Saint Sebastian

Sebastian was the saint you prayed to against plague, which is a large part of why he was painted so often in Catholic Europe. Here he is shown from the waist up, tied hard to a tree that stands out against a blue and grey sky, his face turned upward. The arrows are placed so that they run along the lean, strung muscles of his body, and his expression reads as acceptance rather than pain. In the same year, 1636, Ribera painted a second Saint Sebastian, full length, unconscious, knees folded to the ground and the whole weight of the body hanging from the arms tied above him. That one went to the museums of Berlin and was destroyed in the Second World War, so the two canvases can now be compared only from photographs. The Prado's version was hanging in the royal palace in Madrid by 1747, listed in the inventory that year.