"The Crucifixion"

Tintoretto was the immediate successor to Titian  as the leading light of Venetian painting during the second half of the 16th century. If Titian painted for princes and rulers, Tintoretto rarely left the city and specialized almost entirely in producing art for local patrons.  In addition to creating a number of innovative Venetian altarpieces, he dominated the local market for Venetian portrait painting  and was the leading contributor to Venetian drawing of the time. All in all, art critics  say that Tintoretto was the most original painter working in Venice in the later 16th century.  Tintoretto's innovative and dynamic compositions, raking perspectives, shifts in scale, and Michelangelo-style figure painting are probably the closest that Venice gets to Mannerist painting, in spirit if not in content. Tintoretto's ideal was to combine the drawing (or disegno) of Michelangelo with the colour (or colorito) of Titian - an ambition perfectly illustrated in the The Crucifixion. Deeply devout, Tintoretto spent a good deal of his life creating religious paintings and most of his works are still in situ in Venice.

Tintoretto's greatest work is the huge and complex series of fifty canvases painted between 1565 and 1587 for the meeting rooms of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco  A masterpiece of Biblical art, they illustrate scenes from the life of Christ and the Virgin in the upper and lower halls respectively, and scenes from the Passion - dominated by this huge Crucifixion - in the Sala dell' Albergo.  The canvas of the Crucifixion took up an entire wall, and to help him create his intricate series of poses and compositions, Tintoretto made use of numerous small wax models which he moved around and illuminated from different angles.

In conception and execution, Tintoretto's Christ on the cross is one of the most unusual and compelling scenes of the crucifixion of the 16th century. Instead of focusing on the individuals directly involved in the event, the artist provides us with a panoramic scene of Golgotha, populated by an astonishingly varied throng - including soldiers, executioners, horsemen, tradesmen, onlookers, thieves and apostles - engaged in all sorts of different activities and movements with almost insect-like urgency.

In the process, he explores every aspect of the scene. One very rare feature for Renaissance art is the inclusion of the two thieves in the composition, one being nailed to a cross, the other being raised. All four Gospels relate that two thieves were crucified with Christ.

According to Luke, the one on Christ's right rebuked the other, saying that their punishment was deserved whereas Christ was innocent. Christ said to him, "Today you shall be with me in Paradise." The role of the thieves clearly gave Tintoretto a means of filling the vast canvas. But it is also true to say that all his paintings for the Scuola emphasized the humility and mercy of Christ, as well as his links with ordinary sinners, the poor, and the destitute, and the story of the thieves fits nicely into this theme.

Another feature of the scene that is distinctly Venetian is the introduction of huge numbers of people, mostly richly dressed, who have come to witness the event. Men in armor or in luxurious clothes and exotic headgear crowd around from all directions, turning the episode into a spectacle.

The horseman on the left, pointing to Christ, may be Longinus, the Roman soldier who pierced Christ's side and was converted at that moment to Christianity. See also the two men who offer Christ a sponge soaked in vinegar, pretending to help slake his thirst. It is a painting that involves the spectator in the highest degree, especially as details such as the ladder on the left are so close to the picture-plane and to the viewer's space.