Portrait of the Members of the Scuola dei Mercanti

In 1591 the merchants' confraternity of Venice, the Scuola dei Mercanti beside the church of Madonna dell'Orto, wanted its brothers recorded together, and it turned to Domenico Tintoretto, who was then running the busy workshop left by his father Jacopo. What he produced was less a portrait than a roll call, rows of sober, bearded members kneeling in prayer, each face done from life. Groups like this were votive, offered to the Virgin on behalf of the whole brotherhood. The confraternity itself did not survive the French. Napoleon suppressed the Venetian scuole in 1806 and their halls were emptied of everything they owned. These men, painted kneeling for their guild, outlasted the guild by more than two centuries.