The Brazen Serpent

In 1575 plague was moving through Venice. Over the next two years it would kill tens of thousands, among them the old master Titian. The brotherhood that owned this hall existed to fight exactly that, dedicated to Saint Roch, prayed to against the disease. That summer Tintoretto offered to paint the centre of its ceiling, and he chose an Old Testament plague to answer the one outside. God sends venomous snakes among the Israelites, then has Moses lift a bronze serpent on a pole, and whoever looks up at it is spared. The lower half is a mass of the falling and the dead. Look closely at their legs: among the bodies Tintoretto painted the swellings of the plague itself, the buboes, onto these biblical figures.