Andrea Mantegna
St. Sebastian, 1480; panel; Musée du Louvre
Birth name	Andrea Mantegna
Born	c. 1431 Isola di Carturo, now Italy
Died	September 13, 1506 Mantua, now Italy
Nationality	Venetian
Field	Painting, Fresco
Training	Francesco Squarcione
Movement	Italian Renaissance
Works	St. Sebastian Camera degli Sposi The Agony in the Garden

Andrea Mantegna (Italian pronunciation: [anˈdrɛa manˈtɛɲɲa]; c. 1431 – September 13, 1506) was an Italian painter, a student of Roman archeology, and son in law of Jacopo Bellini. Like other artists of the time, Mantegna experimented with perspective, e.g., by lowering the horizon in order to create a sense of greater monumentality. His flinty, metallic landscapes and somewhat stony figures give evidence of a fundamentally sculptural approach to painting. He also led a workshop that was the leading producer of prints in Venice before 1500.

Biography[link]

Youth and education[link]

Mantegna was born in Isola di Carturo, close to Padua (then part of the Republic of Venice), second son of a carpenter, Biagio. At the age of eleven he became the apprentice of Francesco Squarcione, Paduan painter. Squarcione, whose original vocation was tailoring, appears to have had a remarkable enthusiasm for ancient art, and a faculty for acting. Like his famous compatriot Petrarca, Squarcione was something of a fanatic for ancient Rome: he travelled in Italy, and perhaps Greece, amassing antique statues, reliefs, vases, etc., forming a collection of such works, then making drawings from them himself, and throwing open his stores for others to study. All the while, he continued undertaking works on commission for which his pupils no less than himself were made available.

The Agony in the Garden (right panel of the predella of the San Zeno Altarpiece, 1455) National Gallery, London is the pinnacle of Mantegna's early style.

As many as 137 painters and pictorial students passed through Squarcione's school, which had been established towards 1440 and which became famous all over Italy. Padua was attractive for artists coming not only from Veneto but also from Tuscany, such as Paolo Uccello, Filippo Lippi and Donatello. Mantegna's early career was shaped indeed by impressions of Florentine works. At the time, Mantegna was said to be a favorite pupil; Squarcione taught him the Latin language, and instructed him to study fragments of Roman sculpture. The master also preferred forced perspective, the lingering results of which may account for some of Mantegna's later innovations. However, at the age of seventeen, Mantegna separated himself from Squarcione. He later claimed that Squarcione had profited from his work without paying the rights.

His first work, now lost, was an altarpiece for the church of Santa Sofia in 1448. The same year Mantegna was called, together with Nicolò Pizolo, to work with a large group of painters entrusted with the decoration of the Ovetari Chapel in the transept of the church of the Eremitani. It is probable, however, that before this time some of the pupils of Squarcione, including Mantegna, had already begun the series of frescoes in the chapel of S. Cristoforo, in the church of Sant'Agostino degli Eremitani, today considered his masterpiece. After a series of coincidences, Mantegna finished most of the work alone, though Ansuino, who collaborated with Mantegna in the Ovetari Chapel, brought his style in the Forlì school of painting. The now censorious Squarcione carped about the earlier works of this series, illustrating the life of St James; he said the figures were like men of stone, and had better have been colored stone-color at once.

This series was almost entirely lost in the 1944 allied bombings of Padua. The most dramatic work of the fresco cycle was the work set in the worm's-eye view perspective, St. James Led to His Execution. (For an example of Mantegna's use of a lowered view point, see the image at right of Saints Peter and Paul; though much less dramatic in its perspective than the St. James picture, the San Zeno altarpiece was done shortly after the St. James cycle was finished, and uses many of the same techniques, including the classicizing architectural structure.)

