09 Works, Today, January 20th, Saint Sebastian’s Day, With Footnotes — 20
St. Sebastian, circa 1614
Oil on canvas
Height: 200 cm (78.7 ″); Width: 120 cm (47.2 ″)
Gemäldegalerie, Berlin
Sir Peter Paul Rubens (28 June 1577–30 May 1640) was a Flemish Baroque painter. A proponent of an extravagant Baroque style that emphasized movement, colour, and sensuality, Rubens is well known for his Counter-Reformation altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects.
In addition to running a large studio in Antwerp that produced paintings popular with nobility and art collectors throughout Europe, Rubens was a classically educated humanist scholar and diplomat who was knighted by both Philip IV of Spain and Charles I of England. More Sir Peter Paul Rubens
Saint Sebastian (died c. 288 AD) was an early Christian saint and martyr. Sebastian had prudently concealed his faith, but in 286 was detected. Diocletian reproached him for his betrayal, and he commanded him to be led to a field and there to be bound to a stake so that archers from Mauritania would shoot arrows at him. “And the archers shot at him till he was as full of arrows as an urchin is full of pricks, and thus left him there for dead.” Miraculously, the arrows did not kill him…