圣塞巴斯蒂安殉难

Around 1475 the Pucci family of Florence wanted an altarpiece for their chapel in the church of Santissima Annunziata, and the Pollaiuolo workshop used the commission to show off. The saint tied to the post is almost secondary. The real display is the ring of six archers around him, arranged in matching pairs, two bending to reload their crossbows and two loosing their bolts, the same bodies seen from front and back so the painters could prove they understood a figure from every side. Behind them the ground falls away down a winding river into a pale blue Tuscan distance, one of the earliest landscapes in Italian painting to open up such convincing depth. The picture is usually credited to the brothers Antonio and Piero del Pollaiuolo working together, though recent scholarship gives the leading hand here to Piero. It's a large panel, and it now hangs in the National Gallery in London.