Reni, so famous in his day that he was appealed only by his first name, Guido, often preceded by the overly praiseworthy adjective divine, after a training in his homeland, starting from the age of twenty-five he had frequent and long stays in Rome, where he was greatly appreciated by the pope's family and by other members of the papal court. Also this canvas, where Saint Sebastian is represented, who according to tradition was a Roman soldier originally from Gaul martyred at the time of Diocletian, must be the result of that kind of commission, since in addition to the high pictorial quality, recent analyzes have shown that it adds a precious realization, given that lapis lazuli was widely used for the blue of the sky, so expensive that it is generally supplied or paid for separately by the client. The image, responding to the classic ideals of Reni's poetics, does not show the body of a martyr scarred by darts and run over by streams of blood, but the idealized one of a young man with a decidedly sensual beauty. Dating from around 1615, the canvas had great success, so much so that Cardinal Borghese wanted a similar version, the result at least in a large part of the artist's workshop, and now preserved in the Capitoline Picture Gallery. Reni must subsequently have returned to this subject, re-proposing it with different variations: replicas of this other type are known in various museums around the world (Louvre, Prado, Dulwich Picture Gallery), but none reaches the quality of this one, which ended up in the Brignole collection - It rises already before the end of the seventeenth century.
