The Presentation of the Virgin

Tintoretto's monumental Presentation of the Virgin, painted for the church of Madonna dell'Orto in Venice between 1552 and 1556, remains in situ — one of the few great Tintoretto works still in its original location, giving it a site-specific power that museum paintings inevitably lose. The Madonna dell'Orto was Tintoretto's parish church, where he and his family worshipped throughout his life and where he and several family members are buried; his deep personal connection to the building and its congregation gave this commission an intimacy alongside its public ambition. The enormous canvas (429 × 480 cm) occupies the full wall of the sacristy door, creating an architectural integration between painting and architecture that anticipates the Baroque programs of the following century. The subject — the three-year-old Mary mounting a dramatic, improbably long staircase toward the High Priest while her parents watch from below — allowed Tintoretto one of his most audacious spatial inventions: the staircase receding steeply into depth, the tiny figure of Mary isolated against an immense architectural space, the crowd of onlookers providing a human scale that emphasizes the child's miraculous self-possession.

The dramatic perspective of the monumental staircase creates extraordinary spatial depth, with the tiny figure of the young Virgin ascending toward the light in a composition that exploits Tintoretto's theatrical sense of staging.