Turner’s admirer, John Ruskin, thought this dazzling sunset was his finest Venetian picture. It lacked ‘one single accurate detail’, but it was still ‘the likest thing to what it is meant for’.Not the least inaccurate element is the title: there is no church of S Benedetto here. Turner may simply have been in a muddle. But he could have intended to show the vision of the sun experienced by St Benedict of Norcia at the end of his life. This would tally with his association of sunset with Venetian decline, and his own experience of the city late in life.