Afternoon:
10°c
To Dulwich as Pepys might have written in his diary, to see paintings of St Sebastian by Guido Reni, only to be reminded of Ross Kemp.
Some months ago I did with him what my mother did with me before the war - sent him off to find a picture that he really liked, with instructions to come and tell me which and why. He could have picked a Rembrandt but he chose Guido's nude Sebastian in the course of martyrdom, far from dead, stuck with an arrow, writhing in agony.
I laughed - "But that's a bugger's picture!" - and he looked as wounded as the saint. He had no idea that a painting could be so interpreted and I had to explain that once art had broken away from exclusively preaching the propaganda of the church, it immediately became the instrument of erotica, often combining both to such an extent that naked saints had to be all but banned from altarpieces for the naughty thoughts that they engendered in the minds of dear old ladies at an early Mass.
And not only old ladies. Many a prince of the church might experience a twitch under his cassock at the sight of a comely Sebastian, and a cardinal who had money to spend on the arts might well, and knowingly, commission a painting of a subject that was holy in origin but obscene in effect. St Lawrence, for example, naked on the griddle, was - as it was widely supposed that a man condemned to death by burning at the stake enjoyed an erection at the first lick of the flames - an ideal image for the bedroom, and what could be better for a prelate whose dark imaginings included a little homoerotic sadomasochism? "Look at the proud pink nipples," I said to Ross, "look at the drapery, low in the loins and about to slip further - of course it's a bugger's picture."
We spent the rest of our time looking at less troublesome paintings and then went to have tea at a greasy spoon in a less salubrious district of Sarf London, Ross bearing postcards of, among other pictures, the Sebastian. Immediately recognised, he passed these to horny-handed men at other tables, asking their opinion. Most favoured the Sebastian.
"But my friend here," said Ross, "tells me that it's a bugger's picture."
It was not the moment to defend my view. It is nevertheless an interpretation much supported by the Dulwich Picture Gallery. "Look here, upon this picture, and on this..." said Hamlet, and so indeed do they, showing us Sebastians by Derek Jarman, Gustave Moreau, Yukio Mishima, Pierre et Gilles, even the cover of a pornographic magazine and, most tellingly, a Sebastian by Gianantonio Bazzi, not for nothing nicknamed Sodoma.
