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Saint Sebastian
Portuguese workshop, Diogo Pires, "O Moço" (The Younger) (?)
Limestone with traces of polychrome
Early 16th century
113 cm (H) x 38 cm (W)
From the Parish Church of São Sebastião
of Câmara de Lobos
MASF379
Fragment of a sculpture of St. Sebastian, in limestone, found in the 1990s under the floor of the Parish Church of Câmara de Lobos. This practice appears to have been common in Madeira, with the recent appearance of various sculptures in the same conditions of burial. Their deterioration led them to be buried so that they would disappear with dignity and not be profaned.
The thaumaturgical powers of St. Sebastian were very popular in Portugal in the 1400s and 1500s. Along with St. Roc, Saint Anton, St. Cosme and St. Damian, St. Sebastian was also invoked as a protective shield against the miseries of the body, especially against the plague. His divulgation throughout the Iberian Peninsula began in the 7th century.
Madeira Island has various churches and many altars dedicated to St. Sebastian, and for the oldest ones, images of importance were imported. This is the case of the image of St. Sebastian from a Flemish workshop made for the old chapel of St. Sebastian, which is in the A Cidade do Açúcar (The City of Sugar) Museum Nucleus.
This piece displays refinement in the modelling of the forms, which the disappearance of the lower section does not diminish. He is shown as Sebastianus sagittatus, with his hands tied to a tree trunk, and his young body covered with holes that represent the wounds made by arrows when he was martyred. He is wearing only tight-fitting breeches, with a rope tied in the front. The beardless face has a serene expression and is framed by abundant, wavy hair.
This must be a sculpture from the workshop of Diogo Pires, "O Moço" (The Younger), in Coimbra, due to the delicateness of its late-Gothic modelling, perceptible in the European models of the late Middle Ages and the Manueline period. The artist is the natural heir of his father, the sculptor Diogo Pires, the Elder, who worked in Coimbra in the last third of the 15th century. The work of Diogo Pires, "O Moço", is known between 1513 and 1525.
This sculpture must be the image of the old patron saint of the chapel of St. Sebastian in Câmara de Lobos, at the beginning of the 16th century. |
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