Visitación

Tintoretto made this around 1588 for the staircase of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, the Venetian confraternity whose halls he had been filling with paintings for two decades. It shows the moment from Luke when the pregnant Mary greets her older cousin Elizabeth, herself unexpectedly carrying the child who would grow up to be John the Baptist, the two women reaching for each other on a flight of steps. Tintoretto built the picture to be read from far below, hung high over an archway near an Annunciation by the aged Titian. In the 1930s it was taken down for an exhibition and afterwards rehung at eye level for easier viewing. Only in 2014, with new lighting, did it go back up to the height he had painted it for.