St. Sebastian

Dating from the second half of the 17th century, this figure of St. Sebastian, originating from the Arquivo das Congregações (Archive of Religious Congregations) in Lisbon, referred to in the official correspondence of the second decade of the 20th century as the Casa Congreganista do Quelhas, is an erudite sculpture from the period of baroque classicism that displays an almost abstract and idealistic conception of form, both in its anatomical perfection and correctness and in the carefully modelled expression of plenitude on the face, admirably fixed on the moment immediately before death. The ideological component of this image is realised in the ecstasy of the spiritual fusion with God and the certainty of the resurrection, in the exact dimension of the sublimation of the martyr’s pain, regarded by the martyr as a God-given gift, a means of achieving eternal glory. The virulence of the martyrdom suggested by the arrows stuck into his body and the trickles of blood are an iconographic reference without any apparent dramatic dimension, because it is virtually cancelled out by the tranquillity of the bodily attitude.
Carved out of a solid, monolithic block of chestnut, with joints in the upper part of the trunk, at the point of interception of the arms, hands and the voluminous pleat of the perisonium, the powerful three-dimensional plasticity of the life-sized figure is reinforced by the extremely fine polychrome layers that enhance the vibrations of the skin over the bones, the veins and the tensions of the body’s muscles, in gentle glazes and gradations of tone, defining areas of light and shade in an admirable pictorial work that is associated with the technical virtuosity of the carving. At the same time, considering that this image is traditionally thought to be a model of the king Dom Sebastião, even though this is contradicted by the royal portraits of that time, it is fair to raise the possibility of a Messianic “inspiration” in this actual figuration.
Its realisation may hypothetically be included in an exaltation of the Restoration, prophesying the salvation of the nation upon the imagined “return” of the king known as The Desired One, presented as a human saint and a martyr with the same name.