In Venice, Bernardo Strozzi built a superb reputation for himself as a portrait painter with a profound capacity for physical and psychological characterization and as a painter of religious subjects. An excellent example of his interpretation of a religious theme is St Sebastian Cared for by the Pious Women. It was painted for the church of San Benedetto; its exaggeratedly refined monumental construction is relaxed by the dynamic Baroque rhythm and atmospheric luminosity of the melodramatic evocation of the face of the saint and the still-life vignettes.
