Christi Himmelfahrt

The building this hangs in belongs to a confraternity founded to fight plague, dedicated to Saint Roch, the saint people prayed to against the disease. From 1564 Tintoretto spent more than 20 years covering its walls and ceilings, working for little money to keep the commission in his own hands. This Ascension is among the last canvases he made for the upper hall, finished around 1580. Christ does not rise calmly here. He surges upward on a bank of cloud and wheeling angels, the whole scene torqued and lit in flashes, the apostles below reacting late, as if the event were too fast to follow. Down in a lower corner two figures stand by a small pool and palm trees, quiet ground beneath all that upward motion. It still hangs where he put it, on the wall of the hall he painted for.