Saint Bartholomew and Saint Sebastian

In 1509 this was not a picture you stood in front of. It was one leaf of a pair of shutters that closed over the organ of San Bartolomeo, the church beside the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, the trading house of the German merchants at Rialto. With the organ shut you saw these two, Bartholomew holding the flaying knife of his martyrdom and Sebastian bound to a column, set inside a painted classical architecture. When the doors opened, two more saints stood revealed behind them. Sebastiano was a young Venetian then, painting in the glowing colour of Giorgione, who at that same moment was frescoing the outer walls of the Fondaco next door. In the 18th century the shutters were taken out of their frame and hung as four separate paintings, which is how they reach us now.