Saint Sebastian Tended by Saint Irene (Hendrick ter Brugghen) in the Diocletianic Persecution, has the soldier Sebastian shot by archers as punishment for his treason. Looking for his body to bury, Irene found Saint Sebastian tied to a tree and miraculously alive, then nursed him back to health. Rather than painting the scene of Sebastian being shot with arrows, in the midst of his attempted execution, Ter Brugghen chooses to show the moments afterwards where Irene and her maid untie him from the tree. Some attribute this narrative shift to the emergence of the plague within Utrecht in the 1620s: several artists desiring a subject saved from agony, turn
Saint Albina the Martyrology, states that she was brought to Italy and was killed in the town of Formia. Her remains are kept in the cathedral of the Italian city of Gaeta. According to the Greek tradition, they were miraculously transported there. This is the Saint Albina depicted in the picture, venerated as a saint in Italy. Her feast day is 16 December. Another Albina, who died on 4 March 387, was the mother of Saint Marcella. The Bollandists Henchenius and Papenbroch (of the Acta Sanctorum) did not consider her inclusion in the calendar properly supported by authority. Athanasius of Alexandria may