The specifics of Luca Giordano’s artistic education have long been the subject of intellectual curiosity and investigation. Born in Naples to the artist Antonio Giordano, it is unclear if Luca was ever apprenticed to his father, or received any formal training. Giordano’s earliest biographers suggest he was a self-taught prodigy, refining his technique by copying paintings, frescos and sculptures. Giordano’s style is indebted to that of Jusepe de Ribera, and it is now accepted that the young artist spent his formative years in Ribera’s orbit.

While many of Giordano's earliest paintings combine passages copied from other masters with the artist's own inventions, here he engages directly with one of Ribera's compositions, making only minor changes (fig. 1). Giordano’s work of this early period is marked by a deep psychological interest in the biblical and mythical subjects he treated. He treated Saint Sebastian on several occasions in these formative years, paying particular attention to the calm and focused features of Saint Irene and her attendant and Saint Sebastian’s ecstatic expression. Nicola Spinosa, who first identified the painting as an early work by Giordano, dates it to the mid-1650s (written communication, dated 30 September 2019). While recognizing the painting's quality, Guiseppe Scavizzi, favors an attribution to another, as yet unidentified, follower of Ribera on account of his belief that Giordano never copied Ribera’s compositions verbatim (private communication, 18 February 2022).

Around the time he completed this painting, Giordano employed the composition of the contorted body of Saint Sebastian in another painting, now in the Gemäldegalerie, Dresden (fig. 2), as well as a recently rediscovered small-scale variant (Sotheby’s, London, 5 December 2020, lot 120). Giordano continued to draw upon this composition the following decade, taking the figure of Saint Irene from Ribera again with an altered figure of Saint Sebastian (fig. 3).