A crucificação

Tintoretto finished this in 1565, the same year he was admitted as a member of the confraternity whose meeting house it fills. It is enormous, more than 5 meters high and about 12 wide, and it was made to hang above the bench where the officials of the Scuola sat during their meetings. In March of that year he took his final payment of 250 ducats for it. What is unusual is where he put his energy. Instead of narrowing in on the three crosses, he spread a whole crowd across Golgotha. Soldiers, horsemen, tradesmen, onlookers, and the two thieves whose crosses are still being hauled upright, all of them busy at once. The men of the confraternity who met beneath it were laymen who nursed the sick and buried the plague dead in a city that lived with regular outbreaks. This was the scene they sat under while they decided how to spend the charity in their care.