[Archers] St. Sebastian by Gerrit van Honthorst

[jaynardone at comcast.net]

Thank you for the post Lord Mungo, this picture is of much interest to me! 

Janyn 



----- Original Message -----

From: "Garth Groff" <sarahsan at embarqmail.com> 
To: archers at seahorse.atlantia.sca.org 
Sent: Thursday, June 4, 2015 6:51:49 PM 
Subject: [Archers] St. Sebastian by Gerrit van Honthorst 

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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