Saint Sebastian with Madonna and child

This altarpiece is signed and dated 1503, which makes it one of the last things Filippino Lippi finished before he died the next year. It was ordered by the Lomellini family for their chapel in a church in Genoa. Saint Sebastian stands bound to a marble column, pierced with arrows, on a pedestal in front of a ruined classical building, with John the Baptist beside him pointing him out. Up in the arched top, the Virgin sits between two angels while the Christ Child holds a pomegranate, an old symbol of the Resurrection. Lippi had trained in the workshop of Botticelli, and by 1503 he was one of the most admired painters in Florence, sending work out to cities like this one on commission.