Christ and the adulteress

This is the moment from John's gospel when scribes and Pharisees drag a woman caught in adultery in front of Jesus and demand to know whether she should be stoned, as the law of Moses required. It is a trap. Agree, and he defies Rome, which alone could order an execution; refuse, and he breaks the Law. Tintoretto stages it as a tight, jostling confrontation, the accusers crowding in from one side while the woman waits at the centre. Jesus has stooped to write with a finger on the ground, the gesture the gospel describes but never explains. When he stands, his reply is the line everyone still knows, that whoever is without sin should throw the first stone. It is an early work, from around 1550, and the Accademia records it as attributed to Tintoretto rather than firmly documented.