St Sebastian
From Wikipedia;
"Sebastian had prudently concealed his faith, but in 286 it was detected. Diocletian reproached him for his supposed betrayal, and he commanded him to be led to a field and there to be bound to a stake so that certain archers from Mauritania would shoot arrows at him. "And the archers shot at him till he was as full of arrows as an urchin is full of pricks, and thus left 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 discovered he was still alive. She brought him back to her house and nursed him back to health.
"Sebastian later stood by a staircase where the emperor was to pass and harangued Diocletian for his cruelties against Christians. This freedom of speech, and from a person whom he supposed to have been dead, greatly astonished the emperor; but recovering from his surprise, he gave orders for Sebastian to be seized and beaten to death with cudgels, and his body thrown into the common sewer."
When taking the photo, I had a recollection of a work by Redon, that peculiar and very marmite* artist, whose work captured me in my late adolescence.
I found four Redon paintings of St Sebastian being shot, but when I looked at them I found less similarity in them to my trunk than I had expected. I believe I conflated various pictures by Redon. His Sebastians feature trees but these are not close up like my photo, though the Saint Sebastian (1910/12) in the National Gallery of Art, Washington has the long rectangular format. There are several Buddha which use a single tree a but these do not feature close views of the tree.
Closer in spirit and composition are some of the artists's noirs: the magnificently titled lithograph I Plunged into Solitude. I Dwelt in the Tree behind Me (1896) in the Art Institute of Chicago; and two charcoal drawings: The Trees (1890s) in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and The Tree (1875) in the Art Institute of Chicago. There is also the cover of In the Dream, a set of lithographs, (1879). In 1883, there is an Angel and Demon.
There is also a painting of the martyrdom by Gustave Moreau, an artistic predecessor, of Redon's, depicting the martyrdom with a large tree behind- it is much like a deposition, with the saint being assisted by two women. Neither Moreau and Redon give detail to the body of Sebastian. Instead they try instead to create the atmosphere of a spiritual event.
Depictions of the martyrdom occasionally show the archers (Signorelli (1441-1523)), while others go closer up and depict the martyr with arrows piecing him. This is often a little bizarre. In Mantegna's painting of 1459, in a feat of archery, an arrow has pierced the martyr's forhead and exited through his neck. Matteo di Giovanni (c.1430–1495) shows the saint walking easily though there are arrows penetrating him.
The subject should allow a range of extreme identifications: of courage, resistance, of sadism, or indifference to pain, or spiritual victory. But few artists show much emotion in Sebastian's face other than a vaguely defiant aspect, as if he is simply refusing to pay for a dessert wrongfully placed on a cafe bill. Or, as with Guido Reni's post-execution picture (1615), he's looking skyward wth a God, can you come and untie me now? It's been over half an hour and here I am still with these darn arrows expression.
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*there is, for sure, a histrionic quality in Redon, hence, perhaps, his appeal to adolescents. Personally, I still get him 50% of the time. The drawing is often awkward: sometimes that's effectively naif and sometimes that's an obstacle.. The melancholy that pervades the best work seems to connect with lived experience and, the sense of humour meeting the macabre is fun or silly depending on one's mood. The blacks are dense and entrancing but I find his colours garish. I adore the titles.
Julian Barnes writes enjoyably about Redon in his excellent Keeping an Eye Open
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