La Découverte du corps de saint Marc

The scene is a burial vault in Alexandria, and the Venetians in it are grave-robbing with a purpose. They have come to carry off the body of Saint Mark, their patron, and are hauling corpses out of the wall tombs one by one to find him. Then the saint himself appears, the tall figure on the left with his arm thrown up, telling them to stop. His body already lies at their feet. Tintoretto painted this around 1562 for the Scuola di San Marco in Venice, commissioned by its guardian Tommaso Rangone, and he built the room as a deep box of tiled floor and receding arches that rushes away from you into shadow. The light does not obey that tidy perspective. It flares and drops unevenly, so the miracle feels less staged than sprung on the men who witness it.