Semi-nude/Clothed

A third iconographic consideration in the depiction of St. Sebastian, is as a figure that was often scantily clothed or, in very rare instances, nude. Such a presentation is inherently sensuous, even erotic in content and implication. A semi-nude figure was a condition that would be employed by most artists except those who portrayed him fully clothed in princely garb and generally before mid-XV^th Century. The semi-nude representation of St. Sebastian by the mid-XV^th Century and after allowed the artist to portray the saint as an ideal of youthful Apollonian beauty as seen in Piero della Francesca's representation of Sts. Sebastian and John Baptist (c. 1444) (See: Figure 118). This Apollonian figure stood in stark contrast to the tortured pincushion of Giovanni del Biondo's figure in the Martyrdom of St Sebastian (1370) (See: Figure 13).