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Gerrit van Honthorst, 'Saint Sebastian', about 1623

Key facts
Full title Saint Sebastian
Artist Gerrit van Honthorst
Artist dates 1592 - 1656
Date made about 1623
Medium and support oil on canvas
Dimensions 101 × 117 cm
Inscription summary Signed
Acquisition credit Bought, 1930
Inventory number NG4503
Location Room 24
Collection Main Collection
Saint Sebastian
Gerrit van Honthorst
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Four bloody arrows pierce Saint Sebastian’s seemingly lifeless body. One has stabbed through his leg, and a stream of blood seems to enter our space from its tip. The saint was a Roman centurion who converted to Christianity and, in punishment, the Roman Emperor Diocletian ordered Sebastian’s fellow soldiers to tie him to a post and shoot him with arrows.

Honthorst must have seen many depictions of the saint’s martyrdom during the period that he worked in Rome, but he likely painted this work a few years after he returned to his native Utrecht in 1620. There were a number of outbreaks of the plague in Utrecht between 1624 and 1626, and Sebastian was revered as a ‘plague saint’, believed to offer protection against the deadly and highly contagious disease.

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