Miracle of the Slave

Tintoretto's Miracle of the Slave from 1548 — now in the Gallerie dell'Accademia — was the painting that made him famous at the age of twenty-nine and announced the arrival of a radically new approach to Venetian painting. The enormous canvas (415 × 541 cm), depicting Saint Mark diving headfirst from heaven to rescue a Christian slave whose pagan master is trying to destroy his relics, electrified Venetian audiences with its unprecedented foreshortening of the flying saint, its dramatic crowd of astonished witnesses, and its compositional energy that seemed to explode conventional narrative organization. The Procuratoria of San Marco initially refused to accept the work, finding it too unconventional; but Tintoretto's supporters prevailed, and the painting's revolutionary qualities were soon universally recognized. Aretino wrote congratulatory verses; Vasari, who was in Venice and saw it, discussed it in his Lives. The painting announced a synthesis that Tintoretto had reportedly declared as his program: 'the drawing of Michelangelo and the color of Titian' — a formula that, whatever its biographical accuracy, perfectly describes the painting's combination of muscular anatomical invention with Venetian tonal warmth.

Tintoretto combines dramatic foreshortening with dynamic figure composition and bold chiaroscuro, using the radical aerial perspective of the diving saint to create the explosive energy that defines his revolutionary contribution to Venetian painting.