St Sebastian is captured in a moment of extreme suffering. His naked body, sculpted in ivory, bends to the shape of the tree made from bronze: one arm is stretched up while the other arm is folded behind his back. His face looks up to the sky with a painful yet composed expression. At his feet a putto climbs onto a barely recognisable helmet to remove the arrows, since lost, embedded in the saint’s body. This small sculpture was attributed to François Duquesnoy by Christian Theuerkauff, former director of the sculpture collections at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, but this attribution has been almost unanimously rejected today.¹ However, the fair quality of its execution could suggest the artist’s early production when, having arrived in Rome (1618), he started earning his living with Claude Pernet, a carver active in the early 1620s. According to Bellori, Duquesnoy primarily produced ivory and wood pieces, a typical northern European activity, “carving heads of saints for reliquaries”.² The torsion of the body and the solemn gait of the figure, which almost seems to move forward a step, reveals clear adhesion to early Italian Baroque models close to the production of the Flemish sculptor, albeit with a different iconography, with reference to versions - still of dubious attribution - of Christ at the column.³ Some elements, such as the absence of ropes binding the saint and the chubby cherub with no wings contribute to a secular, classicalstyle interpretation of this scene of martyrdom.⁴ 

The theme of the angel removing the arrows and the drape covering just one side of the body can also be found in Peter Paul Rubens’ painting of St Sebastian Healed by Angels, conserved in Palazzo Corsini in Rome and dating to around 1608.⁵ This is the oldest known version with this iconography and its closest model can be found in a drawing by Aegidius Sadeler II (Washington, National Gallery, inv. no. 1992.18.1),⁶ subsequently engraved by the same artist, which in turn interpreted a painting by Giulio Cesare Procaccini (1610-12, Brussels, Musée des Beaux Arts). There is also a drawing attributed to Guido Reni, associated with a painting known through historical sources as belonging to the Bolognese senator Ferdinando Cospi, conserved in the sacristy of San Salvator in Bologna (Florence, Uffizi, Gabinetto dei disegni e delle stampe, no. 1427 E), which is contemporary in chronological terms (1610) and with the same iconography.⁷ Although lacking in references in traditional hagiography, this piece is emotionally engaging. 

Georg Petel, a German sculptor who died at a young age, had contact with Rubens in Antwerp in 1621-22 and had the opportunity to get to know the Roman scene over subsequent years thanks to a journey to Italy. Some of his ivories are comparable to this sculpture, particularly the Crucified Christ (private collection),⁸ the St Sebastian in Munich (c. 1630, Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, inv. no. R 2600) and the one in a private collection (formerly in the collection of Carl Mayer von Rothschild),⁹ which also features similar iconography. Meanwhile, the same technical combination of ivory with another material (in this case wood) and a partially similar pose adopted by the saint can be seen in the St Sebastian currently attributed to Justus Glesker, but previously deemed to be a piece from Petel’s Italian period and later considered an autograph work by Duquesnoy, now at the Museo degli Argenti in Palazzo Pitti, Florence.¹⁰ 

Sara Comoglio 

¹ See the letter from Prof. C. Theuerkauff, Berlin, 9 June 1998 (Cerruti Collection Archives).

² Bellori 1976, p. 288.

³ See Boudon-Machuel 2005, p. 226, and particularly the ivory now at the National Gallery in Washington (inv. no. 2007.67.1).

⁴ Rome 2000b, vol. 11, p. 400.

⁵ Jaffé 1989, p. 162, cat. 75.

⁶ De Ramaix 1997, pp. 155-156, cat. 095.

⁷ Bohn 2008, pp. 19-20, cat. 12.

⁸ P. Boccardo, cat. 48, in Florence 2013a, pp. 180- 181.

⁹ Sold at auction under lot no. 147, Aguttes, Paris, 24 May 2013.

¹⁰ E. Schmidt, cat. 62, in Florence 2013a, pp. 214-215.