Jacques Callot

In comparison to the works on the wall at right, Callot’s image of martyrdom places pictorial as well as psychological distance between the viewer and the martyr. St. Sebastian, who was shot with multiple arrows, is here a heroic but tiny figure in the center of the composition, a playful target for the perfectly aligned soldiers who aim from the foreground and middle ground. Callot’s heavier treatment of the shadowed repoussoir (foreground framing device) pushes the action back into space, creating a theatrical recession that distances us from the visceral suffering of the saint. Instead, we sense that Callot is documenting the event, complete with a dilapidated coliseum that places the scene in biblical history.