Mary with the Child, Venerated by St. Marc and St. Luke

In Counter-Reformation Venice the Virgin was often shown as a vision in the sky, standing on a crescent moon and crowned with stars, the Woman of the Apocalypse from the Book of Revelation. Tintoretto paints her that way here, hovering above two seated evangelists. They are known by the creatures beside them: the lion of Mark, patron saint of Venice, and the ox of Luke, who was said to have painted the Virgin himself. It is one of the altarpieces Tintoretto carried out entirely by his own hand rather than leaving to his busy workshop. It reached Berlin in 1841, bought in Italy by the art historian Gustav Waagen for the Prussian king.