San Sebastiano

Guido Reni returned to Saint Sebastian again and again, and this is one of several versions he left, close cousins now scattered from Bologna to Madrid. Around 1625 Reni was among the most sought-after painters in Italy, and Sebastian meant more to the faithful than a Roman martyr shot with arrows. Because he survived that volley, Europeans for centuries prayed to him against the plague, a disease that struck from nowhere like an arrow. Reni gives him almost no wounds and no agony. The young man leans back against a tree, wrists bound, his eyes turned up to a break in the sky, the skin lit in the cool silvery tone Reni was known for. The pose is borrowed, echoing Michelangelo's bound Rebellious Slave. Within a few years of this canvas, plague swept northern Italy and killed much of Milan.