La creación de los animales

Tintoretto painted this in the early 1550s for a Venetian confraternity, the Scuola della Santissima Trinita, as part of a small cycle on the opening of the book of Genesis. It is the moment the world fills with creatures. God, in a rush of drapery, sweeps across the canvas almost like an arrow in flight, and out of his path stream the animals, fish and birds and beasts all shown moving in one direction, as if creation itself were happening at speed. The headlong energy and the strong diagonal are typical of the young Tintoretto, who loved to make paint move. Over the centuries the cycle was broken up and scattered; three of its canvases are together again today in the Accademia in Venice, with a fourth in Florence.