San Luca Altarpiece, 1453; Tempera on panel; Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan

The sketch of the St. Stephen fresco survived and is the earliest known preliminary sketch which still exists to compare to the corresponding fresco. The drawing shows proof that nude figures were used in the conception of works during the Early Renaissance. In the preliminary sketch, the perspective is less developed and closer to a more average viewpoint however. Despite the authentic look of the monument, it is not a copy of any known Roman structure. Mantegna also adopted the wet drapery patterns of the Romans, who derived the form from the Greek invention, for the clothing of his figures, although the tense figures and interactions are derived from Donatello

Among the other early Mantegna frescoes are the two saints over the entrance porch of the church of Sant'Antonio in Padua, 1452, and an altarpiece of St. Luke and other saints (at left) for the church of S. Giustina, now in the Brera Gallery in Milan (1453). As the young artist progressed in his work, he came under the influence of Jacopo Bellini, father of the celebrated painters Giovanni and Gentile, and of a daughter Nicolosia. In 1453 Jacopo consented to a marriage between Nicolosia and Mantegna.

Aesthetic[link]

Andrea seems to have been influenced by his old preceptor's strictures, although his later subjects, for example, those from the legend of St. Christopher, combine his sculptural style with a greater sense of naturalism and vivacity. Trained as he had been in the study of marbles and the severity of the antique, Mantegna openly avowed that he considered ancient art superior to nature as being more eclectic in form. As a result, the painter exercised precision in outline, privileging the figure. Overall, Mantegna's work thus tended towards rigidity, demonstrating an austere wholeness rather than graceful sensitivity of expression. His draperies are tight and closely folded, being studied (it is said) from models draped in paper and woven fabrics gummed in place. His figures are slim, muscular and bony; the action impetuous but of arrested energy. Finally, tawny landscape, gritty with littering pebbles, marks the athletic hauteur of his style.

Mantegna never changed the manner which he had adopted in Padua, though his coloring—at first neutral and undecided—strengthened and matured. Throughout his works there is more balancing of color than fineness of tone. One of his great aims was optical illusion, carried out by a mastery of perspective which, though not always mathematically correct, attained an astonishing effect in those times.

Successful and admired though he was there, Mantegna left his native Padua at an early age, and never resettled there again; the hostility of Squarcione has been assigned as the cause. He spent the rest of his life in Verona, Mantua and Rome; it has not been confirmed that he also stayed in Venice and Florence. In Verona around 1459, he painted, a grand altarpiece for the church of San Zeno Maggiore, a Madonna and angels, with four saints on each side (at right; detail above).

Work in Mantua[link]

Detail of the frescoes in the Camera degli Sposi in the Palazzo Ducale in Mantua

The Marquis Ludovico II Gonzaga of Mantua had for some time been pressing Mantegna to enter his service; and the following year, 1460 Mantegna was appointed court artist. He resided at first from time to time at Goito, but, from December 1466 onwards, he moved with his family to Mantua. His engagement was for a salary of 75 lire a month, a sum so large for that period as to mark conspicuously the high regard in which his art was held. He was in fact the first painter of any eminence ever domiciled in Mantua.

His Mantuan masterpiece was painted in the apartment of the Castle of the city, today known as Camera degli Sposi (literally, "Wedding Chamber"): a series of full compositions in fresco including various portraits of the Gonzaga family and some figures of genii.

The Chamber's decoration was finished presumably in 1474. The ten years that followed were not happy ones for Mantegna and Mantua: his character grew irritable, his son Bernardino died, as well as the marquis Ludovico, his wife Barbara and his successor Federico (who had declared Mantegna cavaliere, "knight" ). Only with the election of Francesco II of Gonzaga did the artistic commissions in Mantua begin again. He built a stately house in the area of the church of San Sebastiano, and adorned it with a multitude of paintings. The house can be still seen today, although the pictures have perished. In this period he began to collect some ancient Roman busts (which were donated to Lorenzo de Medici when the Florentine leader visited Mantua in 1483), painted some architectonic and decorative fragments, and finished the intense St. Sebastian now in the Louvre (box at top).

