San Sebastián

Titian painted this Saint Sebastian in the early 1570s, when he was somewhere in his eighties with decades of fame behind him. By then his handling had loosened completely. Up close the figure dissolves into broad dragged strokes and smears of paint, so that the martyr, pierced by two arrows against a dark and stormy sky, seems half formed out of the gloom around him. The canvas is actually three pieces stitched together, and the lower section was left rougher than the rest, which has led some to wonder whether he ever thought it finished. It stayed with the Barbarigo family in Venice until the Hermitage bought their collection in 1850.