- It would have better to refer to this emblem of martyrdom as one of the most complex icons’ of Christendom, and every depiction of him through out history manifests itself in a different and altered context. So many artists have rendered Saint Sebastian in so many different ways that his very legend changes depending on the artist’s intentions. But one thing we do know is that he is a desired martyr. His body and nudity has always been depicted as a testimony to beauty. We have our saint in his most perfect sensual pose, portraying the beauty of man, as any renaissance artist would have imaged. He is naked, beautiful, we are all passionately moved by him. Rather than the renaissance martyr with dozen of arrows in his body, our saint is frozen in a time shortly after the first arrow had been shot. Our Saint Sebastian is awaiting his death, this depiction portrays him as life is about to depart from him. A death he looks forward to, a release from the very machine he is bound to, a desire we all share with him, which also brings him into the modern fold. Our saint becomes an idiom of our liberation, as his martyrdom takes place with us as his spectator. We are left with no other choice but to bear witness to his death as it takes place for us in our presence.

Saint Sebastian