Polychrome Carved Wood Figure Saint Sebastian




Polychrome Carved Wood Figure Saint Sebastian

Flemish, 16th Century
High 71 cm.

Polychrome Carved Wood Figure Saint Sebastian,   a good Flemish late Gothic wood statue of Saint Sebastian 16th century, finely cared almost “en ronde bosse”, of good anatomy, the saint depicted in a pose tied with ropes to a forked tree trunk, with long hair, characteristic facial features, and draped loincloth, shaped base, arrows missing.



The details of Saint Sebastian’s martyrdom were first spoken of by 4th-century bishop Ambrose of Milan (Saint Ambrose), in his sermon (number 22) on Psalm 118. Ambrose stated that Sebastian came from Milan and that he was already venerated there at that time. Saint Sebastian is a popular male saint, especially among soldiers and athletes, who often wear his medal as a pious sacramental. He is commonly known as the “Patron Saint of Sports.[2][3][4]

According to Sebastian’s 18th-century entry in Acta Sanctorum,[6] still attributed to Ambrose by the 17th-century hagiographer Jean Bolland, and the briefer account in the 14th-century Legenda Aurea, he was a man of Gallia Narbonensis who was taught in Milan and appointed a captain of the Praetorian Guard under Diocletian and Maximian, who were unaware that he was a Christian.




Diocletian reproached Sebastian for his supposed betrayal, and he commanded him to be led to a field and there to be bound to a stake to be shot at. “And the archers shot at him till he was as full of arrows as an urchin,”[9] leaving him there for dead. Miraculously, the arrows did not kill him. The widow of Castulus, Irene of Rome, went to retrieve his body to bury it, and found he was still alive. She brought him back to her house and nursed him back to health. The other residents of the house doubted he was a Christian. One of those was a girl who was blind. Sebastian asked her “Do you wish to be with God?”, and made the sign of the Cross on her head. “Yes”, she replied, and immediately regained her sight.[citation needed] Sebastian then stood on a step and harangued Diocletian as he passed by; the emperor had him beaten to death and his body thrown into a privy. But in an apparition Sebastian told a Christian widow where they might find his body undefiled and bury it “at the catacombs by the apostles.”[citation needed] Sometimes Sebastian is known as the saint who was martyred twice.



Sebastian was also said to be a defense against the plague. The Golden Legend transmits the episode of a great plague that afflicted the Lombards in the time of “King Gumburt”, which was stopped by the erection of an altar in honor of Sebastian in the Church of Saint Peter in the Province of Pavia.

* From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Sebastian

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