Saint Sebastian by Pietro Perugino

Saint Sebastian by Pietro Perugino

Serenity under the arrows

Sebastian stands in the arch of a classical loggia, tied to a column, two arrows piercing his body. Yet his expression is completely serene: he looks upward, lips slightly parted, with none of the pain the subject might suggest. This is Perugino’s ideal of grace — balanced, tender and still. Beyond the arch spreads a soft Umbrian landscape of feathery trees and distant hills under a luminous sky.

A line from the Psalms

On the column above Sebastian’s head is inscribed Sagittae tuae infixae sunt mihi — “Your arrows have pierced me” — from Psalm 38. The martyr’s wounds are read as the arrows of God, suffering accepted as a sign of divine love.

The master of Raphael

Perugino ran the busiest workshop in Italy at the end of the fifteenth century and trained the young Raphael. The balance of this picture — figure, architecture and landscape all in harmony — is exactly what Raphael learned from him.

Where it hangs

The panel is in the Louvre and measures 176 by 116 centimetres.

About this print

Made from a 3,372-pixel photograph of the original, enough to print sharply at up to about 22 inches on its longest side.

Sources: Musée du Louvre, Paris · Wikidata Q3464081 · Wikimedia Commons