St. Sebastian

In this sculpted image, St. Sebastian is portrayed as a fresh-faced youth, tied to a trunk, semi-naked and waiting to be hit by the arrows of his martyrdom, in keeping with the iconographic type that was popularised in the fifteenth century for the representation of the saint, invoked as the protector against disease and epidemics. In the Portuguese medieval sculpture, the theme served as a pretext for the representation of the human anatomy and for the naturalistic modelling of the figures, as is the case in this work attributed to Diogo Pires-o-Velho, whose authorship can be recognised in the oval profile of the face framed by the voluminous hair hanging in ringed curls. The sculpture belonged to the Convent of Santos, in Lisbon, documenting the extensive territorial scope of the activity of this sculptor established in Coimbra.