St. Sebastian
Medium
Woodcut
Dimensions
Sheet: 5 1/16 × 3 7/16 in. (12.8 × 8.7 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Rogers Fund, 1918
Accession Number
18.17.2-2
Tags
Art Historical Context
Behold Hans Baldung Grien's *St. Sebastian* (1512), a woodcut measuring just over 5 by 3 inches, now housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Drawings and Prints department. This intimate print captures the martyred saint, traditionally shown pierced by arrows and bound, often accompanied by angels in Renaissance depictions. Baldung, a leading German artist of the Northern Renaissance and a close associate of Albrecht Dür, infuses the scene with emotional intensity, blending Gothic expressiveness with emerging humanist detail. Woodcuts like this were revolutionary in the early 16th century,...
About the Artist
Hans Baldung (called Hans Baldung Grien) · 1484–1545
Hans Baldung Grien (1484/85–1545), born in Schwäbisch Gmünd into an erudite family of jurists and physicians, forsook academia to pursue art. His early training around 1500 took place in the Upper Rhineland, likely Strasbourg, before he apprenticed under Albrecht Dürer in Nuremberg from 1503 to 1507. There, the young artist honed his skills in painting, printmaking, and stained glass, even managin...