More interesting in the eyes of most of us are the two small pictures of the Saints Sebastian and George, two youthful figures intended to show the contrast of suffering and repose. In the “St. Sebastian” now at Vienna, Mantegna has deliberately set himself the task of representing the human form wrung by physical agony, and the divine strength of a will that can conquer pain by the power of its endurance. His success was complete, and among the countless representations of martyrdom that exist, there is scarcely a finer example than this St. Sebastian bound to the ruined column and pierced with arrows, lifting his eyes heavenwards in his mortal agony. At his feet lie broken statues and marbles, shattered fragments of the old world that was crumbling to ruins around, and which by the delicate grace of their shapes and mouldings help to associate ideas of beauty with this scene of suffering and death. The opposite of this picture meets us in the armed “St. George” of the Venice Academy, who stands under an archway garlanded with flowers, leaning on his lance in satisfied repose of victory, with the dragon dead at his feet. His classical head is not unlike the youthful saints of the Verona altar-piece, while the highly finished character of the execution approaches the style of the Uffizi triptych, evidently painted about the same time. To these we may add the wonderful “Dead Christ” of the Brera, a work almost terrible in its realism, and exaggerated foreshortening, but which reveals in a surprising degree Mantegna’s mastery both in drawing and management of light and shade. This _Cristo in Scurto_ was one of those daring trials of skill which he loved to attempt, not to please the eye or gratify the taste of his employers, but simply in order to overcome some difficulty or solve some problem from which a less powerful mind would have shrunk. The satisfaction which he felt in the success of this experiment is proved by his unwillingness to part with this work, which never left his studio until his death, when it is mentioned by his son in the list of paintings that were sold to pay his debts.