The man is penetrated by Death’s arrow. Images of San Sebastian, much coopted by Gay visual culture, make the erotic end of his death (for viewer) quite clear. The penetration of the arrow and the wound becomes absolutely incorporated into a homosexual vernacular. But here we have something less obvert. Yet the gentleness of the expression of the dying, the way in which he clutches his throat, and the swashbuckling nature of a winged death that is not unlike the bat-woman suggests a triumph that is the end but also an erotic end.
