It is important to refer briefly to the way in which Perugino painted Sebastian. There are: 1. the Cerqueto fresco of 1478; 2. the Fiesole picture, now in the Uffizi, of 1493; 3. the Wantage figure, of about 1498; 4. the Borghese picture, of about 1500; 5. the Panicale fresco, of 1505; 6. the Perugia fresco, of 1518; 7. the manuscript in question; and the drawing of an archer at Christ Church, Oxford. (I leave out of this consideration the effeminate St. Sebastian, in the Perugia gallery, Sala XI., No. 16.) [Illustration: _Alinari photo_] [_Perugia Gallery_ THE MARTYRDOM OF ST. SEBASTIAN, 1518] The Cerqueto one, and all the others save No. 2, represent St. Sebastian tied to a column of wood; but the Cerqueto fresco is far more robust in its delineation, more Signorellesque in its muscular power than any of the others. The bend of the neck and the upward gaze of the face are distinctive of all seven. The Uffizi picture alone (2), in which St. Sebastian is one of the two attendant saints, standing one on either side of the enthroned Madonna, represents the figure with his hands, as usual, bound behind him, but he is not bound to a column. In Nos. 2, 3, and 4 the saint stands on the ground; in the others, 1, 5, 6, and 7, the wooden post is elevated above the ground. The position of the feet differs in every case, but in each instance the face is upturned, the hands bound behind the back, the body nude, save for a loin-cloth, and the flesh pierced by arrows. In No. 7 there is but one mark of an arrow to be noted. The page in question most closely resembles the Perugia picture, No. 6. This came from the church of San Francesco al Patro, and was painted in the year of a great visitation of plague, and the selection of the plague saint is thus accounted for. In this picture there are the two archers only (whereas at Panicale there are four), and there are the two angels, which in the Panicale fresco certainly appear, but are in attendance upon the Eternal Figure, whose representation appears in the lunette above. One angel in the Perugia picture (6) bears a crown. It is impossible to say what the other one carries, as the fresco is so damaged; but the colouring of these angels very closely resembles the gay colouring in the manuscript. The column was a very persistent type, as in structure the one painted in 1478 appears over and over again later on. The column in this manuscript very closely resembles the central limb of Perugino's crosses in his crucifixion scenes; and in this detail Lord Wantage's picture resembles most closely the manuscript; but the landscape, which is but slight and loose in this picture, is very fine in the manuscript and almost identical with the Città della Pieve landscape, and with the Bettona one, and closely resembles the repainted Borghese picture (4), which has also the frilled clouds that are so distinctive in the manuscript.