This picture is expressly ascribed by Vasari to Antonio alone. On the other hand, Albertini, an earlier authority (1510), ascribes it to Piero, the younger brother of Antonio. It is known that many pictures were the joint production of both brothers--Antonio furnishing the design, and Piero putting it into colour. "In the 'St. Sebastian,'" says Sir F. Burton, "we probably have a work so produced; the severe and strenuous drawing of the elder brother, the sculptor and _toreuta_ by profession, is visible throughout; whether he shared in the painting, and if he did, to what extent, may remain an open question." Antonio Pollajuolo (the "poulterer,"--so called from his grandfather's trade) is an interesting man from two points of view: first, as an instance of the union of the arts in old times; for he was a working goldsmith and engraver as well as a sculptor and painter. He took to painting comparatively late in life, desiring, says Vasari, "for his labour a more enduring memory" than belongs to works of the goldsmith's art; "and his brother Piero being a painter, he joined himself to him for the purpose of learning the modes of proceeding in painting. He acquired a knowledge in the course of a few months and became an excellent master." He became, indeed, an excellent draughtsman, but "neither harmony of colours nor grace was the strong point of this master" (Morelli's _Italian Masters in German Galleries_, p. 351). In 1484 Antonio was invited to Rome by Pope Innocent VIII., and executed some important monumental works in St. Peter's. His brother died in 1496; Antonio, two years later. The two brothers were buried in S. Pietro in Vincoli, where busts of them may be seen. Antonio is interesting, in the second place, for the developments he introduced into Italian painting. He was one of the first of the Florentines to adopt an oil medium, and the first (says Vasari) who had recourse to the dissection of the dead subject. To him, therefore, Ruskin attributes a baleful influence. "The virtual beginner of artistic anatomy in Italy was a man called 'the poulterer'--Pollajuolo, a man of immense power, but on whom the curse of the Italian mind in this age was set at its deepest. See the horrible picture of St. Sebastian by him in our National Gallery." He was the beginner of those anatomical studies, continues Ruskin, which, pursued and established by later masters, "polluted their work with the science of the sepulchre, and degraded it with presumptuous and paltry technical skill. Foreshorten your Christ, and paint Him, if you can, half-putrefied--that is the scientific art of the Renaissance" (_Ariadne Florentina_, Appendix IV.).