Why Saint Sebastian Became a Gay Icon

Saint Sebastian, a Christian martyr and captain in the Praetorian Guard, is considered the earliest known gay icon despite his historical role as patron of soldiers and athletes. He was not killed by arrows as commonly depicted; after being rescued by Saint Irene, he was clubbed to death and dumped in Rome's sewers by Emperor Diocletian. Renaissance painters, however, consistently portrayed him tied to a stake, pierced by arrows, with a tense naked body and eyes raised to heaven, making him the most frequently depicted male saint in art. The languid eroticism of these paintings, as noted by critic Richard A. Kaye, presents both a homoerotic ideal and a portrait of a tortured closet case. Japanese writer Yukio Mishima, in his 1949 autobiographical novel 'Confession of a Mask,' credited a reproduction of Guido Reni's painting of Sebastian with sparking his sexual self-discovery. Susan Sontag observed that Sebastian's face shows no physical pain, divorcing beauty from suffering, which resonates with LGBTQ+ experiences of enduring love like an arrow and suffering from societal exclusion.