Cristo ante Pilatos

In the 1560s the Venetian painter Jacopo Tintoretto began covering the walls and ceilings of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, a charitable brotherhood in Venice, with an enormous cycle of paintings that would occupy him for over two decades. This Christ before Pilate, from about 1566, hangs in the upstairs room called the Albergo, and it stands more than five metres tall. Christ waits in a long white robe, lit as if from within, silent and upright, while the Roman governor Pilate turns away and washes his hands of the verdict. Tintoretto worked fast and cheaply to win the commission over his rivals. The picture is still in the exact room he painted it for.