Over the course of his career, Jusepe de Ribera Spanish repeatedly explored certain devotional subjects, among them Saint Bartholomew, Mary Magdalene, Saint Jerome, and Saint Sebastian. The latter is a recurring figure whom Ribera depicted both in the traditional manner, pierced by multiple arrows, and in the less-frequent presentation, being cured of the resulting wounds by Saint Irene. Ribera´s frequent portrayals of the saint derived from the fact that Sebastian was one of the most popular saints in Catholic Europe stemming from his role in protecting the faithful from the plague.

In this half-length work, Saint Sebastian, solidly bound to a tree, turns his gaze to the heavens with an expression that signals his voluntary acceptance of martyrdom. The placement of the arrows underscores the saint´s wiry, muscular body, accentuated by the use of dark and light to intensify the emotional power of the scene. The same year that Ribera executed this work, he painted another image of Saint Sebastian that hung at the Staatliche Museen, Berlin, until it was destroyed in World War II. These two paintings offer a clear picture of two very different approaches to martyrdom and nudity by the artist. The Berlin work was a full-length depiction of the saint in which Sebastian is unconscious, with his knees on the ground, dangling from the tree to which his arms have been tied. As a result, his figure is extraordinarily twisted, emphasizing the sensation of suffering and martyrdom. In the Prado canvas, however, Sebastian remains fully conscious, providing an example of acceptance and faith in the face of suffering. Thus, despite the violence of the subject, this image is imbued with a serenity that stresses devotion rather than cruelty. In 1651, a year before his death, Ribera took one further step in that direction with a work for the charterhouse of San Martino, Naples, in which the saint´s torso is depicted in a more diagonal posture.

In the Prado painting, the nude human body assumes greater importance than in almost any other work by Ribera. But here, flesh is not used to transmit the sensual values most commonly associated with the nude body since antiquity; instead, it is presented in a religious sense. Its models have roots in classical sculpture, but they now become instruments for conveying religious content associated with the Counter-Reformation, where images of martyrdom served as exemplars to the faithful. Ribera´s understanding of the body as the principal vehicle for communicating sentiments and emotions coincides with that of classical artists—what changes is the nature of those sentiments. Unlike scenes of mythological torment, in which Ribera transmits horror and suffering through both the figures´ twisted bodies and their facial expressions, his holy martyrdoms emphasize the dichotomy between their protagonists´ serene and resigned expressions and their battered bodies. This Saint Sebastian is one of the finest examples of that dichotomy, as Ribera achieves a masterful balance of emotional and compositional elements by focusing the light on the saint´s chest and modeling his anatomy with contrasting light and shadows.

Portús Pérez, Javier, Jusepe de Ribera. Saint Sebastian. En: Splendor, Myth, and Vision: Nudes from the Prado, Clark Art Institute; Museo Nacional del Prado, 2016, p.178--181 n.27