In 1488 Mantegna was called by Pope Innocent VIII to paint frescos in a chapel Belvedere in the Vatican. This series of frescos, including a noted Baptism of Christ, was destroyed by Pius VI in 1780. The pope treated Mantegna with less liberality than he had been used to at the Mantuan court; but all things considered their connection, which ceased in 1500, was not unsatisfactory to either party. Mantegna also met the famous Turkish hostage Jem and studied with attention the ancient monuments, but his impression of the city was a disappointing one as a whole. Returned to Mantua in 1490, he embraced again his more literary and bitter vision of antiquity, and entered in strong connection with the new marquise, the cultured and intelligent Isabella d'Este.

In what was now his city he went on with the nine tempera pictures of the Triumphs of Caesar, which he had probably begun before his leaving for Rome, and which he finished around 1492. These superbly invented and designed compositions are gorgeous with the splendour of their subject-matter, and with the classical learning and enthusiasm of one of the master-spirits of the age. Considered Mantegna's finest work, they were sold in 1628 along with the bulk of the Mantuan art treasures to King Charles I of England. They are now in Hampton Court Palace, somewhat faded, but many repaintings have been removed in a recent restoration. His workshop produced a series of engravings after them, which largely account for their rapid fame throughout Europe.

Later years[link]

In spite of declining health, Mantegna continued to be active. Other works of this period include the Madonna of the Caves, the St. Sebastian and the famous Lamentation over the Dead Christ, probably painted for his personal funerary chapel. Another work of Mantegna's later years was the so-called Madonna della Vittoria, now in the Louvre. It was painted in tempera about 1495, in commemoration of the Battle of Fornovo, whose disputable outcome Francesco Gonzaga was eager to show as an Italian League victory; the church which originally housed the picture was built from Mantegna's own design. The Madonna is here depicted with various saints, the archangel Michael and St. Maurice holding her mantle, which is extended over the kneeling Francesco Gonzaga, amid a profusion of rich festooning and other accessory. Though not in all respects of his highest order of execution, this counts among the most obviously beautiful and attractive of Mantegna's works from which the qualities of beauty and attraction are often excluded, in the stringent pursuit of those other excellences more germane to his severe genius, tense energy passing into haggard passion.

After 1497 Mantegna was commissioned by Isabella d'Este to translate the mythological themes written by the court poet Paride Ceresara into paintings for her private apartment (studiolo) in the Palazzo Ducale. These paintings were dispersed in the following years: one of them, the legend of the God Comus, was left unfinished by Mantegna and completed by his successor as court painter in Mantua, Lorenzo Costa.

After the death of his wife, Mantegna became at an advanced age the father of a natural son, Giovanni Andrea; and at the last, although he continued launching out into various expenses and schemes, he had serious tribulations, such as the banishment from Mantua of his son Francesco, who had incurred the marquis' displeasure. Perhaps the aged master and connoisseur regarded as barely less trying the hard necessity of parting with a beloved antique bust of Faustina.

Very soon after this transaction he died in Mantua, on September 13, 1506. In 1516, a handsome monument was set up to him by his sons in the church of Sant'Andrea, where he had painted the altar-piece of the mortuary chapel. The dome is decorated by Correggio.

Engravings[link]

Bacchanal with a wine vat, engraving by Mantegna, c1475, 278 x 422 mm

Mantegna was no less eminent as an engraver, though his history in that respect is somewhat obscure, partly because he never signed or dated any of his plates, but for a single disputed instance of 1472. The account which has come down to us from Vasari (as usual keen to assert that everything flows from Florence) is that Mantegna began engraving in Rome, prompted by the engravings produced by the Florentine Baccio Baldini after Sandro Botticelli. This is now considered most unlikely as it would consign all the numerous and elaborate engravings made by Mantegna to the last sixteen or seventeen years of his life, which seems a scanty space for them, and besides the earlier engravings indicate an earlier period of his artistic style. He may have begun engraving while still in Padua, under the tuition of a distinguished goldsmith, Niccolò. He and his workshop engraved about thirty plates, according to the usual reckoning; large, full of figures, and highly studied. It is now considered either that he only engraved seven himself, or none. Another artist from the workshop who made several plates is usually identified as Zoan Andrea.

