St Sebastian

Entry

According to traditional belief, St Sebastian was a Roman officer of the Praetorian Guard under Emperor Diocletian in the third century AD who fell into disgrace upon the discovery of his Christian faith. Sebastian was said to have been tied naked to a tree trunk on the emperor’s orders, with his body subsequently riddled with the arrows of the Roman soldiers. Miraculously, he survived this first sentencing, only to be arrested once again and clubbed to death.

In the Middle Ages, Sebastian was venerated as a plague saint across all of Europe, with the arrows seen as a symbol of the disease sent down by God. For the period in which the present work was carved, however, virtually no sculptures of the saint are known to have originated from Mechelen.³ In style and height, the Amsterdam Sebastian is exceptional as well. Sculptural production in the city of Mechelen circa 1500 consisted mainly of the so-called poupées de Malines (Mechelen dolls): polychromed wooden depictions of saints with doll-like faces, generally measuring no more than about 40 cm in height. Larger-scale variants like the present Sebastian only became more common in the second quarter of the sixteenth century.⁴

Margaret of Austria died in 1530, after having served as governess of the Burgundian Netherlands for twenty-three years. She was a great lover of music, literature and art, and the city from which she ruled, Mechelen, became a major centre of humanism and artistic innovation during this period. With the presence of the modern-thinking artists attending her court from abroad, the city also became one of the first artistic centres in northern Europe where the influence of the Italian Renaissance was perceptible. Stylistically, the Amsterdam Sebastian is a work exemplifying Mechelen sculpture in its transition from gothic to renaissance. Sebastian is one of the few saints traditionally depicted naked, providing a means for renaissance artists to demonstrate their knowledge of the male nude according to the new, classical ideal. The forceful corporeality and realistically rendered muscles of the Amsterdam Sebastian reveal the artist’s familiarity with such examples. The notably small waistline and full hips nevertheless recall a far less robust type of the male nude commonly encountered in the Middle Ages, which likewise entails a pronounced waistline and hips but then combined with narrow shoulders, a lean rib cage, bony arms and legs, and a poignant facial expression.⁵ The sweet, serene face of the Amsterdam Sebastian, however, displays not the slightest trace of suffering, as if invulnerable to fear and pain. He submits to his terrible fate, as to be expected of a Christian saint. The small, heart-shaped mouth, the half-closed and heavy-lidded eyes and the refined arching of the eyebrows are indeed as yet reminiscent of the ‘Mechelen doll’. The overall figure, however, has obtained a far more dynamic character all its own, achieved through the elegant ‘S’-curve of the body, the fluttering loincloth, lively limbs and muscled nudity. In comparison, the console with its gothic moulding appears outdated.

All indications are that the Amsterdam Sebastian belonged to a series of five plague saints, four of which are today preserved at the Museum Hof van Busleyden in Mechelen: the Sts Anthony Abbot, Christopher, Adrian, and Roch of Montpellier.⁶ All are approximately the same height as the Sebastian and mounted on gothic-profiled consoles borne by angels holding escutcheons, just as the present work. By his nakedness alone, the Sebastian initially appears markedly different from the others. Upon closer inspection, however, a marked stylistic agreement emerges in details such as the jutting cheekbones and the form of eyes, nose, mouth and a number of the limbs. The right hands on both Sebastian and Anthony (fig. a) – specifically, the broad back of the hand and the noticeably lively fingers – are very similar.⁷ The close resemblance between Sebastian and Anthony is also apparent in other respects. In corporeal terms, these two figures are rendered with greater suppleness than the others. Where Sebastian’s loincloth and Anthony’s robe display a perceivable Schwung, the drapery folds of the other three are heavy. The hands, legs and feet (inasmuch as they can be discerned) on both the Roch and Christopher are ostensibly finished with less precision. Furthermore, Anthony and Sebastian possess the same rich, glowing flesh tones, while those of the other three appear rather dull.⁸

Nothing is known about the series’ background, other than the fact that four of the figures – the Adrian, Anthony Abbot, Roch and in all probability the Christopher – originally stood in the chapel of the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwe-Gasthuis in Mechelen, founded at the end of the twelfth century on the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwestraat. In the years 1857-58, the hospital and its contents were moved to a new complex on the Keiserstraat. At this time, the four above-cited plague saints were transferred to the new chapel, where they were mounted high up on columns standing near the altar where they could be seen by bed-ridden patients in the adjoining men’s and women’s sick wards.⁹ What year the sculptures came into the possession of the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwe-Gasthuis in Mechelen is not known. They do not appear in Jean-Baptiste de Noter’s watercolour showing the baroque interior of the old hospital chapel in the year 1830,¹⁰ though this does not exclude a location elsewhere in the church. In Willocx’s 1895 history of the hospital, only the Anthony, Adrian and the Roch are noted standing in the new chapel. Describing them as statues from the ‘Brabantine school of around 1500’, he makes no mention of the Christopher or Sebastian.¹¹ Describing another area of the chapel, however, Willocx does note, standing left of an altar: ‘on a block with escutcheon, a small wooden statue of the St Sebastian… of the gothic era…’.¹² The emphasis on the figure’s small size and the distinction between the ‘Brabantine school’ and ‘gothic era’ and make it improbable that he was referring to the Sebastian in the Rijksmuseum.¹³ In the case of the Christopher, however, Willocx is likely to have been mistaken. In 1960, Godenne described all four works today preserved at the Hof van Busleyden as standing in the chapel: …placées très haut et mal éclairées…. Borchgrave d’Altena also discusses the Christopher in the same context, together with the Anthony, Adrian and Roch.¹⁴ Evident is that both men were unaware of the Amsterdam Sebastian, suggesting its possible separation from the group even prior to being moved to the new hospital.

The painted coat of arms on the console of St Sebastian cannot be determined, as the polychromy is too highly abraded. Similarly, the coats of arms on the four other statuettes also fail to warrant a proper identification. Equally uncertain is to what extent these coats of arms have been preserved in their original state. The right half of the escutcheon on Adrian’s console bears Arma Christi (cross, spear, reed with sponge, flagellum, whip), a star and a moon, but according to Borchgrave d’Altena, these are later additions.¹⁵ In the illustrations accompanying Borchgrave d’Altena and Halsema-Kubes, St Christopher’s escutcheon is fully intact. With a little effort, one can discern a chevron and a cross. In more recent images, however, the escutcheon’s left half is missing.¹⁶ With the Anthony, the letters ‘CF’ and three roses (?) are visible in the upper half of the escutcheon; the three alike figures on the upper right of Roch’s escutcheon possibly represent the three pales of the Mechelen municipal coat of arms.¹⁷

Titia de Haseth Möller, 2024