“In the average European oil painting of the nude the principal protagonist is never painted. He is the spectator in front of the picture and he is presumed to be a man. Everything is addressed to him...women are there to feed an appetite, not to have any of their own” (Ways of Seeing 54-55)
An exception to this rule can be seen in paintings - by some of the most celebrated artists of the Renaissance - of St Sebastian. Without exception, in works by Antonio Palllaiuolo, Antonella de Messina, Andrea Mantegna, Rubens and El Greco, St Sebastian is represented as an attractive young man. He is usually bound, penetrated by arrows, and bleeding. He is anatomically well proportioned, muscular, and despite his passivity, powerful.
Whose appetites were being fed in these paintings? For whose perusal, pleasure and acquisition were these figures created?
There are probably many answers to those questions but at least one has to be a tautology that makes the others possible: the people who like that kind of thing are the people who like that kind of thing!
So: gay men? Sure. Women? Sure? I really don't know; I am neither a woman nor a gay man so I couldn't possibly say. One thing is clear, however; the subject and object positions implied by these paintings are different from those identified by John Berger. It's not just a matter of the reversal of the usual pattern, although that is what's happening too: where before there was an invisible, powerful male observer and a passive and self-observing and therefore divided and controlled female subject now the divided, objectified and self-objectifying figure is the male. The fact that the observer could now be anyone - female, male homosexual, a typical heterosexual male voyeur who now finds himself quite confused - means that the artificiality of the invisible observer's position becomes obvious. It could be that these paintings are the best way to learn to look at all other iterations of the nude in Western oil painting!
In any case, by the time naturalistic/humanist oil painting emerged in 14th Century St Sebastian was already a famous nude figure. In particular he appeared in thousands upon thousands of copies of 'Books of Hours'.
In the Middle Ages many literate Europeans learned to read through reading a 'Book of Hours'. A Book of Hours was a prayer book, gospel, reading primer and comic book all rolled into one. In many houses for hundreds of years across Europe, one of these books was probably the only book that a family had in its possession; the only book they'd ever read. I can imagine that its text and, even more so, its illustrations provided endless amusement and edification for its owners.
Books of Hours, were, especially before the invention of movable type printing, extremely expensive and prestigious items. They were status symbols; acquisitions. And, while they were ostensibly religious texts, their use was in effect secular and heterodox. Consider too that any text appearing in a book of hours was typically in Latin (a language that few people literate in their own vernacular could read); people had these books to look at the pictures.
It is not surprising that in the far more puritanical climate of both Protestant and Catholic Europe after the Reformation, Books of Hours fell into disrepute. Religious conflict meant that souls were to be fought over, persuaded or coereced into following one church or another; Books of Hours were far too private and democratic; they liberated the very things that reformers and counter reformers sought to control – thoughts, actions and feelings.
At the height of their popularity, women were at least as (if not more) likely as men to own and enjoy Books of Hours. The 14th Century poet, Eustache Deschamps imagined the thoughts of one lady: "As graceful and gorgeous as me... So the people will gasp when I use it, 'That's the prettiest prayer-book in town.”
Again and again, St Sebastian is represented in these prayer books. He is always naked, pretty, penetrated by arrows, bleeding.
I am reminded of the start of Pedro Almodovar's film Law of Desire (1987). In it a naked young man is shown alone on a bed in a room where he is being observed by camera by other men who speak to him in commands through a microphone. He is commanded to masturbate; to make himself an object for the perusal, pleasure and acquisition of the male observers.
Is it too much of a stretch to compare the 'nothing left to the imagination' objectification taking place in this film to the stock depiction of the naked, penetrated and bloody St Sebastian in thousands upon thousands of Books of Hours? I don't think so. Of course, Almodovar's implied observer is gay, but that doesn't change the point that in both cases, the male body is being objectified for the observer.
Consider again the secular and heterodox, to say nothing of uncontrollable nature of the Books of Hours. It is, of course, no argument at all to point to the anatomically nonrepresentational nature of the medieval illustrations of St Sebastian in the Books of Hours as a reason for why these images were not seen as erotic; the Renaissance hadn't yet begun! And in any case, without perspective the erotic imagination of the observer will have to work that little bit harder!
I am not attempting to claim that these representations of St Sebastian had no religious or moral meaning for medieval readers/viewers/voyeurs. St Sebastian is an exemplary reminder of the triumph of faith and perseverance in the face of torture. He is also the patron saint of plague victims. What could be less erotic than mass death?
However, the obvious answer to that question: “What could be more aphrodisiacal than the imminence of death?” points to the undeniable fact that these representations had to have a powerful erotic charge. After all is said; why does he have to be nude? Why is he penetrated and bleeding? Why this love of the penetratable male nude?
The nudity of the Medieval St Sebastian was nothing compared to how he appears from the Renaissance onwards. Where before he was just one saint among many represented in the Book of Hours from the hands and imagination of the 15th, 16th and 17th Century masters he became the star of the show.
It seems that all pretence of religion has gone: St Sebastian is now mostly a vehicle for the celebration of the male body as erotic object:
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| St Sebastian (of Vienna) Andrea Mantegna |
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| St Sebastian (of the Louvre) Andrea Mantegna |
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| Martyrdom of St Sebastian Antonio Pollaiuolo |
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| St Sebastian Antonella Da Messina |
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| Martyrdom of St Sebastian Il Sodoma |
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| St Sebastian Peter Paul Rubens |
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| St Sebastian El Greco |
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