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| Mariotto di Nardo Martyrdom of St Lawrence 1389 tempera on panel Harvard Art Museums |
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| Jacobello del Fiore Martyrdom of St Lawrence with Benedictine Nuns ca. 1425 tempera on panel Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Biagio d'Antonio Martyrdom of St Catherine ca. 1480-90 oil on panel Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht |
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| Piero and Antonio del Pollaiuolo Martyrdom of St Sebastian 1475 oil on panel National Gallery, London |
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| Antonio Maineri St Sebastian 1492 oil on panel Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna |
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| Giovanni Mansueti St Sebastian with St Liberalis of Treviso, St Gregory the Great, St Francis of Assisi and St Roch ca. 1494 tempera on canvas Gallerie dell' Accademia, Venice |
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| Anonymous Florentine Painter Martyrdom of St Sebastian ca. 1450-1500 oil on panel Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Pietro da Saliba St Sebastian ca. 1490-1500 tempera on panel Accademia Carrara, Bergamo |
"Throughout the Renaissance the preeminent saintly defender against the plague was the fourth-century Roman martyr Sebastian. According to his fifth-century biography, Sebastian was a valued member of the Praetorian guard of the Emperors Maximian and Diocletian, who used his position to visit imprisoned Christians and strengthen their faith. Denounced as a Christian, he refused to apostatize and was sentenced to death. At the Emperor's orders he was taken to a field and, in the words of the Passio, "pierced with arrows like a hedgehog." His executioners left him for dead, but Christians who came secretly at night to claim his body for burial found him miraculously still alive. . . . Renaissance creation of a devotional image of Sebastian is highly unusual since this was an image type normally reserved for Christ and the Virgin. Like other aspects of Sebastian's iconography, its existence demonstrates the enormous significance of his cult as a Christ-like redeemer against the plague. By the second half of the Quattrocento the new image had become the standard representational type of Sebastian, far outnumbering both narrative cycles and isolated depictions of the martyrdom proper. Such success is due to the way in which the image allows the worshiper direct access to the promise of salvation from the plague contained in Sebastian's wounded but living body. No narrative detail intrudes upon the intimate relationship between saint and devotee; since Sebastian will draw the arrows, the worshiper rests secure in his presence."
– Louise Marshall, from Manipulating the Sacred: Image and Plague in Renaissance Italy, published in Renaissance Quarterly (Autumn, 1994)
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| Francesco Marmitta St Sebastian ca. 1495-1500 oil on panel Fondazione Cavallini Sgarbi, Ferrara |
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| Filippino Lippi St Sebastian with St John the Baptist and St Francis (Pala Lomellini) 1502 tempera on panel Palazzo Bianco, Genoa |
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| Francesco Zaganelli St Sebastian 1513 oil on panel Palazzo dei Diamanti, Ferrara |
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| Il Garofalo (Benvenuto Tisi) St Sebastian ca. 1520-25 oil on panel Museo di Capodimonte, Naples |
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| Bernardino Luini Salome with the Head of John the Baptist ca. 1510-20 oil on canvas Musée du Louvre |
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| workshop of Giovanni Bellini Slaying of St Peter Martyr 1509 oil on panel Courtauld Gallery, London |
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| Girolamo Savoldo Death of St Peter Martyr ca. 1530-35 oil on canvas Art Institute of Chicago |