St. Sebastian

According to legend, the emperor Diocletian recruited Sebastian in 303 AD to be an officer in the imperial bodyguard, but Sebastian continued to defend his Christian faith. The Legenda Aurea (1265/66; Golden Legend) also tells about the impressive healing of Cromatius: the severely ill prefect had summoned Sebastian and Polycarpus, a Christian priest. They immediately baptised him and he was miraculously healed. To further support this new faith, Sebastian destroyed hundreds of idols in Cromatius’s house. When Diocletian heard of it, he ordered the execution of Sebastian, who miraculously survived the archers’ attempt to kill him with arrows. Diocletian then ordered that he be beaten to death with clubs. The saint has been venerated since the 7th century for his ability to turn away the plague. In the early 15th century, it became usual to depict Sebastian – both north and south of the Alps – as a naked youth clad onlyin a loin cloth. Mantegna, who was the most important Upper Italian painter of the Quattrocento, became court painter to the Gonzaga in Mantua in 1459. This is the first of his Sebastians and was probably painted a short time earlier in Padua. It documents his intensive study of ancient architecture and sculpture. The ability to depict a space in exact perspective was an accomplishment of the early Florentine Renaissance. The realism in this depiction of Sebastian’s injuries and pain had seldom been found in such a clear and unmistakable form before. Perhaps the rider in the clouds at the above left is a reference to the transitoriness of human life. The archers have left the scene; three of them can be seen in the background at the left as they climb a curving path. Fragments of ancient sculpture at the left on the tile floor of a ruined Roman basilica are perhaps a reference to Cromatius. Like the architectural setting, they testify in particular to a reawakened knowledge of ancient culture. © Cäcilia Bischoff, Masterpieces of the Picture Gallery. A Brief Guide to the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna 2010