Il Garofalo's Workshop
St. Sebastian

First half of 16th century
Oil on wood
Musei Capitolini, Rome

The artist goes even farther than usual in stressing the physical attractiveness of St. Sebastian, leaving him only the skimpiest cover for his private parts and reducing the number of arrows (in the Golden Legend so many that he looked like a porcupine) to just four so as not to distract from saint's beauty.

The walled city in the background is most likely Rome. In the Golden Legend Rome is the setting for Sebastian's story and its interests are an important subtheme.

Read more about images of St. Sebastian.

• Home Page
• Iconography of St. Sebastian
• This Picture

Photographed at the Musei Capitolini by Richard Stracke, shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.