Das Wunder des Sklaven

By 1548 the young Tintoretto was a nobody in a city ruled by Titian, and this was his gamble. The Scuola Grande di San Marco, the richest lay brotherhood in Venice, gave him the biggest commission of his life so far, and he answered with a scene that refuses to stay calm. A slave has been sentenced to have his eyes put out and his legs broken for praying to Saint Mark against his master's orders. Mark himself plunges head-first out of the sky, and the torturer holds up his broken tools to show the crowd they simply shattered. Notice how the light drives diagonally across the packed square rather than settling anywhere. That restlessness was new, and it made Venice pay attention. The painting hung in the Scuola until 1815, when it came to the Accademia, a few minutes' walk from where it was first unveiled.