Madonna and Child with Saints Cecilia, Marina, Theodore, Cosmas, and Damian

Venice had only recently come through one of the worst plagues in its history, the outbreak of 1575 to 1577 that killed close to 50,000 people, around a quarter of the city. Tintoretto painted this altarpiece a few years later, in his early 60s, running the busy workshop that filled Venetian churches with large canvases through his final decades. The Virgin sits with the Child among five saints, and two of them are worth naming: Cosmas and Damian, brothers and physicians in the early church who were said to treat the sick without ever taking payment. They were the saints Venetians turned to against disease. Around them stand Cecilia, Marina and the soldier-saint Theodore, one of the city's old protectors. It is a quiet, crowded gathering rather than a dramatic scene, the kind of devotional picture a congregation would have prayed before week after week.