File:BLW St Sebastian, V&A.jpg

English: St Sebastian

1497
Designed by Hans Holbein the Elder (about 1465-1524)
Germany, Augsburg
Partially gilded silver, set with glass, pearls, sapphires and rubies
Museum no. M.27-2001

This powerfully expressive figural reliquary of St Sebastian is one of the most important works of art bought by the Museum in recent years.Of superb artistic quality, it is a rare and powerful example of European goldsmith's work from the great age of Albrecht D�rer and Hans Holbein. Reliquaries usually contain fragments of saints' bones or objects associated with saints. The base of this reliquary, elaborately decorated with pinnacles and figures in the Gothic style, contains relics associated with St Sebastian visible through a window on one side. Recent examination has revealed fragments of wood, possibly believed to be shards of the arrows that fatally pierced the saint, all wrapped in silk.

St Sebastian was believed to protect people from the plague, and according to the inscription on the base, the reliquary was a votive offering commissioned from the monastery during an epidemic.The cult of relics was central to medieval Christian worship. The formal display of relics on major feast days was an important ritual of the Catholic church. Contemplation of them was thought to reduce time spent in purgatory after death and many saints were thought to be responsive to prayer against specific illnesses.

Sebastian was one of the most popular saints in the late Middle Ages. He lived reputedly in 3rd-century Rome, an officer in the Roman Praetorian guard at the time of the Emperor Diocletian. He was condemned to death for his Christian beliefs and shot with arrows. He is depicted here pierced with arrows (some lost) and lashed to the boughs of a tree. None of the arrows entered his vital organs and he survived the ordeal. He confronted the emperor with a renewed avowal of his faith and was this time clubbed to death. His body was thrown into a sewer in Rome.

This reliquary was one of a number of costly items commissioned by Georg Kastner, abbot of Kaisheim Monastery near Augsburg in south Germany between 1490 and 1509. Kaisheim was a Cistercian monastery founded in 1134 and dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Kastner 'enriched his abbey both inside and out'. Among his other commissions were a companion reliquary of St Christopher, a large monstrance and a precious white chasuble (robe). The reliquary of St Sebastian is inscribed with the date 1497 and with the names of Kastner, Duke Frederick III of Saxony, who partly paid for the commissions, and the Emperor Maximilian.

The British Museum owns a design for this reliquary, believed to be by Hans Holbein the Elder (around 1460/5-1534). Holbein bought a house in Augsburg in 1493 and painted an altarpiece for Kaisheim Monastery in 1502, again commissioned by Kastner. Like many painters of the day, such as D�rer, Schongauer and Cellini, he initially trained as a goldsmith.Holbein's design differs from the silver reliquary in having an oval base.

The name of the goldsmith who made the reliquary is not known. However, the wonderful modelling of the saint's hair and arms confirm that he was clearly a master craftsman . He was probably trained in Augsburg, which was one of the major centres of goldsmithing expertise in 15th-century Europe.

The reliquary is presumed to have first come onto the art market when Kaisheim Monastery was secularised in 1802-3. Its first known owner was the Russian Prince Petr Soltykoff, renowned for his wealth and discerning taste for medieval art. The private collector Sir Julius Wernher acquired the reliquary, probably between 1880 and 1890, to add to his own outstanding art. The reliquary joined the Museum's collections in 2001.

Purchased with the assistance of the National Heritage Memorial Fund and The Art Fund.