3-002-549 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

St. Sebastian Succoured by Holy Women, 1851-1873. Two Christian women, Irene and a companion, extract arrows from Sebastian, who has been left for dead by the Roman emperor Diocletian's archers. Sebastian miraculously recovered, only to be clubbed to death later. In Corot's painting, Sebastian's approaching sainthood and martyrdom is symbolized by putti, or cherubs, who carry a laurel wreath and a palm frond. As one critic wrote in 1871, "At the moment when St. Sebastian suffers and seems to die, the forest shares in his agony and mourns his death, while at the same time lifting him up to the heavenly spaces of a melancholic sky."