Dimensions: object: 1005 x 202 x 247 mm, 55.6 kg
Copyright: CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED, Photo: Tate
Editor: Here we have Eric Gill's 'St Sebastian,' a stone sculpture in the Tate collection. I'm struck by the weight and the almost industrial feel of the material. What can you tell me about it? Curator: The carving itself embodies a tension. Gill, deeply religious, embraced both faith and the physical act of making. Consider the stone: it’s not just a medium but a testament to labor. How does this materiality affect your understanding of the saint's martyrdom? Editor: I guess it grounds it, makes it less ethereal, more about the real suffering of a body. Thanks, that's given me a new way to look at it. Curator: Exactly. It’s a reminder that art, even religious art, is always shaped by material conditions and human effort.
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St Sebastian miraculously survived the arrows intended to kill him as punishment for his Christian faith. He had long been a favourite vehicle for the depiction of the male nude. This work was commissioned from Gill, who was a Roman Catholic, by Marc-André Raffalovich, a friend of Oscar Wilde. Though Gill does not include the arrows, thus emphasising the relaxed sensuality of the saint’s languid pose, the sculpture also recalls a memorial monument. Heroic nudes were common on war memorials of the 1920s and the theme of St Sebastian might seem a fitting symbol for the more recent martyrdom of the war dead. Gallery label, September 2016
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