The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian

Pinturicchio set this martyrdom in a real place. Sebastian, so the legend runs, was a soldier in the Roman army who refused to give up his Christian faith, and tradition placed his execution by arrows on the Palatine Hill, the hill of the old imperial palaces. So the background shows Rome as it stood in the 1490s, with the ruined Colosseum and the church of Saints John and Paul on the neighbouring Caelian Hill. Both are still there, a short walk apart.

In front, archers on either side draw their bows at the saint, who is tied to a column. The legend does not end with them. Sebastian was said to have survived the arrows and been nursed back to health, and to have confronted the emperor Diocletian again, who then had him beaten to death.