Among the principal examples are: Battle of the Sea Monsters, Virgin and Child, a Bacchanal Festival, Hercules and Antaeus, Marine Gods, Judith with the Head of Holophernes, the Deposition from the Cross, the Entombment, the Resurrection, the Man of Sorrows, the Virgin in a Grotto, and several scenes from the Triumph of Julius Caesar after his paintings. Several of his engravings are supposed to be executed on some metal less hard than copper. The technique of himself and his followers is characterized by the strongly marked forms of the design, and by the parallel hatch marks to produce shadows. The closer the parallel marks, the darker the blacks were. The prints are frequently to be found in two states, or editions. In the first state the prints have been taken off with the roller, or even by handpressing, and they are weak in tint; in the second state the printing press has been used, and the ink is stronger.

Neither Mantegna or his workshop are now believed to have produced the so-called Mantegna Tarocchi cards.

Assessment and legacy[link]

Giorgio Vasari eulogizes Mantegna, although pointing out his litigious character. He had been fond of his fellow-pupils at Padua: and for two of them, Dario da Trevigi and Marco Zoppo, he retained a steady friendship. Mantegna became very expensive in his habits, fell at times into difficulties, and had to urge his valid claims upon the marquis' attention.

In solid antique taste, Mantegna distanced all contemporary competition. Though substantially related to the 15th century, the influence of Mantegna on the style and tendency of his age was very marked over Italian art generally. Giovanni Bellini, in his earlier works, obviously followed the lead of his brother-in-law Andrea. Albrecht Dürer was influenced by his style during his two trips in Italy. Leonardo da Vinci took from Mantegna the use of decorations with festoons and fruit.

Mantegna's main legacy in considered the introduction of spatial illusionism, both in frescoes and in sacra conversazione paintings: his tradition of ceiling decoration was followed for almost three centuries. Starting from the faint cupola of the Camera degli Sposi, Correggio brought on his master and collaborator's research in perspective constructions, producing eventually a masterwork like the dome of Cathedral of Parma.

Major works[link]

The Virgin Mary in Andrea Mantegna's San Zeno Altarpiece combines pseudo-Arabic halos and garment hems, with an Oriental carpet at her feet (1456–1459).

