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Guido Reni, Dulwich Picture Gallery,

London
Jonathan Jones

2 minutes

It takes a courageous gallery to search the world for examples

of a single painting and exhibit them next to their own version so
that everyone can see its weaknesses. Although I suspect this
was not the intention at all.

In the 19th century, Guido Reni's Saint Sebastian at Dulwich

was one of the most famous paintings in Britain. By 1900, its
authenticity was doubted and it vanished into the storerooms.
Only recently has scholarly fashion turned back. It is now on
permanent view in a dramatic position, and this little exhibit
brings together versions of the same subject by Reni from
museums including Madrid's Prado and Rome's Capitoline.

Unfortunately, the comparison shows that Dulwich owns the

weakest example of the composition in which a young man
stands tied to a tree, an arrow piercing his naked flank. In the
Prado picture you sense the artist striving to imagine a living
body from the inside. The Dulwich artist does not seem to think
about anatomy with the same intelligence. The supposed proof
that overrides such flaws and makes this perhaps the very first
of Reni's Sebastians is a mark of drawing that shows him
reconsidering the position of the saint's loincloth. I think it is a lot
to hang on a glimpse of pubic hair.
An own goal, then - but Dulwich is to be praised for
demonstrating that the unjustly ridiculed Reni could be as
powerful as Caravaggio. His saints dreamily looking upward
have more than rosaries in their febrile thoughts.

· Until May 11. Details: 020-8299 8711.