Sebastian, Saint, Martyr

SEBASTIAN, Saint, Martyr. - He is commemorated in the Depositio martyrum on 20 January, as buried in the cemetery in catacumbas.

On the same date and in the same place he is remembered by the Calendar of Carthage, the Hieronymian Martyrology, the Gelasian and Gregorian Sacramentaries (the Leonine is mutilated at that point) and the Itineraries. His cult spread rapidly in the Church and down to the modern age he was much venerated, above all for protection against the plague (cf. B. Pesci, op. cit. in bibl., p. 191). Even today the memory of St. Sebastian is alive in the minds of the faithful for his note as a defender of the Church (the Passio says that Pope Gaius would have appointed him, while still living, defender of the Church).

St. Ambrose in a discourse (CSEL, 62, p. 466) states that he was a native of Milan and that he perished in the persecution of Diocletian. This chronological notice appears confirmed by the place of his tomb in catacumbas, which certainly cannot be older than the second half of the 3rd century.

The Passio, a true hagiographic romance, falsely attributed to St. Ambrose, but certainly more recent, was probably compiled in the first half of the 5th century by a monk of the monastery that Pope Sixtus III built in catacumbas (Lib. Pont., I, p. 234), with the aim of spreading his cult. There are grouped around the person of St. Sebastian many other authentic martyrs who have nothing in common with him, and unknown figures sprung from the author's imagination; it recounts miracles and conversions with long and tedious speeches: devices all dear to the hagiographers of the time for making their narrative more attractive.

According to the Passio, St. Sebastian would have been an officer of the army, condemned for the faith to be pierced by the arrows of his fellow soldiers, and taken up by the matron Lucina, who would have buried him « in Catacumbas in initio cryptae iuxta vestigia Apostolorum ».

H. Delchaye, Cinq leçons sur la méthode agiographique, Brussels 1934, pp. 33-37; P. Styger, Römische Märtvergröfte, I, Berlin 1935, pp. 130-48; Martyr. Hieronymianum, p. 50 f.; Martyr. Romanum, p. 29; R. Valentini-G. Zucchetti, Codice topografico della città di Roma, II, Rome 1942, p. 17; B. Pesci, Il culto di s. S. a Roma nell'antichità e nel medioevo, in Misc. hist. Oliger, ibid. 1945, pp. 177-200.

ART

The vast iconography of St. Sebastian begins in Early Christian art, from which depictions of him dating to the 5th century have come down to us, with identifying inscriptions, painted as frescoes both in the Catacombs of St. Callixtus and in those of St. Sebastian on the Via Appia. Notable is the 7th-century mosaic above a side altar of the church of St. Peter in Chains in Rome, where St. Sebastian is presented as an elderly, bearded Roman warrior. Depictions of St. Sebastian dressed as a soldier and without arrows persist until the late Middle Ages: as examples of greater importance one may cite the 13th-century apse fresco in the church of St. George in Velabro in Rome and a magnificent 14th-century Gothic stained-glass window in the cathedral of Strasbourg.

In Italian Gothic art St. Sebastian was sometimes depicted as a graceful, clothed youth holding an arrow in his hand; a typical depiction of this kind is found among the saints of the polyptych by Antonio Vivarini da Murano, in the Vatican Pinacoteca.

The art of the Renaissance depicted St. Sebastian as a rule as a nude youth, pierced by several arrows; nevertheless during the Renaissance he was depicted in the company of other patron saints of the plague, namely St. Roch and St. Anthony the Hermit; nonetheless the vast iconography of St. Sebastian in the 15th and 16th centuries is certainly due not only to the fact that he was a protector of plague victims, but also to the fact that the representation of his youthful nude torso lent itself to evident classical echoes. Among the Renaissance works in which St. Sebastian was exceptionally presented clothed, it suffices to note the 1464 fresco by Benozzo Gozzoli in the church of St. Augustine in San Gimignano, which fresco represents the Saint according to the iconographic scheme of the Madonna of Mercy, who receives the praying people under her protective mantle. His quality as an intercessor for plague victims caused St. Sebastian to appear in certain representations of the Madonna of Mercy, painted on three confraternity banners, and coming from the workshop of Benedetto Bonfigli in Umbria; the figure of St. Sebastian, pierced with arrows, is seen in these banners in the foreground among the people praying under the mantle of the Virgin (the banner of the church of Civitella Benoziana, that of the church of Corciano and that of the church of St. Francis in Montone; the latter, dated 1482, is considered by some scholars to be the work of Bartolomeo Caporali).

