St Sebastian
by RENI, Guido, Oil on canvas, 170 x 130 cm
During his career Reni and his workshop produced two types of images of St Sebastian, which exist in various versions. The first type, from around 1615, exists in the autograph work now in the Musei di Strada Nuova, Palazzo Rosso in Genoa. Reni returned to the subject around 1616-17, with a different, larger composition. Many versions exist of this work, the painting in the Dulwich Gallery, London, is most likely the original and first one.
Powerfully Caravaggesque in its dramatic chiaroscuro, Reni’s Sebastian is shown as a striking nude, indebted in its form to antique sculpture and to the classicism of the Bolognese school of the Carracci