Saint Sebastian Tended by the Pious Women

Rustici Francesco called Rustichino

(Siena 1592 - 1626)

The canvas was made by Francesco Rustici who sold it to Scipione Borghese in 1624-1625. The subject depicts a well-known episode of the passion of Sebastian, a young commander of the first Praetorian Guard (284-305). After Sebastian had converted numerous pagans to the Christian religion, he was condemned to martyrdom by the emperor Diocletian. The saint was tied to a pole and shot with arrows by his own comrades. Believing him dead, they abandoned his body near the Cloaca Maxima. The matron Irene found him there in the night, and with her servant, decided to help him, carefully removing the arrows from his wounds.

Object details

Commentary

The painting was mentioned for the first time by Iacomo Manilli among the works at the Casino di Porta Pinciana. In 1650, Manilli rightly attributed the work to the painter from Siena, describing it as ‘the great St Sebastian, with two women who are removing the arrows. It’s by Rustichino of Siena’. The attribution is retained in all the inventories and later sources. It was only confused by François Raguenet in 1701 (p. 13), who according to Paola della Pergola (1959, p. 51) ascribed it to ‘Mecherino’, evidently in a moment of distraction.

The work depicts a subject dear to Christian worshippers: Irene tends to the martyr Sebastian after his arrow-ridden body was thrown into the Cloaca Maxima. Rustici in fact decided to represent the moment in which the pious woman, aided by her assistant, is extracting one of the arrows from the saint’s side and treating his wounds.

According to critics, the Sienese artist sold the painting to Scipione Borghese during one of his brief stays in Rome, most likely between 1624 and 1625, when Rustici is mentioned in the ‘state of souls’ record of the parish church of San Lorenzo in Damaso as having sojourned in a house in Vicolo delle Stalle, together with Girolamo Tantucci – the bishop di Grosseto – and the engraver Orazio Brunetti (Sani 1997, pp. 434, 457; Pezzo 2017); Brunetti in fact produced a significant number of prints from engravings designed by Rustici.

Variations on this theme which are also considered the work of the Sienese painter are held by other museums and churches: the Yekaterinburg Museum of Fine Arts, which preserves a work published by Markova and believed to be later than our painting (1994, p. 247, fig. 2); the church of St Sebastian in Narbonne, which contains a painting mentioned by Roberto Longhi (1928, p. 179); the Gallerie fiorentine (Spinelli 1997, pp. 24-25); and the Pinacoteca di Siena. The last of these works was brought to completion by Father Vincenzo Rustici upon the premature death of the painter in April 1626 (Bagnoli 1980, pp. 89, 187). Another painting with a similar subject, finally, is cited by Marco Ciampolini (2017, p. 271, fig. 47), who attributes it to Rustici, whereas previous critics had ascribed it to the painter Trophime Bigot.

  Antonio Iommelli