San Sebastiano

Rome in the years around 1615 lived under a standing fear of plague, and the man tied to this tree was the saint people prayed to against it. Sebastian was a Roman soldier the emperor Diocletian ordered shot with arrows for his Christian faith, and the old story is that he survived them. Guido Reni gives almost none of that terror. The body is a smooth, idealised youth, hip shifted, eyes turned up toward a light off the canvas, more absorbed than in pain. Reni liked the subject enough to paint it at least six times over his career, and later admirers were drawn to exactly this mix of sanctity and open sensuality. This is one of the earlier versions, kept in Rome, the city where the soldier was said to have died.