Kain und Abel

Around 1550 the young Tintoretto, still making his name in Venice, took on a set of canvases for the confraternity of the Holy Trinity, scenes from the opening of Genesis. This is the first killing in the Bible: Cain lunging with his weight thrown forward, Abel already falling beneath him among the trees. Tintoretto builds the whole thing out of two straining, nearly naked bodies and a single diagonal of movement, the kind of speed and force that would become his signature and set him apart from the older Titian. The confraternity was dissolved under Napoleon and its pictures were scattered. This one entered the Venetian Accademia in 1812, where it now hangs not far from Titian's great Assumption of the Virgin.