03 Works, Today, March 26th, is Saint Castulus' Day, With Footnotes - #84

SAINT KASTULUS

Saint Castulus (died 286) is venerated as a martyr. According to tradition, he was the chamberlain (or officer, valet) of Emperor Diocletian and the husband of Saint Irene of Rome.

Castulus was an officer who oversaw the household and palace for Emperor Diocletian, who was actively persecuting Christians. He is described as a quiet but zealous Christian. He arranged for Christians to gather for Mass inside the emperor’s palace because it was the last place that Roman authorities would search. He also sheltered Christians in his own home, which was attached to the palace. With a friend, he even went about the city, gathering men and women to the faith and presenting them to the pope for baptism.

Paolo Caliari, 1528–1588

St. Mark and St. Marcellian are lead to their martyrdom, c. 1565/70

Oil on canvas

355 × 540cm.

San Sebastiano, Venice

The Golden Legend of Jacopo da Voragine tells the story of the brothers Mark and Marcellinus and the events before their execution in great detail. The attempts by their despairing parents to get the two martyrs, strengthened in their faith by St Sebastian, to change their minds and abandon their faith is the subject of the crowded scene, which sticks very closely to the textual source. Idealized architecture conforming to the forms of Palladio and Sansovino provides the setting for the dramatic event. According to Ridolfi, the two paintings intended for the side walls of the "presbytery" were completed in 1565. This seems a credible date, and fits well with the report that Federico Zuccaro, who spent two and a half years in Venice from 1563, made drawings from both works. More on this work

Paolo Caliari, known as Paolo Veronese (1528 – 19 April 1588) was an Italian Renaissance painter based in Venice, most famous for large history paintings of both religious and mythological subjects, such as The Wedding at Cana and The Feast in the House of Levi. With Titian, who was at least a generation older, and Tintoretto, ten years older, he was one of the "great trio that dominated Venetian painting of the cinquecento" or 16th-century late Renaissance. Veronese is known as a supreme colorist, and after an early period with Mannerist influence turned to a more naturalist style influenced by Titian.

His most famous works are elaborate narrative cycles, executed in a dramatic and colorful style, full of majestic architectural settings and glittering pageantry. His large paintings of biblical feasts, crowded with figures, painted for the refectories of monasteries in Venice and Verona are especially famous, and he was also the leading Venetian painter of ceilings. Most of these works remain in situ, or at least in Venice, and his representation in most museums is mainly composed of smaller works such as portraits that do not always show him at his best or most typical.

He has always been appreciated for "the chromatic brilliance of his palette, the splendor and sensibility of his brushwork, the aristocratic elegance of his figures, and the magnificence of his spectacle", but his work has been felt "not to permit expression of the profound, the human, or the sublime", and of the "great trio" he has often been the least appreciated by modern criticism. Nonetheless, "many of the greatest artists ... may be counted among his admirers, including Rubens, Watteau, Tiepolo, Delacroix and Renoir". More on Paolo Caliari

Among those he sheltered were Mark and Marcellian. He is one of the saints associated with the life and legend of Saint Sebastian.

He was betrayed by an apostate named Torquatus and taken before Fabian, prefect of the city.

Castulus was tortured and executed by being buried alive in a sand pit on the Via Labicana. 
According to tradition, Irene subsequently buried the body of the martyred Saint Sebastian. She was later martyred herself, around 288 AD.

St. Mark and St. Marcellian being buried alive

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