Der Tempelgang Mariens

Tintoretto painted this for Madonna dell'Orto, the parish church a few steps from his own house in Venice and the one he loved best. The subject, the young Virgin climbing the temple stairs to be presented to the priest, had been painted a generation earlier by Titian, the reigning master of the city. Tintoretto knew that version well and set out to outdo it. Instead of spreading the figures evenly across the picture, he threw a huge staircase diagonally back into depth, so the small child climbs away from us toward a burst of light at the top while onlookers below crane upward. The whole drama is built out of a single flight of stairs. Vasari, passing through Venice, called it the best-executed painting in the church.