Saint Sebastian

Matteo di Giovanni's Saint Sebastian, painted around 1462 and now in the National Gallery, London, depicts the early Christian martyr who was a favorite subject of Renaissance painters for his combination of religious devotion and idealized male beauty. Matteo di Giovanni was one of the leading painters of fifteenth-century Siena, producing works that maintained the city's distinctive artistic traditions while incorporating influences from contemporary Florentine art.

Matteo di Giovanni's refined Sienese style renders the saint with elegant proportions and luminous coloring, combining the decorative beauty of the Sienese tradition with the more naturalistic figure modeling emerging in mid-fifteenth-century Italian painting.