• St. Jerome in the Wilderness (c. 1448–1451) - Tempera on wood, 48 x 36 cm, São Paulo Museum of Art, São Paulo, Brazil
• The Adoration of the Shepherds (c. 1451–1453) - Tempera on canvas transferred from wood, 40 x 55,6 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
• San Luca Altarpiece (1453) - Panel, 177 x 230 cm, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan
• Presentation at the Temple (c. 1455) - Tempera on wood, 68.9 x 86.3 cm, Staatliche Museen, Berlin, Germany
• Crucifixion (1457–1459) - Wood, 67 x 93 cm, Louvre, Paris
• Christ as the Suffering Redeemer (1495–1500) - Tempera on wood, 78 x 48 cm, Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, Denmark
• Agony in the Garden (c. 1459) - Tempera on wood, 63 x 80 cm, National Gallery, London
• Portrait of Cardinal Ludovico Trevisan, (c. 1459–1460) - Tempera on wood, 44 x 33 cm, Staatliche Museen, Berlin
• St. Bernardino of Siena between Two Angels, (attributed, 1460) - Tempera on canvas, 385 x 220 cm, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan
• Portrait of a Man (c. 1460-1470) - Wood, 24.2 x 19 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington, USA
• Death of the Virgin (c. 1461) - Panel, 54 x 42 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid
• Portrait of Francesco Gonzaga (c. 1461) - Panel, 25 x 18 cm, Capodimonte Museum, Naples
• Madonna with Sleeping Child (c. 1465–1470) - Oil on canvas, 43x32 cm, Staatliche Museen, Berlin
• St. George (c. 1460) - Tempera on panel, 66 x 32 cm, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice
• San Zeno Altarpiece (1457–1460) - Panel, 480 x 450 cm, San Zeno, Verona
• St. Sebastian (c. 1457–1459) - Wood, 68 x 30 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna [1]
• St. Sebastian - Panel, 255 x 140 cm, Louvre, Paris
• Adoration of the Magi (1462) - Tempera on panel, 76 x 76.5 cm, Uffizi, Florence
• The Ascension (1462) - Tempera on panel, 86 x 42.5 cm, Uffizi, Florence
• The Circumcision (1462–1464) - Tempera on panel, 86 x 42.5 cm, Uffizi, Florence
• Portrait of Carlo de' Medici (c. 1459-1466) - Tempera on panel, 40.6 x 29.5 cm, Uffizi, Florence
• The Madonna of the Cherubim (c. 1485) - Panel, 88 x 70 cm, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan
• Triumph of Caesar (c. 1486) - Hampton Court Palace, England
• The Lamentation over the Dead Christ (c. 1490) - Tempera on canvas, 68 x 81 cm, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan[2]
• Madonna of the Caves (1489–1490) - Uffizi, Florence
• St. Sebastian (1490) - Panel, 68 x 30 cm, Ca' d'Oro, Venice
• Madonna della Vittoria (1495) - Tempera on canvas, 285 x 168 cm, Louvre, Paris
• Holy Family (c. 1495–1500) - Tempera on canvas, 75.5 x 61.5 cm, The Dresden Gallery, Dresden
• Judith and Holofernes (1495) - Egg-tempera on wood, National Gallery of Art, Washington
• Trivulzio Madonna (1497) - Tempera on canvas, 287 x 214 cm, Museo Civico d'Arte Antica, Milan
• Parnassus (Mars and Venus) (1497) - Canvas, 160 x 192 cm, Louvre, Paris
• Minerva Chases the Vices from the Garden of Virtue (c. 1502) - Oil on canvas, 160x192 cm, Louvre, Paris

Mantegna only known sculpture is a "Sant'Eufemia" in the Cathedral of Irsina, Basilicata.

References[link]

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 
• Janson, H.W., Janson, Anthony F.History of Art. Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers. 6 edition. January 1, 2005. ISBN 0-13-182895-9
• Early Italian Engravings from the National Gallery of Art; J.A. Levinson (ed); National Gallery of Art, 1973,LOC 7379624
• Martineau, Jane (ed.), Suzanne Boorsch (ed.). Andrea Mantegna (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art; London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1992) Exhibition Catalog: Metropolitan Museum of Art; Royal Academy of Arts
•  "Andrea Mantegna". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913. 
• Berger, John and Katya, Lying Down to Sleep. Corraini Edizioni. 2010. ISBN 9788875702618

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Andrea Mantegna

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). Catholic Encyclopedia. Robert Appleton Company. 

• Links to all the engravings; see section B
• Video about the St Sebastian by Andrea Mantegna (french)
• "Christ as the Suffering Redeemer", 1495-1500
• Grove art on the "Camera Picta
• Brief bio of Mantegna from Web Gallery of Art

Saint Sebastian
Painting by Il Sodoma, c. 1525., depicting St. Sebastian and the arrows.
Martyr
Born	c. 256
Died	c. 288
Honored in	Roman Catholicism Eastern Orthodoxy Oriental Orthodoxy Anglicanism Aglipayan Church
Feast	January 20 (Catholic), December 18 (Eastern Orthodox)
Attributes	arrows
Patronage	Soldiers, plagues, arrows, athletes/athletics/sports

Saint Sebastian (died c. 288) was a Christian saint and martyr, who is said to have been killed during the Roman emperor Diocletian's persecution of Christians. He is commonly depicted in art and literature tied to a post or tree and shot with arrows. This is the most common artistic depiction of Sebastian; however, he was rescued and healed by Irene of Rome before criticising the emperor and being clubbed to death.^[1] He is venerated in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches.

The details of Saint Sebastian's martyrdom were first spoken of by 4th century bishop Ambrose of Milan, in his sermon (number 22) on Psalm 118. Ambrose stated that Sebastian came from Milan and that he was already venerated there in the 4th century.

