The martyr Saint Sebastian – portrayed within the Christian iconographic tradition as a youthful man bound and shot with arrows – is here instead depicted as a young bull, pierced with crossbow bolts, arrows and knives. Regarding his choice of a bullock as the martyred saint, Hirst explains: “It’s kind of odd to take meat and give it back a personality in some way or make it a metaphorical carrier or something like that. People don’t like faces on meat. But also for it to be dead in a tragic way. For you to have some sort of understanding or to feel its pain or tragedy