Assomption de la Vierge

In the Venice of the 1550s the young Tintoretto was fighting for commissions against Paolo Veronese, whose warm color the city adored. The biographer Carlo Ridolfi later told a story about this very canvas. Veronese had first been given the job, and Tintoretto took it away from him by promising to paint it in Veronese's own style. Whether or not that is exactly true, the picture does glow with the bright, high color you would expect from his rival, while the Virgin sweeps upward on a bank of cloud and the apostles crane after her from below. It was made for the church of Santa Maria dei Crociferi and today hangs nearby in the Gesuiti church in Venice.