San Sebastiano

Andrea Mantegna painted this Saint Sebastian in the last year of his life, in 1506, when he was in his mid-seventies and had served the Gonzaga court in Mantua for most of his career. It was his third version of the martyr, and the darkest of them. The saint stands bound and pierced with arrows against cold stone, but the picture is really about the man who made it. In the lower corner Mantegna set a guttering candle trailing smoke and a small scroll carrying a Latin line: nothing but the divine endures, the rest is smoke. He died before that year was out, and the painting was still in his studio.