The picture was hung in San Marco, but its influence not proving
elevating to the sensuous minds of the Florentines, it was removed to
the chapter-house, and Gio Battista della Palla, the dealer who bought
so many of the best pictures of the time, purchased it to send to the
King of France. Its subsequent fate is not known, although Monsieur
Alaffre, of Toulouse, boasts of its possession. He says his father
bought three paintings which, in the time of the Revolution, had been
taken from the chapel of a royal villa near Paris [Footnote: Padre
Marchese, _Memorie_, &c., vol. ii. note p. 119.], one of which is
the _S. Sebastian_. In design and attitude it corresponds to the
one described by Vasari, the saint being in a niche, surrounded by a
double cornice. The left arm is bound; the right, with its cord
hanging, is upraised in attitude of the faith, so fully expressed in
the beautiful face. Three arrows are fixed in the body, which is nude
except a slight veil across the loins; an angel, also nude, holds the
palm to him. Connoisseurs do not think this painting equal in merit to
the other works of Fra Bartolommeo.
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