The innumerable depictions of St. Sebastian left to us by Renaissance art can be grouped into three main generic types, namely: 1) scenes of the Saint's martyrdom; 2) depictions of the Saint alone, of a statuary character, isolated; 3) Madonnas enthroned venerated by saints, "sacred conversations" and other sacred scenes, in which the Saint was depicted or added.

a) To the first type belong the fresco by Vincenzo Foppa, now preserved at the Brera in Milan, the fresco by Benozzo Gozzoli in the collegiate church of San Gimignano, the panel by Antonio and Pietro del Pollaiolo in the National Gallery in London, the panel by Luca Signorelli in the Pinacoteca of Città di Castello, the panel attributed to Girolamo Genga in the Uffizi and the grandiose fresco by Pinturicchio in the Borgia Apartment of the Vatican Palace. Several masterpieces of contemporary art north of the Alps, stylistically Gothic, also presented the scene of St. Sebastian's martyrdom, often framing it in triptychs and polyptychs. Among these works from north of the Alps the more important are: the triptych by Hans Memling in the Louvre in Paris; a panel by the same Master in the Museum of Brussels and the triptych by Hans Holbein the Elder in the Pinacoteca of Munich.

b) The second type is so numerous as to be able to be considered a type in its own right of Italian art between 1450 and 1550, and it illustrates in particular the taste of the Renaissance for beauty conceived according to the ideals of classical antiquity and for anatomical virtuosity. Among these innumerable depictions of St. Sebastian alone, leaning and bound to a column, or to a tree, it will suffice to cite by way of example a few of the very highest artistic value, such as the panel by Antonello da Messina in the Gallery of Dresden, those by Francesco Buonsignori and by Botticelli in the Museum of Emperor Frederick in Berlin; those by Liberale da Verona, one of which is likewise in the Museum of Berlin and the other at the Brera in Milan; the panel by Fiorenzo di Lorenzo in the Pinacoteca of Perugia, a compartment of the polyptych by Piero della Francesca at Borgo San Sepolcro, the painting by Pietro Perugino in the Louvre, that by Sodoma in the Pitti Gallery, made at its beginning to serve as a banner; and finally that by Dosso Dossi at the Brera. Andrea Mantegna depicted St. Sebastian three times, namely in the fresco now preserved in the Louvre, in the panel of the Gallery of Vienna and in the painting of tragic representation in the Ca' d'Oro in Venice. Even the pictorial vision realized in the St. Sebastian by Titian, now owned by the Hermitage of Leningrad, derives from this figurative type, to the study of which Raphael also devoted himself in his youthful period, as a pen drawing of his, preserved in the Academy of Venice, demonstrates. Sometimes the half-figure of the nude

Saint wounded by arrows (e.g., in the panel by Antonello in the Staedel Collection in Frankfurt and in that by Lorenzo Costa at the Brera). Giorgione, exceptionally, painted a half-figure of St. Sebastian clothed, holding an arrow (Venice, Accademia).

