Saint Sebastian

Centurion of the 1st cohort under Diocletian, Saint Sebastian was put to death for embracing the Christian religion. His body was first riddled with arrows (sagittation) on the Field of Mars in Rome: miraculously, he survived and was cared for by a young widow, Irene. He was then martyred in the circus, before his body was thrown into the Cloaca maxima, the city's sewage system. This painting evokes the moment before his martyrdom. The Roman soldier lies with his wrist still attached to the tree against which he received the arrows. His pierced body bears the stigmata of the event. The artist has depicted the saint in isolation, before Irene's arrival.

The painting has been attributed to Antonio de Bellis, a Neapolitan painter active in the second third of the XVII* century, whose style epitomizes the new developments in Neapolitan painting. A pupil of Massimo Stanzione, he was strongly influenced by Caravaggio, as were all Neapolitan artists of his generation. He was also influenced by the Bolognese painter Guido Reni, who was in Naples in 1620 - 1621.

This Saint Sebastian, dating from the 1640s, is part of a period in Naples when Caravaggio's strong Tenebrism and raw naturalism were tempered by a search for gentleness and idealization.

Saint Sebastian, patron saint of archers, is frequently invoked to guard against plague epidemics. The great plague of Naples in 1656, which took the lives of a number of painters (including, no doubt, Antonio de Bellis himself), provided an opportunity to depict the saint on numerous occasions, providing a pretext, as is often the case in painting, for a tragic yet sensual development of the male nude.