Grief resolved in Christ

Although the story of Sebastian and Irene is semi-legendary and is not found in any historical chronicles, it was a popular one in the Renaissance. Sebastian was a Roman Christian who was tortured in A.D. 286 by Emperor Diocletian. The emperor had him tied to a pole, and his best archers used him as a target. Astoundingly, Sebastian survived the ordeal; his wounded body was taken from the pole by Irene, a fellow Christian who nursed him back to health. After this recovery, Sebastian would have another encounter with Diocletian that led to his martyrdom. Sebastian pierced by arrows was a common subject in Renaissance paintings, but by the early 17th century, painters began favoring depictions of Sebastian being tended by Irene.

Georges de la Tour was a French painter who specialized in candlelit scenes. Dramatic lighting effects were popular in the paintings of the early Baroque era—a break from the previous century’s favoring of scenes strongly lit from the front. This high-contrast style was known as chiaroscuro and was well suited to the period’s emphasis on drama and decorative effects. De la Tour’s painting of Sebastian and Irene deploys the master’s characteristic touch to create a painting with a stunning unity of form and content.

Mention the Baroque and what often comes to mind is the exuberant decorative elements in the arts of the time. Cathedrals were furnished with massive pulpits and altars decorated with carved and painted sculptures of saints and angels. Palaces featured grandiose staircases, elaborate entryways, and heavily embellished interiors. Baroque painters experimented with complicated arrangements of pictorial space and ­dramatic depictions of intense emotion.

De la Tour organized his painting of Sebastian and Irene around a strong central diagonal axis. The viewer’s gaze travels back and forth from Sebastian’s broken body to the grief-stricken faces of Irene and her companions in a whirlwind of powerful feelings. Subtle contrasts—Sebastian’s lying on the ground versus Irene and her standing companions; the single figure of the martyr versus the grouped figures of his mourners—emphasize the saint’s plight: He is alone in his physical suffering but for the empathy of Irene and her friends. Irene and her associates are experiencing their sadness together, but not in the same way. Irene herself is focused on attending to Sebastian’s medical needs; her companion in black extends her hands in a gesture of pity; another companion is silently praying while a fourth figure weeps. There are thus several diagonal axes in the picture, all of them converging on Sebastian himself. There is even a literal arrow piercing Sebastian’s torso, further emphasizing the focus of the collective emotional outpouring of the women in the picture.

In the visual language of painting, diagonal lines are often used to signify movement, unrest, and action. But a triangle sitting on its base communicates the opposite: rest, repose, stability. De la Tour’s picture, despite its intense emotional content organized via a prominent diagonal, is made of a series of such triangles. Irene’s figure is a triangle; so is that of the companion to her left. Their hands and faces make two more triangles. Sebastian’s upraised knee is the apex of yet another triangle.

This tension—between the active, unstable diagonal and the placid, settled triangles—gives de la Tour’s painting a powerful symbolic meaning. All grief has a resolution in Christ. In the story, Irene does not succumb to a despairing inaction when presented with Sebastian’s wounded body. She seeks to give comfort and aid because she knows the source of lasting comfort.

In contrast to many Baroque painters, with their crowded canvases and frescoes depicting swirling, contorted figures engaged in vigorous action, de la Tour often imbued his pictures with an atmosphere of quiet repose. Little is known about his intellectual life and even less about his faith. As his career advanced, though, he worked ever more exclusively on paintings of religious subjects. A quiet, trusting faith, one that is aware of the brokenness of the world yet which does not react in bitterness or despair, is woven into the structure of Saint Sebastian Tended by Saint Irene; woven as it ought to be in the life of every believer, what trials may come.

—William Collen is an independent researcher who writes RUINS, a Substack blog discussing art and aesthetics from a Christian perspective