainian artist Alex Dneprovsky’s Sebastian. He leaps towards the heavens, breaking his earthly tethers whilst they seek to hold him down. The urban setting place this Sebastian in the here & now. The artist suggests the wires that tie him “completely pierced him” & represent the problems we all face. Will we allow them to possess us or do we have the will to break free from them altogether?

Incidentally, at one time Saint Sebastian was regarded as a saviour from plague, so perhaps we should all be invoking his powers again. Think on.

Dedicated to James, who did everything he could. With added fabulous.