La salita al Calvario

Tintoretto won the San Rocco commission by a manoeuvre. When the confraternity invited designs, the others brought sketches and he installed a finished painting overnight, then offered it as a gift they could not politely refuse. That was 1564, and he went on working in the building for more than 20 years. This Ascent to Calvary comes from the first room he decorated. He bends the road into a switchback climbing the canvas, so Christ straining under the cross near the top shares the path with the two thieves below, also made to carry their crosses, which few painters bothered to show. Men in ordinary Venetian dress help with the load. The light drops in from above onto a dark ground, the way he lit almost everything in this room.