São Sebastião

In 1478 the plague was in Venice again, killing something like one in seven people. Saint Sebastian, who had survived being shot full of arrows, was the saint you prayed to against it, and this panel was made for exactly that purpose, for a Venetian confraternity founded that same plague year. Antonello sets him not in some vague holy place but in a sunlit Venetian square, with tiled paving that races back into the distance and ordinary chimneys and washing lines behind. The perspective is almost show-off precise, learned in part from Piero della Francesca. A few arrows pierce the calm body, but Sebastian barely seems to feel them. On the ground in front of him a soldier lies stretched out fast asleep, as though this were any ordinary afternoon.