St Sebastian Tended by St Irene

As a young man Bassetti trained under Felice Brusasorzi and in circa 1605 left Verona for Venice, where he befriended Palma Giovane; an artist with whom he remained in contact even after he left the lagoon. In 1616 he travelled to Rome where he worked alongside Carlo Saraceni and two fellow Veronese artists, Alessandro Turchi and Pasquale Ottino, in the Quirinal’s Sala Regia (1616-17). Like Turchi and Ottino, Bassetti specialised in painting on slate, a preferred support for Veronese artists, but he also executed a number of large-scale works. Whilst in Rome he absorbed the Caravaggesque influences of his roman contemporaries but, like his Veronese companions, he maintained the muted colours more typical of painters from his native city.

This painting, which is conceived in a highly contrived “Caravaggesque” light, probably dates from the end of Bassetti’s Roman sojourn (1616-19) or from the years immediately after his return to Verona in 1620-21. The main subject of this painting is a study of the male nude, and the arrows seem to have been painted in almost as an afterthought, thus turning the figure into a St Sebastian.