Dorota Sadovská (Slovak, b. 1973)
Saint Sebastien 1998
Oil on canvas
Museum Purchase with Funds Provided by the Edward J. Gallagher, Jr. Memorial Fund
2000.016.001
Saint Sebastien comes from the artist’s series Yellow Heaven, a series of large-scale, monochromatic portraits of saints. Medieval and early modern depictions of Saint Sebastien typically showed him from a frontal point of view, tied to a tree and pierced by arrows, the symbol of his martyrdom. Sadovská has dramatically altered this traditional perspective by positioning the viewer’s gaze directly above the saint’s head. The extreme foreshortening of the subject combined with the monochromatic color palette makes the saint appear disembodied, almost as if a mirage.
