The Temptation of Saint Anthony

Tintoretto made this around 1577 as an altarpiece for a chapel in the church of San Trovaso in Venice, paid for by a Venetian official named Antonio Milledonne, who chose to be buried right at its foot. The subject is the desert hermit Anthony under assault, the old story of a holy man in the wilderness set on by temptation, here crowded round by figures pulling at him, two women and a devil, while a foreshortened Christ swings in from above to reach him. Tintoretto composed it to be seen from below and read fast, the way an altarpiece is, the bodies twisting and lunging in his usual restless way. Milledonne's tomb slab is still there beneath it.