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La androginia de San Sebastián

San Sebastian’s Androgyny

Translation: Alexandra Sorina Radulescu

Androgyny was the one of the favourite topics of the symbolic painters from the end of the 19th century. The founding father of symbolic painting, Gustave Moreau, is well known for this theme. As a matter of fact, some of his figures are not only homoerotically charged, but also related to the divine. This ‘androgynous divine’ theme can also be appreciated in other artists such as Jean Delville.

Moreau’s paintings fluctuate between Paganism and Christianity, so when he tackles androgyny, it is from a place of transcendence. On the one hand, his San Sebastians would represent Christianity, while his Apollo, god of masculine beauty, would represent Paganism. His Jupiter et Sémélé (1894-95) is another example of androgyny: a god that in his first draft was bearded and powerful, arises as sweeter and callower in the final version. In the case of Apollo, Moreau paints him from the beginning of his career until he achieved professional maturity, and he continually used the androgynous archetype. This unveils the androgynous ideal as persistent throughout all Moreau’s works. Although the Apollo he painted during his youth followed a Raphaelesque design, his subsequent version captures his full personality. In addition, Apollo is vested with a halo that grants him certain Christian overtones. On this occasion, the Pagan God is compared to Christ. Due to his obsession with Oriental style, Moreau overdid the atmosphere with the combination of Christian and Pagan elements that created a complex iconographical mixture.

While on the topic of androgyny, a key figure in Moreau’s paintings is San Sebastian, whose representations originate in the Renaissance and are maintained throughout the European pictorial tradition of the Modern Period. As we mentioned, these androgynous models explicitly appear in Moreau’s portrayal of the topic. We could even state that Moreau will lay the foundations for the portrayal of San Sebastian as a gay icon, not without taking into account de fin-de-siècle literary inspirations: Mirbeau’s Sébastien Roch (1890), D’Annuzio’s Le martyre de Saint Sébastien (1911) and George Trakl’s Sebastian im Traum (1915).

We could say that the San Sebastian that Moreau portrays is in a way a martyr imitation of Christ from an iconographic point of view, although it does have some distinctive features. If we take a look at his hagiography, Sebastian dies young, tied to a post and half naked, killed with arrows by his fellow archers who considered him a traitor for embracing the Christian faith. Its gruesomeness was one of the characteristic aspects of the saint’s representation, mainly in the themes in which young San Sebastian’s haggard flesh is pierced by countless arrows, which may well remind us of the bloody representations of Christ in Spanish Baroque period.

Nevertheless, Moreau’s Sebastian is young and androgynous, fallen and accompanied by women who are picking up his body near a tree that resembles the cross. Moreau almost seems to be painting Michelangelo’s three Pietàs when he is depicting Sebastian. This leads us to comparing them to some other young depictions of Christ previous to the fin-de-siècle, such as Goya’s Christ (1780), probably one of the models for the androgyny of Christ in the 19th century.

Gustave Moreau, Apollo and the Satyrs, 1895.
Gustave Moreau, The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, 1869.
Gustave Moreau, Saint Sebastian being tended to by Holy Women, 1869.

OpenEdition le sugiere que cite este post de la siguiente manera:
Dr. Pedro Ortega (27 de febrero de 2026). La androginia de San Sebastián. El blog de Tartalo. Recuperado 14 de abril de 2026 de https://doi.org/10.58079/15s1e


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