The Deposition

Tintoretto worked in Venice in the 1550s at a speed that unnerved his rivals, laying paint down in quick broad strokes while others polished. This Deposition shows it plainly, left in a rough, unfinished state that lets you watch him think: the dead Christ being lowered, the Virgin fainting below among the women, a pale grey sky behind. It is one of only two times he painted this exact moment, the other now in Strasbourg. Most often he chose the instant just after, with Christ's body across his mother's knees. Here he caught the descent itself, the figures still in motion, nothing yet smoothed into a finished surface.