Getty Museum
Figures Tending to the Wounded Saint Sebastian
Creator
Andrea LilioItalian Artist · 1555–1627
All works by this person →Acidic colors, extravagant draperies, and figures in contorted poses proliferated in Andrea Lilio's Mannerist style. He spent much of his career working in Rome and participated in many of the decorative enterprises commissioned by Pope Sixtus V, including frescoes in the Vatican Library and the Sistine Chapel. Between 1597 and 1601, he worked in Ancona, his birthplace, where he created a series o
More on Getty ULAN- Date
- about 1596
- Medium
- Black chalk with traces of white chalk, squared for transfer in black chalk
- Culture
- Italian
- Department
- Drawings
- Institution
- Getty Museum
- Object ID
- b1d25c2b-3222-4282-bd35-6970cf238b5e
From the Getty Museum record
Irene, a widow from Rome, tends to the wounds of Saint Sebastian, who miraculously survived an attack by Roman archers. On learning that Sebastian, a Roman army officer, had secretly adopted Christianity, his fellow soldiers shot him full of arrows and mistakenly left him for dead. After Irene nursed him back to health, this early martyr confronted the emperor with a renewed avowal of his faith. Andrea Lilio almost certainly executed this drawing as a study for an altarpiece. In contrast to other images of Sebastian, which usually show the saint bound to a tree or pillar and surrounded by archers, this intimate depiction focuses on the saint's spiritual exaltation.
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