At the end of the Záttere the barred gates of the Stazione Maríttima deflect you away from the waterfront and towards the church of San Sebastiano . The parish church of Paolo Veronese , it contains a group of resplendent paintings by him that gives it a place in his career comparable to that of San Rocco in the career of Tintoretto, but in contrast to San Rocco, this church is frequently overlooked, despite recent bursts of restoration work.

---

San Sebastiano is open Mon-Sat 10am-5pm, Sun 3-5pm - but often closed Sun in winter; L3000/1.54.

---

Veronese was still in his twenties when, thanks largely to his contacts with the Verona-born prior of San Samuele, he was asked to paint the ceiling of the sacristy with a Coronation of the Virgin and the Four Evangelists (1555); once that commission had been carried out, he decorated the nave ceiling with Scenes from the Life of St Esther . His next project, the dome of the chancel, was later destroyed, but the sequence he and his brother Benedetto then painted on the walls of the church and the nun’s choir at the end of the 1550s has survived in pretty good shape. (Current restoration work has closed access to the choir and necessitated the removal of the Coronation of the Virgin and the Four Evangelists to the Accademia.) In the following decade he executed the last of the pictures, those on the organ shutters and around the high altar - on the left, St Sebastian Leads SS. Mark and Marcellian to Martyrdom , and on the right The Second Martyrdom of St Sebastian (the customarily depicted torture by arrows didn’t kill him). Other riches include a late Titian of St Nicholas (on the left surround of the first chapel on the right), and the primeval sixteenth-century majolica pavement in the chapel to the left of the chancel - in front of which is Veronese’s tomb slab.