Cristo e l'adultera

This comes from early in Titian's long career, painted in Venice around 1520, when he was still in his thirties and Giovanni Bellini, the grand old master of the city, had only just died. The story is from John's gospel. A woman is dragged before Christ to be stoned for adultery, and he answers that whoever is without sin should throw the first stone. Titian crowds the figures right up to the front of the picture, large and close, so that you stand almost among them at the moment of judgment. Scholars still argue over exactly when he painted it, with guesses running across more than a decade, but they agree the hand is his. It later passed through the collection of an Austrian archduke, Leopold Wilhelm, on its way to Vienna, where it hangs today.