Worship of the Golden Calf

This towering canvas has hung since about 1563 in the choir of the Madonna dell'Orto, the church of Tintoretto's own Venetian neighbourhood — the parish where he lived and where he would be buried. He made it and its companion, a Last Judgement, for little more than the cost of the materials, a gift to the church as much as a commission. It sets two moments from Exodus one above the other. High on the mountain, Moses receives the tablets of the law from God. Below, the Israelites who could not wait crowd and feast around the golden idol they had cast in his absence. The calf itself is lifted on a board and carried, small and bright, through the throng.