Holy Ambiguity, Queerness in the St Sebastian Triptych by the Master of the Holy Kinship

This research project serves as a case study to examine whether queer theory and traditional iconography can be two distinct yet interrelated entry ways through which a fifteenth century artwork can be more cohesively understood. In order to do so it questions how the St Sebastian Triptych (ca. 1493-94) by the Master of the Holy Kinship, at display in the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne, constitutes meaning as a painting-with-doors in its format and iconography, and how it articulates its own queerness. This research finds that the Triptych should be understood as a ‘panel with doors’. The Triptych contains painted clues on the inner and outer sides of the wings which demarcate the different spaces of the triptych and connect the inner and outer sides. The narration has the form of a ‘representatively hidden narration'. It appears that the St Sebastian Triptych constitutes its meaning through a gendered juxtaposition of the themes ‘martyr’ and ‘healer’ in the outer and inner...Show moreThis research project serves as a case study to examine whether queer theory and traditional iconography can be two distinct yet interrelated entry ways through which a fifteenth century artwork can be more cohesively understood. In order to do so it questions how the St Sebastian Triptych (ca. 1493-94) by the Master of the Holy Kinship, at display in the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne, constitutes meaning as a painting-with-doors in its format and iconography, and how it articulates its own queerness. This research finds that the Triptych should be understood as a ‘panel with doors’. The Triptych contains painted clues on the inner and outer sides of the wings which demarcate the different spaces of the triptych and connect the inner and outer sides. The narration has the form of a ‘representatively hidden narration'. It appears that the St Sebastian Triptych constitutes its meaning through a gendered juxtaposition of the themes ‘martyr’ and ‘healer’ in the outer and inner wings. St Sebastian is both martyr and healer because of Christ, of which he is an image bearer. The outer wings introduce both themes by juxtaposing female martyr saints opposite to male healer saints. This gendered juxtaposition is also present in the inner wings, where it is applied to St Sebastian’s life and death. The tripartite format allowed the Master of the Holy Kinship to thematically oppose the wings, while he used the middle panel as a place of synthesis. The middle panel merges the opposed elements of the inner side wings. The result is a strongly ambiguous middle panel in which the body of St Sebastian forms the axis and apogee. St Sebastian is shown here both as martyr and healer, passive as well as active, feminine yet male. It is this ambiguity which grants this triptych its enchantment and religious and emotional power. This ambiguity is also the reason why the St Sebastian Triptych can be called ‘queer’. The triptych expresses its queerness in the sensuality and ambiguity of St Sebastian’s body in the middle panel, because it transcends the gendered division as presented in the outer wings. By thematizing pain (martyrdom) and redemption (healing), the St Sebastian Triptych ultimately refers back to Christ’s passion and resurrection. The St Sebastian Altarpiece is part of a larger Christian tradition of hagiographies and visual arts in which an overlap between pain and seduction and between fear and desire is frequent.Show less

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Holy Ambiguity, Queerness in the St Sebastian Triptych by the Master of the Holy Kinship