Saint Sebastian, workshop of Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem

Workshop of Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem (Haarlem 1562-1638)
Late 16th century
Oil on oak panel, h. 88 cm, w. 73 cm
A 17th century French Louis XIII period giltwood frame carved with oak leaves and acorns.
Framed: h. 108 cm, w. 92 cm

Our work merges in itself all the facets of artistic creation in full swing in Haarlem at the end of the 16th century. The founding artists of the Haarlem Academy, Cornelis Cornelisz, Hendrik Goltzius, and Carel Van Mander, deeply influenced by the Mannerist art brought back from Italy and developed in Prague by their compatriot Bartholomeus Spranger, brought an interest in anatomy and the study of the human body to its peak in the Netherlands.

The choice to illustrate Saint Sebastian is only a pretext to assert the perfect mastery of the human body. In the guise of a young man, whose athletic figure symbolises the ideal of masculine beauty, the painter devotes himself to this plastic and graphic representation of the body, an optical staging of the person's manifest expressiveness.

The canon of ancient beauty transcribed with a Nordic brush, this is how the vigorous figure of the saint emerges from the darkness, naked in his absolute vulnerability.

Standing up, he raises his arms to the sky, while his head leans back and seems to find support against the tree trunk. His eyes seeking divine deliverance from above, in his gaze hope and confidence mingle and contrast with his facial expression: mouth half-open, frowns betraying torment.

The ecstatic moment of torment when, overcoming suffering, mystical enjoyment is drawn on his face.
The muscular tension at its peak seems to be barely contained in this body, which resists with all the martial vigour of a warrior.
The pinkish flesh with yellow and warm tones is shaded with greyish-blue to indicate the light shadows formed by the muscular undulations.
The chiaroscuro work gives its plastic strength to this human body, the intense light illuminates the upper part, dazzling at the level of the thorax like the target of archers, leaving its hips in shadow.
The flowing white fabric, knotted at the front, encircles her waist, carefully draped she introduces movement into this almost static composition of the body immobile in the face of its fate.

Our work is a variant of the original painted by Cornelis Cornelisz. van Haarlem.
Saint Sebastian, circa 1591, oil on canvas, h. 146 cm, l. 105 cm, in the Collections of the Prince of Liechtenstein, inv. GE 2472. An arrow pierces his body, from which a few drops of blood gush out.
Offered or commissioned by Michiel Jansz. van Mierevelt (Delft, 1566 - 1641), painter of the Dutch Golden Age, he was in his estate at his death.

Only two replicas from the original are known and listed by Pieter Van Thiel in his catalogue raisonnée of the artist. (P. J. J. Van Thiel, Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem, a monograph and catalogue raisonné, Ghent 1999, cat. Art. 109)

Our variant (shown in the catalogue, plate no. 71) comes from the collection of the Italian art dealer Gilberto Zabert in Turin, published in his catalogue in 1980 with an erroneous attribution to Hendrick Goltzius.

Our variant is also the one where the arrow is missing, as well as the traces of blood.
Another reduced version (oil on panel, h. 46.3 cm x 38.3 cm, plate no. 70 of the catalogue) was in the New York art trade in the late 1990s.

Its two variants must obviously have come from the artist's studio, as P. Van Thiel suggests, and would belong to the studio production of the period of activity between 1586 and 1593.


Cornelis Corneliszoon van Haarlem (1562 – 11 November 1638) was a Dutch Mannerist painter and draughtsman.
Cornelis was born in 1562 into a well-to-do family in Haarlem. His parents having fled the city during the Spanish siege (December 1572 - July 1573), the child was entrusted to the painter Pieter Pietersz (c.1540-1603), who raised him and taught him his art.
After a year's stay in Antwerp to complete his training under the master Gillis Congnet, he returned to Haarlem where he settled permanently around 1580-81. It was in 1583 that he received his first major commission there, the group portrait of the members of a bourgeois militia: the Banquet of the Civic Guard of Haarlem. In the same year, Cornelis met Hendrik Goltzius and Carel van Mander, with whom he founded the Haarlem Academy.
In 1588, the dissemination of five of his works through engravings by Goltzius brought him a certain celebrity. Cornelis was later appointed painter to the city of Haarlem, and in 1630 he participated in the reorganization of the local Guild of St. Luke by reforming its medieval statutes in the spirit of the Renaissance.
His works – often signed with the monogram CH1 – reflect the work of the Haarlem Academy in a naturalistic approach, indebted to the practice of drawing from life as well as to the study of ancient sculptures, and which quickly supplanted Spranger's Mannerist influence.
He painted not only biblical or mythological subjects, but also portraits and still lifes.