It is, in a monstrous way, the picture of the year. This week the latest atrocity reported to have been carried out by Islamic State was illustrated in news reports with a photograph of a mushroom cloud of smoke and dust rising above the ruins of ancient Palmyra. This brutal conjunction of beauty and violence – the remaining columns of the ancient city gold-hued against the leaden plume of destruction floating in the pure blue sky – is an image of sheer fanaticism, unbridled hatred, and the obliteration of everything anyone has ever called civilised.

The picture was released on 25 August, but it is the only possible way to illustrate this week’s story: in a new twist of sadism and barbarity, Isis have reportedly killed three prisoners by tying them to Roman-period columns, then blowing up the columns.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mantegna’s The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian. Photograph: Heritage Images/Getty Images

Here is an answer for anyone who still thinks it is irrelevant to mourn antiquities when people are dying in Syria. In a neat illustration of the inseparability of violence against art and violence against human beings, the terrorists destroyed flesh and stone together. It is a perfect expression of this singular savagery that is torturing and killing and also obliterating the collective memories – the human heritage of the world.

Tony Blair has conceded that without the Iraq war there would probably be no Islamic State. But what use are apologies? They won’t bring Palmyra back. The west is paralysed by our urge to blame ourselves for this new religious fascism. Spooked by Iraq, we shy away from dealing with things that are happening now, not 10 years ago.

Why it's all right to be more horrified by the razing of Palmyra than mass murder Read more

I am just a mourner for Palmyra, not a politician. At the Victoria and Albert museum the other day I chanced, in the medieval gallery, upon a face from this ancient city, a sweet and haunting portrait in stone of a citizen from that lost world. It was like seeing a ghost.

It may be morbid to dwell on what was done to the three people in its latest crime. But the details matter. They reveal the unleashed extremity of the human imagination at its darkest. Surely, the prisoners tied to pillars intentionally recall the three crosses in the Christian Passion, as portrayed by artists such as Rembrandt. Yet the echoes of Christian martyrdom go deeper. Christ was tied to a column to be tortured before his death. Piero della Francesca and Caravaggio, among others, have depicted this moment of suffering and humiliation.

Not only Christ, but the saints, have often been portrayed tied to columns to be tortured in some of the most harrowing of all paintings. Andrea Mantegna in the 15th century shows Saint Sebastian shot full of arrows, tied to a ruinous Roman column.

I will never again be able to look at Mantegna’s Sebastian or Caravaggio’s flagellated Christ, tied to their columns, without remembering the fates of those poor souls at Palmyra.

The image of a cloud of smoke over the ruins has been used this week because there are no pictures of this new atrocity and if there were, they would not be published by sane newspapers. But just as Islamic State destroys art, great art can help us to picture what happened without insulting the victims.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Rembrandt’s The Three Crosses, c. 1653. Photograph: Heritage Images/Getty Images

This was martyrdom. Caravaggio shows us that.

What should we do about it? Pray? Look at paintings and feel horror? Or do everything possible to end Islamic State’s murderous reign?