c) The third type of Renaissance depictions of St. Sebastian is the one in which he appears among the saints grouped around the throne of the Madonna and in the "sacred conversations"; this type is represented above all by works of Venetian painting, among which the most notable are: the great altarpiece with the Virgin enthroned by Giovanni Bellini, now kept at the Accademia in Venice, that of Cima da Conegliano also in the Accademia in Venice and another by the same artist at the Brera in Milan, the altarpiece by Alvise Vivarini in the Museum of Emperor Frederick in Berlin, that of Bartolomeo Montagna at the Brera in Milan and the two altarpieces by Lorenzo Lotto in Bergamo, one in the church of S. Bartolomeo and the other in the church of Santo Spirito. Among the Madonnas adored by saints, by non-Venetian masters, mention should be made of that of Perugino at the Uffizi and that of Correggio, known as the St. Sebastian, in the Dresden Gallery. Among the "sacred conversations" in which St. Sebastian appears, one notices first of all two by Titian: one in Venice in the church of S. Maria della Salute, where St. Mark has been painted enthroned, and another, known as that of S. Nicola dei Frari, kept in the Vatican Pinacoteca; then the panel by Giovanni Mansueti in which St. Sebastian, bound to a column, occupies the central place in the group of five saints (Venice, Accademia) and the panel by Bartolomeo Montagna (Venice, Accademia) where Christ is adored by St. Sebastian and St. Roch. Also to be remembered is the idyllic panel by Giovanni Bellini in the Uffizi, called the Allegory of the Church, where before the Madonna on a small throne two unclothed saints keep silent vigil: the old St. Jerome, his body consumed by penance, and the young St. Sebastian of ideal beauty, wounded by arrows. Finally: the conception of the following paintings with St. Sebastian is closely linked to that of the "sacred conversations": the Holy Family by Giorgione in the Louvre; the Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine by Correggio also in the Louvre; the Virgin of the Casio family by Boltraffio, also in the Louvre; and the Madonna between St. Roch and St. Sebastian by Lorenzo Lotto, now in the Contini Bonacossi collection in Florence. It should be remembered that Michelangelo too painted St. Sebastian in the Last Judgment of the Sistine Chapel, depicting him as a naked young man kneeling who holds an arrow in his hand and placing him in the group of the martyr saints.

As the last Renaissance works of art with St. Sebastian may be remembered: the altarpiece by Paolo Veronese in the church of the Santo in Venice, whose broad image conveys rather the glory of St. Sebastian than his isolated depiction, and the great canvas by Tintoretto in the hall of the Pregadi in the Doge's Palace in Venice, where the Saint is depicted among the patrons of Doge Pietro Lando. To Paolo Veronese is also due the presentation of two scenes from the legend of St. Sebastian, never before or after depicted by any other master. These scenes, grandly conceived and frescoed in the church of S. S. in Venice, represent the Saint exhorting Sts. Marcellus and Marcellinus, and the death of the Saint under the blows of the praetorians.

In Baroque art depictions of St. Sebastian become far less frequent. His isolated images, conceived as statues, disappear. They are only partly replaced both by half-figures, as seen in the paintings of Guido Reni (one in the Louvre, another in the Pinacoteca Capitolina in Rome), of Domenichino (Pinacoteca Capitolina), of Ribera (Madrid, Prado) and of Nicolas Regnier (formerly attributed to Caravaggio, Dresden Gallery), and by depictions of the Saint dead and pierced with arrows, as shown by a painting by Ribera owned by the Museum of Emperor Frederick in Berlin and the marble statue kept in the basilica of S. S. in Rome, the work of the sculptor Antonio Giorgetti, executed after a design by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. In compensation there appear in Baroque art paintings with the scene where St. Sebastian, fainted after his martyrdom, is tended by St. Irene and other pious women who draw the arrows from his body. Beautiful depictions of this scene were painted by: Eustache Le Sueur (Museum of Tours) and Gian Domenico Cerrini (Rome, Galleria Corsini); it also constitutes the subject of a painting of the school of the Carracci, kept in the Museum of Frankfurt. In the nineteenth century this scene was painted in a very famous painting by Jean-Jacques Henner, kept in the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris. To P. P. Rubens (Rome, Galleria Corsini) and to Ant. van Dyck (one painting in the Museum of Antwerp and another in the Louvre) is due a different explanation of the scene, where St. Sebastian, fainted, is tended by angels. A reference to the "sacred conversations" was made by Giov. Battista Tiepolo in his painting with Sts. Sebastian and Roch, owned by the parish church of Noventa Vicentina. The masters of the Baroque also used highly individual figurative forms to explain the scene of the martyrdom of St. Sebastian, entirely different from the Renaissance scheme, as can be seen both in the altarpiece by Domenichino, painted in 1627 for the Vatican Basilica, now replaced there by a copy of it in mosaic (the original in S. Maria degli Angeli in Rome), and in a spacious engraving by the French draughtsman Jacques Callot, where the scene unfolds against the background of the Colossus and the Arch of Constantine. - See pl. XII.

Witold Wehr