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Ciro Ferri
1634-1689
St. Irene tending St. Sebastian
Watercolor on paper.
7 15/16 x 11 inches (202 x 280 mm)
The Joseph F. McCrindle Collection.
2009.126
Inscription:
Inscribed at lower left, in pen and brown ink, "Ciro Ferri"; on verso, in pen and brown ink, "The Christian widow picking the arrow out of the body of S. Sebastian, who / had been Left for Dead, & Curing him. Lee Caxton's Golden Legend fol LXXVIII".
Provenance:
P. & D. Colnaghi & Co., Ltd., London; from which acquired by Joseph F. McCrindle, New York, 10 October 1968 (McCrindle collection no. A0387).
Summary:
According to the Golden Legend, Diocletian ordered that St. Sebastian should be bound to a stake and shot. Archers riddled him "as full of arrows as an urchin is full of pricks." Sebastian, left for dead, was found by a Christian woman who nursed him to health. Diocletian discovered that St. Sebastian survived and eventually he was martyred. The present sheet shows a woman, identified as St. Irene, tending to Sebastian after he was shot by the archers.
Associated names:
McCrindle, Joseph F., former owner.
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