This canvas, from the National Gallery of the Marche, is the pinnacle of Guercino's youthful production and was created in 1619, immediately before his trip to Rome. Guercino does not depict Saint Sebastian as the martyr who stood stoically facing the arrows of his tormentors but as a man suffering, despondent on the ground, with his exhausted gaze turned upwards and his wrists still tied to the post of his martyrdom by ropes. In the background, the sunrise brightens a leaden sky. The depiction of the half-naked body of the saint, the meticulous direction in the arrangement of the legs and the display of the feet in the extreme foreground are the consequences of Guercino's anatomical studies. In 1616, he had founded an Academy of the Nude in Cento at the home of Bartolomeo Fabri, where it was possible to study in depth and draw models from life.