José e a Mulher de Potifar

Tintoretto painted this around 1555 as part of a frieze set high on the ceiling of a Venetian palace, and it helps to know that when you look at it. The steep, tilted viewpoint and the sense of the figures sliding toward you were meant to be seen from directly below. The subject comes from Genesis. Potiphar's wife, reclining nude, grabs at the young Hebrew servant Joseph, who twists violently away and leaves his cloak in her hand. Nearly a century later the painter Velázquez, in Venice buying art for King Philip IV of Spain, acquired this canvas with several other Old Testament scenes from the same ceiling. That is how a Venetian ceiling piece ended up on a wall in Madrid.