Saint Sebastian Tended by Saint Irene

Though Sebastian is famously tied to a tree or post and shot with many arrows, in his story he always survives this, only to be killed with stones some time later;[3] these ordeals are sometimes called his "first" and "second martyrdom".

[9] Baroque artists often treated the new scene as nocturnal, illuminated by a single candle, torch or lantern, in the chiaroscuro "candlelight" style fashionable in the first half of the 17th century.

With a few exceptions with a large vertical "altarpiece" size,[10] the paintings are mostly horizontal in format and the main figures occupy most of the picture space, giving an intimate and intense depiction of the scene.

By the 18th century the subject becomes less common, as Irene and her maid are often replaced by angels, or become nameless "women", as those by Paul Troger (Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna, 1746) are called by the gallery.

[15] Standard redactions of the Late medieval Golden Legend merely say "The night after [the ordeal by archery] came a Christian woman for to take his body and to bury it, but she found him alive and brought him to her house, and took charge of him till he was all whole.

"[16] Identifying the "Christian woman" as the hitherto very obscure Irene came later, and was popularised by Cardinal Caesar Baronius (1538–1607), a leading historian of the church, and one of the writers telling Catholic artists what treatments were appropriate in Counter-Reformation art.

[18] The few scenes before this point, probably all from altarpiece series on the life of Sebastian (there is one by Albrecht Altdorfer), were presumably intending to depict only the anonymous "Christian woman" of the medieval tradition.

Now, as vernacular versions of Baronius' account appeared (including a translation into Dutch/Flemish), artists soon began to paint it as a distinct subject,[19] with the added attraction of the possibilities for chiaroscuro offered by both the usual points in the story chosen for depiction.

[26] One aspect of the new images was that they firmly endorsed medical treatment; one strand of medieval thinking had been that attempts to flee or treat the plague, seen as partly an expression of divine displeasure, were both useless and "presumption" in the face of God's wrath.

[28] The actions of Irene (and her unnamed maid) also reflect the continuing injunction of both the Catholic church and Protestant denominations that people should not flee places with the plague, as many doctors advised individual patients.