Saint Sebastian Tended by the Pious Women

For a long time nobody was sure who had painted this. It hung in the Venetian church of San Nicolo dei Tolentini until Napoleon's suppression of religious houses swept works like it into state hands around 1800. When it reached the Accademia it was catalogued as Bolognese, close to Guercino. Only in an 1895 catalogue was it given to Camillo Berlinghieri, a painter from Ferrara nicknamed il Ferraresino, who had come to work in Venice near the end of his short life. He seems to have painted it around 1632. The subject is an old one. Saint Sebastian, shot with arrows and left for dead, is found still alive and tended by the pious women who had come to bury him.