St. Sebastian
The Christian religion is as full of myths as any other. The stories of early Christian saints are almost all completely unverifiable. Today we look at the story of St. Sebastian. Supposedly, St. Sebastian was killed in the year 287 during the emperor Diocletian's persecution of Christians by being shot with arrows, and then, after the arrows didn't kill him, he was beaten to death. The only problem is that the earliest written record of this is a religious book based on hearsay, written 200 years later. So I think it's safe to call it a myth.
St. Sebastian became a popular subject for artists, because it was an excuse to depict a good-looking naked or nearly-naked young man tied to a pole or tree.
St. Sebastian was usually depicted clad in a loincloth for modesty, but there were exceptions. Above is a statue for a family tomb by Leonardo del Tasso, c. 1500.
This painting of St. Sebastian is by Jan van Scorel, 1542.
This painting is attributed to the Flemish school in the 17th century. Note that St. Sebastian is always represented looking up toward heaven, and rather than appearing to suffer agony from the arrows, his expression is always completely calm and detached, as if the arrows don't bother him.
In recent times, St. Sebastian has become somewhat of a gay icon, whether because of the exposed flesh, the bondage element, or because he represents unjust persecution by authority.
This photo is Nude posed as St. Sebastian by physique photographer Bob Mizer. The model is John Miller. Thanks to my friend Jerry (check out his blog Vintage Muscle Men) for confirming the identification.
Of course, the model in this photo is not pierced by arrows, but if he's supposed to be St. Sebastian, according to artistic tradition he should have been gazing upward.
A surrealist San Sebastian by artist David Londono Manzur, 1984-1986. There are no arrows, he isn't tied to a pole, and I have no idea what the dead birds represent. But Sebastian is gazing upward and appears to be in ecstasy.
Keith Haring's St. Sebastian, 1984, makes the ecstasy more explicit by giving the saint an erection. However, the Picasso-like face and being pierced by airplanes instead of arrows make this image more than a bit bizarre. Note this is not a reference to 9/11, because it was painted 17 years earlier.
Paradox of St. Sebastian looks like a photo, but it's a painting by Bruno Surdo, 2017. Sebastian is chained to a wall of grafitti, and he has been shot by suction-cup-tipped arrows. But at least he's gazing towards heaven.
This is The Liberation of Sebastian by contemporary artist Alejandro Garcia-Lemos. A critic wrote: "One naked man stands behind another, removing the arrows from his body and, apparently, fucking him at the same time, indicating that the removal of the arrows—of shame or name, stigma or social taboo—is connected to sexual pleasure." Of course, that's just one critic's interpretation.
We end with a clip from the 1976 film Sebastiane. This extremely homoerotic British film was aimed at a gay audience. All the dialog in the film is in Latin, with English subtitles. The plot has practically nothing to do with Christian martyrdom. Sebastian, a Roman soldier, is exiled by the emperor to a remote desert coastal garrison. There, Sebastian and the other soldiers cavort naked or in skimpy G-strings for most of the film. At the end, Sebastian spurns the sexual advances of the commanding officer, who then orders Sebastian to be shot with arrows, as seen in this clip. Why is one of the archers clothed and another one naked? Who knows?
3 comments:
That art critic sure made an assumption on that one. "...fucking him at the same time"? Why? Simply because he is standing behind him? Oy...
My assumption on the one clad actor: He strove (strives) for a career and, perhaps erroneously, believed performing naked in a film would limit his opportunities.
I thought the same thing about the art critic.
Very neat post and I loved the clip.
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