San Sebastián y santa Apolonia

This panel began life in Perugia, as one face of a huge double-sided altarpiece Perugino built for the church of Sant'Agostino in the early 1500s. It shows Saint Sebastian tied to a tree and pierced by a single arrow, his body posed with the calm of an antique statue, while a second saint stands beside him. How it ended up in a museum in the French Alps is a story of conquest. After Napoleon's armies swept through Italy, the Treaty of Tolentino in 1797 handed France the right to strip Italian churches of their art. The panel went first to Paris, then in 1811, by imperial decree, it was sent down to Grenoble. It has stayed there ever since, one fragment of an altarpiece whose other pieces are scattered between Italy, France and beyond.