Carlo Dolci’s subject here defies easy identification. He carries no attributes (no sword, cross, or keys, for example) linking him to the life of a specific saint. The artist appears, however, to have based the figure on a painting by an earlier Florentine artist, Cristofano Allori, more clearly depicting the charitable Saint Julian. The intimate scale of this painting suggests that it was intended for private contemplation and devotion. Its meticulous style is typical of Dolci, a slow worker who resolved, according to one early biographer, “never . . . to paint anything other than sacred images or stories.”