2021/10/30 Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian
San Sebastian, 255*140cm, 1480 Tambera tempera and Andrea Mantegna, Collection of the Louvre, Paris
Mantegna painted a total of 3 works of the same subject.
San Sebastian (256-288), a Catholic saint, was the commander of the Roman Janissaries. During the Christian persecution in the third century, the Roman Emperor Diocletian ordered him to be shot with a stray arrow, and When Castulus's widow Irene retrieved his body for burial, she found him alive. She took him back to her home and helped him get back to health. When the Roman Emperor learned that he was not dead, he ordered his soldiers to beat him to death with sticks and throw the body into the sewers. The widow found his body again and buried it. He was revered as the patron saint and plague bearer, and in literary works he was depicted as being tied up and shot through with random arrows. In 934, Sebastian's skull was taken to the German town of Ebersberg, where the Benedictine Abbey was built, which until now is the most important pilgrimage site in southern Germany.
The saint was tied to a tall, almost decadent Corinthian column, his hands and feet bound, his body densely covered with arrows, some of which crossed his body, blood flowing from his wounds, and he looked up at the sky, his eyes resolute, calm and calm in the face of death. The arches on the pillars have been destroyed and fallen, and the vines climb on top of them. Large clouds floated in the air, reflecting the dark tones of the entire picture, and the ground was scattered with some broken walls and the feet of statues. The two archers at the foot of the saint in close-up exchanged glances, looking like executioners, so small that they contrasted with the tall figure of the saint. The line of sight stretches along the stone pillars, and the mountain road winds up to the holy city of Jerusalem. The ruins of the ancient columns seem to imply that the saints wanted to destroy the temples and idols, so that the truth appeared in the ruins and was reborn, and the image of the martyr and the ruins were almost fused.
San Sebastian, 1456-1459; Mantegna is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna
Sebastian, tied to a stone pillar, is killed by random arrows, multiple arrows go deep into the body, bloodstained, one of the arrows is fatal, shooting through the neck and from the forehead, the determined eyes are still looking up at the sky, a halo surrounds his head, the sky is blue, some floating clouds are floating, and the god riding in the white cloud in the upper left corner is Zeus's father, Saturn (i.e. Kronos Cronus). The stone pillars are beautifully carved, but one side is already in tatters, and the head and feet and large statues have fallen to the ground. The line of sight followed the low stone wall, and a seemingly newly opened mountain road extended into the distance leading to the temple.
San Sebastian, 1490, now in the Golden House (Palazzo Dorosa) in Venice
This is the third san sebastian painted by Mantegna a few years later, with only gray stone walls in the background, the figures in the painting are obviously pessimistic, the eyes are still looking upwards, the head is faintly surrounded by apertures, the arms are bound, the feet are free, the arrows are densely spread all over the body, and the arrows that shoot through the legs are in the shape of "M" representing "Morte".
Mantegna (1431-1506), one of the most famous painters of the early Renaissance, was a precocious genius who, at the age of 17, single-handedly took on the task of painting in churches. Passionate about depicting ancient Roman architecture and statues, he studied and used perspective freely, rigorous sketching skills and unique painting angles, often choosing unique viewpoints to depict objects, and his achievements in perspective and chiaroscuro had a wide influence on northern Italy. In the field of mural painting, he pioneered the illusion of perspective control of the whole space, creating a decorative style of zenith painting that lasted for more than three centuries.
Representative works:
"Wedding Hall", "Prayer in the Garden", "St. James on his way to the execution ground", "The Assumption of the Virgin"