"Paradiso"

Tintoretto has woven in the traditional iconography of the Annunciation scene, where the angel Gabriel announces that Mary will carry the child of God, together with the Last Judgment, implied by the artist with the symbol of the scales. The clouds wrap around the central figures, almost likes ripples in a pond, suggesting the continued reverberations of the church's teachings - especially significant during the time of the Counter Reformation.

The large-scale of the masterwork, however, required an intense physicality of the labor. So, although the artist completed a preparatory large-scale version of the composition, he was unable to complete the final version at full scale.  Tintoretto]lacked the strength to climb up and down the scaffolding and put the final touches on his canvas. So he passed that task on to [his son] Domenico.

Seen from afar, Paradiso is nearly an abstract vision composed of rhythmic patterns of light and color. The work represents the culmination of the artist's years of attention to and mastery of sharp contrasts between light and dark in the intensely rendered figures. One art historian said the painting is "...enlivened by color and lighting, which highlight the bodies with powerful chiaroscuro effects ... Jacopo Tintoretto employed a varied repertoire of energetic poses, elaborated over the years in figure studies." The dramatic, almost theatrical quality of Tintoretto's scene would lay the foundation for Baroque art.