Baptism of Christ

For a long time this canvas was catalogued as a work of Jacopo Tintoretto, the great Venetian painter of the 16th century. The Capitoline now gives it to his eldest son, Domenico, and the mix-up is easy to follow. Domenico worked in his father's studio from about the age of 20, and the museum describes this Baptism as derived from one of Jacopo's own compositions, painted in a manner the son had absorbed from him. Two more canvases from the same Roman collection, that of the Pio family, went through the same change of name, a Flagellation and a Crowning with Thorns. The subject is the opening of Christ's public life, when John the Baptist baptised him in the river Jordan and, as the Gospels tell it, the Spirit came down on him like a dove.