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Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Dirck van Baburen (attributed to)

Saint Sebastian attended by Saint Irene and her Maid

ca. 1615 - 1621
Oil on canvas.
169 x 128 cm
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Inv. no.
347
(
1986.4
)
ROOM 12
Level 2
Permanent Collection
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 14 13 15 16 17 18 22 19 20 21 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 Recommended start of the visitClassical rooms
1 14th Century. Early Italian Painting 2 15th Century. German and Spanish Painting 3 15th Century. Early Netherlandish Painting 4 15th Century. Italian Painting 5 15th and 16th Centuries. Renaissance Portraiture 6 16th Century. Villahermosa Gallery 7 16th Century. Italian Painting 8 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 9 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 10 16th Century. Netherlandish Painting 11 Tiziano, Tintoretto, Bassano and  El Greco 12 17th Century. Caravaggio and Baroque Painting 13 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 14 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 15 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 16 18th Century. Italian Painting 17 18th Century. Italian Painting 18 18th Century. Italian Painting 19 Classical rooms 20 Classical rooms 21 Classical rooms 22 18th Century. Italian Painting 23 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 24 18th Century. French and English Painting 25 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Scenes of Daily Life and Interiors 26 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 27 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Portrait 28 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 29 19th Century. European Painting. Goya and Romanticism  
Saint Sebastian attended by Saint Irene and her Maid was acquired for the Collection in 1986 from a Sotheby’s auction in which it was catalogued as by Theodor Rombouts. This attribution was made by Leonard J. Slatkes, who dated the canvas to Rombouts’ period in Rome between 1616 and 1620 and mentioned the possibility that it was the first depiction of this subject by a northern follower of Caravaggio. Gaskell rejected Slatkes’ attribution on the basis of a comparison with other works by Rombouts. Following its restoration, Gaskell examined the canvas and suggested an attribution to Dirck van Baburen, dating the canvas to an early phase in the artist’s career during his time in Italy. Gaskell compared it to one of the artist’s earliest known works, The Burial of Christof 1617, painted for the chapel of the Pietà in the church of San Pietro in Montorio in Rome. He drew attention to the similarities between the arrangement of the figures in space, the manner of applying the pronounced shadows, the construction of the edges of the folds of the drapery, and the placement of the secondary objects.

The same subject is depicted in a painting by an unknown artist now in the Bob Jones University Collection of Sacred Art in Greenville, which has been considered a copy of a lost work by Van Baburen. Its composition has been related to one of the artist’s first documented works in Italy, a Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian painted for a church in Parma. Basing himself on these elements, Gaskell suggested that the present canvas could be associated with the lost Parma painting.

The painting depicts the moment when Saint Irene, a charitable widow, attended the Roman centurion after he had been shot at, extracting the arrow in his side. On the right and also emerging from the darkness is her elderly maid who firmly supports the saint. The lower right area of the canvas is occupied by a mound of Sebastian’s armour. Baburen depicted this popular episode from the saint’s life in a precise manner, sculpting and defining his composition. Various details such as the long brushstrokes used to depict the arms and legs of the saint, the way of highlighting the nose and the toes in reddish tones and the manner of painting the hair in large locks are strikingly typical of Van Baburen’s style, according to Gaskell.

In the 17th century the painting seems to have been in the Genoese collection of Giacomo Filippo Carrega, at which date it was described as a work by Caravaggio. It was passed down through the family by inheritance. The canvas remained unpublished until the Sotheby’s auction of 1986.

Mar Borobia
17th Century17th Century - Dutch paintingPaintingOilcanvas
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Saint Sebastian attended by Saint Irene and her Maid. San Sebastián atendido por santa Irene y su criada, c. 1615-1621
Saint Sebastian attended by Saint Irene and her Maid
Dirck van Baburen (attributed to)

©

Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

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Saint Sebastian attended by Saint Irene and her Maid. San Sebastián atendido por santa Irene y su criada, c. 1615-1621
Saint Sebastian attended by Saint Irene and her Maid
Dirck van Baburen (attributed to)

©

Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

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