Closely related in style to the early LAST SUPPER and Adoration of the Magi studies and so, presumably, from the same period (c. 1480–81) are a couple of small but vital drawings that Leonardo made of Saint Sebastian, now preserved in Bayonne and Hamburg (figs. 69 and 70). The black chalk sketch in Bayonne would seem to be the earlier of the two studies; the frontal stance of the saint there is repeated faintly in leadpoint in the Hamburg sheet, where it serves as a starting point for further elaboration in wiry ink contours. Although his extant studies are few and no painted Sebastians by him survive, Leonardo seems to have become somewhat preoccupied with the saint during his first Florentine period. The list he drew up of his artistic possessions around 1482, shortly after settling in Milan, mentions eight drawings of the saint.

According to legend, Sebastian was an officerof the Praetorian Guard under the Roman emperor Diocletian in the third century. He was ordered to be shot with arrows when he was discovered to be secretly Christian. The popular subject would have been especially attractive to Leonardo, as it was to other Renaissance artists, because it afforded the opportunity to portray a full-length, standing male, nearly nude. Images of Sebastian, who miraculously recovered from his wounds, were almost always in demand due to the centuries-old belief that he was a protector against plague, alleged in ancient times to be caused by the arrows of the Greek god Apollo.