Standard of Saint Sebastian

In May of 1525 a confraternity out in the Camollia district, just beyond the walls of Siena, put down 20 gold ducats for a banner. These were brothers who nursed the sick, and their patron was Saint Sebastian, the young Roman soldier shot full of arrows and long prayed to against the plague. What Sodoma made for them was meant to move. It is a double-sided standard, painted on silk, made to be raised on a pole and carried through the streets in procession. On one face Sebastian stands bound to a tree while an angel comes down with the martyr's crown. As it passed, the other side came round to the crowd: the Virgin and Child above the kneeling brothers, with Saint Roch, another guardian against plague, standing near. The brothers were happy enough with it that six years later they voted him an extra ten ducats.