M0004157: Saint Sebastian, oil painting by Santa Cruz

item

Galleries and Reading Room

Café

Shop

Library

Our galleries are quietest on weekdays and weekend mornings. At busy times, particularly on Saturdays, you may need to queue for our temporary exhibitions.

We’re undertaking some research with website visitors to learn more about how people find access-related information provided by museums. This survey shouldn't take longer than 10 minutes to complete. Thank you for your time!

Help us organize our website content.

A black and white reproduction of an oil painting of Saint Sebastian by Santa Cruz. Saint Sebastian is depicted as a young man with a halo, wearing a white loincloth. His hands and feet are tied to the trunk of a tree. Fourteen arrows are fixed in his body. Eight of them were at one time painted over, leaving only six visible: the overpainted arrows were revealed when the painting was cleaned in 1966. A comparable change occurred in a painting of Saints Fabian and Sebastian by Giovanni di Paolo in the National Gallery, London, in which six arrows were visible in Saint Sebastian's body before cleaning, and twenty after cleaning (D. Bomford and J. Kirby, 'Giovanni di Paolo's "SS. Fabian and Sebastian"' National Gallery Technical bulletin, 1978, 2: 56-65)

Wellcome uses cookies.

M0004157: Saint Sebastian, oil painting by Santa Cruz

Licence and re-use