Saint Sébastien martyr

Reni's Saint Sebastian was among his most celebrated and frequently copied compositions. Sebastian — the Roman soldier martyred for his faith and conventionally depicted bound to a post with arrows piercing his body — offered Baroque painters a pretext for combining the sacred and the erotic in a socially acceptable format. Reni's versions were especially prized for their combination of physical beauty and spiritual expression, and were widely distributed through prints.

Sebastian's upward-gazing face and pale, barely wounded torso are characteristic of Reni's idealising approach to the subject. The arrows and binding cord are present but understated, keeping the composition in the register of devotional beauty rather than physical suffering. Reni's late silvery palette gives the flesh tones a luminous, almost supernatural quality.