Life[link]

According to Sebastian's 5th-century Acta Sanctorum,^[2] still attributed to Ambrose by the 17th-century hagiographer Jean Bolland, and the briefer account in Legenda Aurea, he was a man of Gallia Narbonensis who was taught in Milan and appointed as a captain of the Praetorian Guard under Diocletian and Maximian, who were unaware that he was a Christian.

Sebastian was known for having encouraged in their faith two Christian prisoners due for martyrdom, Mark and Marcellian, who were bewailed and entreated by their family to forswear Christ and offer token sacrifice. His presence was said to have cured a woman of her muteness, and that the miracle instantly converted 78 persons.

According to tradition, Mark and Marcellian were twin brothers and were deacons. They were from a distinguished family and were both married, living in Rome with their wives and children. The brothers refused to sacrifice to the Roman gods and were arrested. They were visited by their father and mother, Tranquillinus and Martia, in prison, who attempted to persuade them to renounce Christianity.

Sebastian ended up converting Tranquillinus and Martia, as well as Saint Tiburtius, the son of Chromatius, the local prefect. Nicostratus, another official, and his wife Zoe were also converted. It has been said that Zoe had been a mute for 6 years. However, she made known to Sebastian her desire to be converted to Christianity. As soon as she had, her speech returned to her. Nicostratus then brought the rest of the prisoners; these 16 persons were also converted by Sebastian.^[3]

Chromatius and Tiburtius converted; Chromatius set all of his prisoners free from jail, resigned his position, and retired to the country in Campania. Mark and Marcellian, after being concealed by a Christian named Castulus, were later martyred, as were Nicostratus, Zoe, and Tiburtius.

Martyrdom[link]

Diocletian reproached Sebastian for his supposed betrayal, and he commanded him to be led to a field and there to be bound to a stake to be shot at. "And the archers shot at him till he was as full of arrows as an urchin,"^[5] leaving him there for dead. Miraculously, the arrows did not kill him. The widow of Castulus, Irene of Rome, went to retrieve his body to bury it, and found he was still alive. She brought him back to her house and nursed him back to health. The other residents of the house doubted he was a Christian. One of those was a girl who was blind. Sebastian asked her "Do you wish to be with God?", and made the sign of the Cross on her head. "Yes", she replied, and immediately regained her sight. Sebastian then stood on a step and harangued Diocletian as he passed by; the emperor had him beaten to death and his body thrown into a privy. But in an apparition Sebastian told a Christian widow where they might find his body undefiled and bury it "at the catacombs by the apostles."

Of the miraculous effect of the example of Sebastian, the Golden Legend reports,

…Saint Gregory telleth in the first book of his Dialogues that a woman of Tuscany which was new wedded was prayed for to go with other women to the dedication of the church of Sebastian, and the night tofore she was so moved in her flesh that she might not abstain from her husband, and on the morn, she having greater shame of men than of God, went thither, and anon as she was entered into the oratory where the relics of Saint Sebastian were, the fiend took her and tormented her before all the people.

Sebastian was also said to be a defense against the plague. The Golden Legend transmits the episode of a great plague that afflicted the Lombards in the time of King Gumburt, which was stopped by the erection of an altar in honor of Sebastian in the Church of Saint Peter in the Province of Pavia.

Because Sebastian had been thought to have been killed by the arrows, and yet was not, and then later was killed by the same emperor who had ordered him shot, he is sometimes known as the saint who was martyred twice.

Location of remains[link]

St. Sebastian, Andrea Mantegna, 1480, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

The remains asserted to be those of Sebastian are currently housed in Rome in the Basilica Apostolorum, built by Pope Damasus I in 367 on the site of the provisional tomb of St. Peter and Saint Paul. The church, today called San Sebastiano fuori le mura, was rebuilt in the 1610s under the patronage of Scipione Borghese. Others sources say that his body would have been carried from Rome to Soissons (France), into the Saint Medard abbey.

In art and literature[link]

Saint Sebastian, Carlo Saraceni (c. 1610–15), Castle Museum, Prague.

