St Mark's Body Brought to Venice

When Tintoretto painted this in the 1560s, the theft of a saint's body was still living civic memory in Venice. The story goes back to the year 828, when Venetian merchants smuggled the relics of Saint Mark out of Muslim-ruled Alexandria, supposedly hiding them under pork so the guards would not search too closely. Venice built its whole identity around that prize, and the great domed basilica to house him. Here Tintoretto shows the escape itself, under a sky gone lurid and green as a sudden storm scatters the crowd. Look at the long colonnade racing back to a vanishing point at hard speed, the pavement tilting up toward you, a camel and turbaned figures fleeing into the arcades. He painted it for the Scuola Grande di San Marco, the confraternity named for the saint, so its members were looking at the founding theft that made their city.