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
Snakes & Arrows of the CD version of the album, and do not include the MVI or LP versions. Writing for "Snakes & Arrows" began in January 2006 with Lee and Lifeson working at their home studio in Toronto. The pair began the writing process by jamming, which gradually molded their ideas into completed pieces. During this process, Neil Peart wrote preliminary lyrics for the songs – a creative method the band has frequently employed on their earlier works. Peart, originally from the Toronto area, has lived in Southern California since 2000. To continue working with his bandmates for the new album, he