Fuga in Egitto

The men who paid for this were a Venetian brotherhood devoted to Saint Roch, the saint you prayed to against the plague, and their meeting house was one of the richest in the city. Tintoretto spent more than 20 years covering its walls and ceilings, sometimes working almost for nothing to keep other painters out. This canvas hangs in the ground-floor hall he finished in the 1580s. The subject is the Holy Family fleeing to Egypt, but Mary, Joseph and the child are pushed to one edge and kept small. Most of the picture is landscape, a wide sky, feathery trees, a river and distant farms caught in restless light. The travelers hurry on through a world that dwarfs them, while the countryside around them simply goes about its evening.