EPPH - Every Painter Paints Himself

The answer is quite simple. While saints often hold the weapons that killed them as their identifying signs (“attributes”), they are rarely posed as though they were their own executioner as well. Michelangelo’s Saint Sebastian is. He is a painter, a self-representation of the artist, holding his arrows like an artist holds a fistful of paintbrushes.

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A poetic painter would recognize the metaphor immediately because they too hold brushes like that in the studio. Those on the right are from a 1951 Self-Portrait by Frida Kahlo and, even without explicit reference to Michelangelo, her brushes drip with blood. Brushes are so important to a painter's ability to depict their inner world that they are often represented by weapons that pierce the body to reveal blood, a common symbol for paint. The brush's symbol is particularly appropriate when, like an arrow, it is long, thin, tipped and made of wood.  

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Now that the arrows are recognized as brushes, St. Sebastian's archer-like pose makes sense for the first time. He is his own executioner because “every painter paints himself”. Other artists have indicated their alter ego in both archer and saint (as artist and model) to convey the same message; Michelangelo did so more concisely in the saint alone.

For Saint Sebastians by other artists, see two examples by Mantegna and one each by Durer, Hans Baldung Grien, Perugino, Carlo Crivelli, Barrocci, Egon Schiele and a lesser-known artist, Antonio Campi.