A Sleeping Martyr in St. Louis

St. Sebastian was depicted throughout the Middle Ages as – well – decidedly middle-aged, with a beard and cloak, but in the Renaissance he was suddenly younger and practically naked. Vasari writes that a painting by Fra Bartolomeo was removed from a church after several women told their Father Confessor they had mentally “sinned at the sight of it, on account of the charm and melting beauty” of the young man in a loincloth. Nonetheless, painters insisted on depicting the martyr as increasingly young, attractive, and nude. Rubens was no exception. He painted a St. Sebastian with a flimsy codpiece, surrounded by angels tending to his wounds. Until recently, it was thought that the only original was in Rome; but all this time there was an earlier version in Missouri, passing for a canvas by the French painter Laurent de La Hyre. Sold as such in St. Louis in 2008 for 40,000 dollars, the painting, with its new attribution, went under the hammer in London in July of 2023 for 4.8 million pounds.