The work references the story of the early Christian martyr Saint Sebastian. According to St. Ambrose, Sebastian was the commander of Emperor Diocletian’s Praetorian Guard; Diocletian was known for his cruelty toward the religious minority of that time — the Christians. Supporting the suffering and standing in their  efense, openly aligning himself with the followers of Christ, led to Sebastian being sentenced to death. “Diocletian ordered soldiers to tie him to a tree in the middle of a field and kill him with arrows. So many arrows pierced him that he resembled a hedgehog, and the soldiers, assuming he was dead, departed,” wrote Jacobus de Voragine in his medieval Golden Legend. Half-dead, he was found by a woman named Irene, who nursed him back to health. As soon as he regained his strength, Sebastian is said to have returned to the emperor to confront him about the injustice inflicted on innocent Christians. Then Diocletian ordered him to be beaten to death, and his mutilated body was thrown into the Cloaca Maxima. The story of Sebastian’s martyrdom and his heroic advocacy for the persecuted has been a recurring motif throughout art history. This work, from the Nubes Formales cycle, inscribes itself in that topos. The subject of the saint becomes a pretext for reflecting on the essence of human integrity. Formally, despite its abstract character referencing the Nubita shape, the sculpture contains an element of subtle figurativeness: from one particular perspective, its outer outline forms a profile that the viewer may easily read as a portrait of Saint Sebastian’s face. The work also employs a series of formal devices that build its narrative. In the areas representing the wounds from the arrows, the wooden surface resembles bruised and battered skin, deformed by the sharpness of steel shafts. A significant material inversion also takes place: the body becomes wood, while the arrow fletchings — traditionally wooden — gleam with the coldness of steel. This branch, bristling with metal, becomes both a record of unshaken defiance and of the heroic struggle against an oppressive system — a symbol of sacrifice in the name of one’s convictions, in which one may also see an allegory of art itself.