Saint Sebastian Healed by Angels, Pieter Paul Rubens (1602)
Sebastian, an officer in the Roman army and a convert to Christianity, was sentenced to death during the persecutions of the Emperor Diocletian. He was bound to a pole or tree, and pierced by arrows shot by soldiers, who left him to die. But Irene, a noble Roman lady, took mercy on him and healed him, though another tradition holds that he was actually saved by the miraculous intervention of angels.
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