O Rapto de Helena

Seven years before Tintoretto painted this, a huge fleet from Venice, Spain and the Pope had smashed the Ottoman navy at Lepanto, and Venice was still living off the memory. So although the subject is ancient, Helen of Troy carried off to a waiting ship, Tintoretto stages it as a sea fight of his own century between Christians and Turks. The whole scene tilts and churns, smoke and rigging and struggling bodies, painted fast and loose in the way that made him notorious for speed. Helen, pale and still at the centre, was understood as Venice herself, prized and fought over. The canvas later belonged to Charles I of England and, after his execution, made its way to Spain, where it hangs in the Prado.