The earliest representation of Sebastian is a mosaic in the Basilica of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo (Ravenna, Italy) dated between 527 and 565. The right lateral wall of the basilica contains large mosaics representing a procession of 26 martyrs, led by Saint Martin and including Sebastian. The martyrs are represented in Byzantine style, lacking any individuality, and have all identical expressions.

Another early representation is in a mosaic^[6] in the Church of San Pietro in Vincoli (Rome, Italy), probably made in the year 682. It shows a grown, bearded man in court dress but contains no trace of an arrow.^[7] The archers and arrows begin to appear by 1000, and ever since have been far more commonly shown than the actual moment of his death by clubbing, so that there is a popular misperception that this is how he died.^[8]

As protector of potential plague victims (a connection popularized by the Golden Legend^[9]) and soldiers, Sebastian naturally occupied a very important place in the popular medieval mind, and hence was among the most frequently depicted of all saints by Late Gothic and Renaissance artists, in the period after the Black Death.^[10] The opportunity to show a semi-nude male, often in a contorted pose, also made Sebastian a favourite subject.^[11] His shooting with arrows was the subject of the largest engraving by the Master of the Playing Cards in the 1430s, when there were few other current subjects with male nudes other than Christ. Sebastian appears in many other prints and paintings, although this was also due to his popularity with the faithful. Among many others, Botticelli, Perugino, Titian, Pollaiuolo, Giovanni Bellini, Guido Reni (who painted the subject seven times), Mantegna (three times), Hans Memling, Gerrit van Honthorst, Luca Signorelli, El Greco, Honoré Daumier, John Singer Sargent and Louise Bourgeois all painted Saint Sebastians. The saint is ordinarily depicted as a handsome youth pierced by arrows. There were predella scenes, when required, often of his arrest, confrontation with the Emperor, and final beheading. The illustration in the infobox is the Saint Sebastian of Il Sodoma, at the Pitti Palace, Florence.

St. Sebastian tended by Saint Irene, Georges de La Tour c 1645.

A mainly 17th-century subject, though found in predella scenes as early as the 15th century,^[12] was St Sebastian tended by St Irene, painted by Georges de La Tour, Trophime Bigot (four times), Jusepe de Ribera,^[13] Hendrick ter Brugghen and others. This may have been a deliberate attempt by the Church to get away from the single nude subject, which is already recorded in Vasari as sometimes arousing inappropriate thoughts among female churchgoers.^[14] The Baroque artists usually treated it as a nocturnal chiaroscuro scene, illuminated by a single candle, torch or lantern, in the style fashionable in the first half of the 17th century. There exist several cycles depicting the life of Saint Sebastian. Among them, the frescos in the "Basilica di San Sebastiano" of Acireale (Italy) with paintings by Pietro Paolo Vasta. Egon Schiele, an Austrian Expressionist artist, painted a self-portrait as Saint Sebastian in 1915. During Salvador Dalí's "Lorca (Federico García Lorca) Period", he painted Sebastian several times, most notably in his "Neo-Cubist Academy". For reasons unknown, the left vein of Sebastian is always exposed. On 1993 in Berlin a sculpture "Saint Sebastian" was created by sculptor Angela Laich.

Many artists painted multiple visuals of St Sebastian. Guido Reni painted a series of different Saint Sebastian paintings. This is one of them.

In 1911, the Italian playwright Gabriele d'Annunzio in conjunction with Claude Debussy produced a mystery play on the subject. The American composer Gian Carlo Menotti composed a ballet score for a Ballets Russes production which was first given in 1944.

