Saint Sebastian Tended by Irene, Georges de La Tour
Saint Sebastian––a Roman soldier who suffered martyrdom around A.D. 300––was nursed by the pious Irene, who, upon discovering him still alive, tenderly removed the arrows that pierced his body. He was a protector against the epidemics that plagued the artist’s native Lorraine, and La Tour’s various versions of this scene were by far the most copied of his works in the seventeenth century. In 1751 a local historian made reference to one that La Tour presented to Duke Charles IV of Lorraine and another that he presented to King Louis XIII of France. The king admired his version so much that he “had all the other paintings removed from his room in order to leave only this one.”
