Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian

Martyrdom of São Sebastião is an oil painting on oak wood, from c. 1536 - 1538, by the artist Portuguese of the Renaissance Gregório Lopes (c. 1490-1550), a work from the Convent of Christ in Tomar and which is currently in the National Museum of Ancient Art of Lisbon.

According to Catholic tradition, Saint Sebastian, a Roman soldier, was a 13th-century Christian martyr and saint, ordered to execute by means of arrows by the Roman emperor Diocletian who accused him of treason for his bland conduct with Christian prisoners. The cult of St. Sebastian was born in the 4th century and reached its peak in the Lower Middle Ages, namely in the 14th and 15th centuries, both in the Catholic Church and in the Orthodox Church, and the Martyrdom of St. Sebastian of Gregory Lopes was a new example of the iconography of the saint's torment.