In his novella Death in Venice, Thomas Mann hails the "Sebastian-Figure" as the supreme emblem of Apollonian beauty, that is, the artistry of differentiated forms, beauty as measured by discipline, proportion, and luminous distinctions. This allusion to Saint Sebastian's suffering, associated with the writerly professionalism of the novella's protagonist, Gustav Aschenbach, provides a model for the "heroism born of weakness", which characterizes poise amidst agonizing torment and plain acceptance of one's fate as, beyond mere patience and passivity, a stylized achievement and artistic triumph. Sebastian's death was depicted in the 1949 film Fabiola, in which he was played by Massimo Girotti. In 1976, the British director Derek Jarman made a film, Sebastiane, which caused controversy in its treatment of the martyr as a homosexual icon. However, as several critics have noted, this has been a subtext of the imagery since the Renaissance.^[15] Also in 1976, a figure of Saint Sebastian appeared throughout the American horror film Carrie.^[16]

In 2007, artist Damien Hirst presented Saint Sebastian, Exquisite Pain from his Natural History series. The piece depicts a cow in formaldehyde, bound in metal cable and shot with arrows.^[17]

Patronage[link]

The Twin Spires of the Basilica Minore de San Sebastian, one of the parishes in Quiapo, Manila. The Basilica is being run by the Recollects of the Province of Saint Ezequiel Moreno in the Philippines.

Fountain with statue of Saint Sebastian in the Obregón boulevard park in Colonia Roma in Mexico City.

Saint Sebastian by El Greco (1578) in Cathedral of San Antolín, Palencia.

In the Roman Catholic Church, Sebastian is commemorated by an optional memorial on 20 January. In the Church of Greece, Sebastian's feast day is on 18 December.

As a protector from the bubonic plague, Sebastian was formerly one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers. The connection of the martyr shot with arrows with the plague is not an intuitive one, however. In Greco-Roman myth, Apollo, the archer god is the deliverer of pestilence; the figure of Sebastian Christianizes this folkloric association. The chronicler Paul the Deacon relates that, in 680, Rome was freed from a raging pestilence by him.

Sebastian, like Saint George, was one of a class of military martyrs and soldier saints of the Early Christian Church whose cults originated in the 4th century and culminated at the end of the Middle Ages, in the 14th and 15th centuries both in the East and the West. Details of their martyrologies may provoke some skepticism among modern readers, but certain consistent patterns emerge that are revealing of Christian attitudes. Such a saint was an athleta Christi and a "guardian of the heavens". In Roman Catholicism, Sebastian is the patron saint of athletes as well as the patron saint of archers. He is commonly referred to as a homosexual icon, which remains an on-going controversial tie between the gay community and the Roman Catholic Church.

Sebastian is the patron and protector saint of the city of Qormi in Malta and the patron saint of Caserta, Petilia Policastro in Italy, Melilli in Sicily, San Sebastián as well as Palma de Mallorca in Spain. He also is the patron saint of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Informally, in the tradition of the Afro-Brazilian syncretic religion Umbanda, Sebastian is often associated with Oxossi, especially in the state of Rio de Janeiro itself.

He is also the patron of a college named for him in Manila, which is adjacent to the Parish of San Sebastian.

Sebastian is the patron saint of the Diocese of Bacolod, Negros Occidental, Philippines.

Saint Sebastian is the patron of Knights of Columbus Council #4926 in the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Jose in California, serving the cities of Mountain View and Los Altos.

In his 1906 Reminiscences, Carl Schurz recalls the annual "bird shoot" pageant of the Rhenish town of Liblar which was sponsored by the Saint Sebastian Society, a club of sharpshooters and their sponsors to which nearly every adult member of town belonged.^[18]

See also[link]

• The 3 paintings by Mantegna
• Le martyre de Saint Sébastien, Claude Debussy
• Saint Sebastian at the Column
• Military saint

References[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Saint Sebastian

External links[link]

• The Life & Martyrdom of St. Sebastian, Saint & Martyr of the Catholic Church
• Legenda Aurea: Life of Saint Sebastian
• Saint Sebastian
• Butler, The Lives or the Fathers, Martyrs and Other Principal Saints St Sebastian
• "St. Sebastian". Catholic Encyclopedia. 1913. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13668a.htm. 

Media related to Saint Sebastian at Wikimedia Commons

•  Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Sebastian, St". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 
• Representations of Saint Sebastian
• St.Sebastian's Church Udayamperoor