Saint Sébastien

Perugino painted this Saint Sebastian around 1490, when he was one of the most sought-after artists in Italy and, a few years on, would have the young Raphael in his workshop. Sebastian was a Roman soldier executed with arrows for his faith, and painters loved him because the subject let them show an idealised nude body. This is one of Perugino's earliest versions, and he makes the saint a slender youth bound to a tree, calm rather than suffering, his skin pale against a clear Umbrian sky. Later he would give the figure the firm, athletic build of an antique statue. Along the base he signed his name in Latin, Petrus Perusinus, Peter of Perugia.