San Sebastiano

Saint Sebastian was the saint people prayed to against plague, because the arrows piercing him were long likened to the sudden, invisible strike of disease, and plague kept returning to Florence in these years. This panel was set up in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore in early 1474. Botticelli was still in his late twenties, and rather than show agony he gives Sebastian the calm, balanced body of an antique statue, standing almost serenely against a distant landscape while the arrows go in. He is bound to a bare tree, raised well above the small figures below. The effect is closer to classical sculpture than to suffering, which seems to be exactly what Botticelli wanted.