Dan Barkley: Saint Sebastian

St. Sebastian is the first and most insistent gay icon

Insistent, in the sense of being obvious, imposing, self-understanding. Saint Sebastian, young body punctured by arrows. Barkley’s painting is simply striking and may prompt you to look at other works by this artist. Gay, of course, Canadian, obsessed.

Daniel Barkley comes from Montreal, he was born in 1962. He holds a master’s degree from Concordia University and his work has been shown across Canada and the United States in numerous group and solo exhibitions. Two large retrospectives of his work showed galleries in Toronto and Ontario. He is mainly interested in the body and even more in the male body. He is interested in men, especially the generously endowed ones, which gives an electrifying effect in combination with religious themes, in which the sexual elements are always tightly covered.

Below are some representations of the saint.

Antonello da Messina (b. 1430 in Messina, d. in February 1479 )

Da Messina painted Sebastian in trendy, contemporary Zara briefs.

Guido Reni (born November 4, 1575 in Bologna , died August 18, 1642 therein).

Sebastian was a Roman soldier who was martyred for the Christian faith during the reigns of Diocletian and Maximian at the end of the 3rd century. He became the patron saint of Rome, and his cult became popular all over Europe as he was invoked in the time of the plague. Sebastian is usually shown as a young man tied to a tree and loaded with arrows, which was the first and unsuccessful attempt to kill him. As you can see, Guido was eager to remove the white shroud, but in the end he didn’t dare.

Andrea Mantegna (born Isola di Carturo, actual Piazzola sul Brenta , 1431–1506)

Mantegna is also the author of this famous painting … Lamentation over the dead Christ.

El Greco (b. okay. 1541 in Fodele or Kandia in Crete, d. April 7, 1614 in Toledo)

As always, El Greco smacked paranoia with a face from a modern comic book.

Gerrit van Honthorst (born November 4, 1592 in Utrecht, died April 27, 1656, ibid.)

Ángel Zárraga (born in 1886 in Durango; died in 1946 in Mexico City).

Lubomir Wojciech Tomaszewski of the Bończa coat of arms (born June 9, 1923 in Warsaw, d. November 15, 2018 in the United States )

– Polish-American artist, painter, sculptor and porcelain designer, teacher, lecturer; from 1966 he lived and worked in the United States.

Felix d’Eon

The cheerful (gay) Mexican artist Felix d’Eon depicts a saint with brown skin and a massive, sensual body in “The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian “. The floral frame adds charm.