[Archers] St. Sebastian by Gerrit van Honthorst

[Garth Groff]

Noble Friends of the Bow,

While cataloging a French art book today I ran across this painting of 
Saint Sebastian, being shot full of arrows: 
http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/gerrit-van-honthorst-saint-sebastian 
. The painting is by Gerrit van Honthorst and dates to 1623. While 
nobody can be completely sure of how accurate the presentation of the 
arrows is, there is a good chance that these have at least some 
authentic period features. I have seen at least one portrait of a 
nobleman with his arrows that dates to about 1550 with similar arrows, 
so I feel pretty comfortable they can be taken as fairly accurate 
representations for late period SCA use.

Since 1623 was pretty much past the end of military archery, we can be 
reasonably certain these are gentlemen's sporting arrows. This is 
further suggested by the cresting, as a lower class archer would 
probably make their own arrows without cresting. These were likely 
professionally made. All four arrows have more or less the same crest, 
from the point end there are two black bands, then some sort of figure 
or design which cannot be clearly seen on any of the four, two more 
black bands, then three more black bands just before the fletch. One has 
two black bands between the fletch and the nock. If the artist painted 
from life, than all the arrows probably were made by, or belonged to, 
the same person.

Three of the arrows seem to have the same color fletches, a white cock 
feather and two red hen feathers. The arrow which is lodged in the 
saint's breast (it is also the arrow with the extra cresting below the 
nock) shows two white feathers. Since it is somewhat different, this 
arrow might have been from a different batch, or might have had some 
special use by its owner. There are three different fletch shapes here. 
The arrow through the saint's arm has swallow tails, and the fletch is 
slightly rounded. The arrow through his thigh has straight-cut 
shield-back fletches. The remaining two arrows are both slope-backed 
shield-cut. In short, though the arrows appear to be of a family, they 
are all slightly different. None of the fletches appear to be bound on 
with thread.

The shafts appear to be unpainted. They were likely treated with boiled 
linseed oil, or a beeswax and tallow mix. All are self-nocked.

What seems odd is that the two arrows which have gone through the 
saint's limbs do not appear to have points. Particular the arrow through 
the thigh, *seems* to be just sharpened wood. Perhaps there are points 
here, but they are obscured by blood. The arm shot is very hard to see 
due to the shadow effects, but appears to be the same.

I loved seeing what I could squeeze out of this picture. Anyone else 
have different opinions?

Yours Aye,


Lord Mungo Napier, The Archer of Mallard Lodge




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