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| Jacopo Tintoretto Discovery of the Body of St Mark ca. 1562-66 oil on canvas Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan |
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| Jacopo Tintoretto Discovery of the Body of St Mark (detail) ca. 1562-66 oil on canvas Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan |
The Stolen Corpse
Basilica San Marco was erected during the 10th century to honor the arrival in Venice of the remains of St Mark. An expedition had been sent to Alexandria to steal the corpse of the saint. Tintoretto's picture envisions the moment when it was located. But which is the saint's body? That stretched on the ground to the left, with its feet toward the viewer, or that being lowered on the right? The haloed saint standing on the left shows us that it is the latter. He signals to the searchers that this indeed is the body they came for, and they can therefore cease looking.
Journey to Egypt
We are in a vaulted space below ground, a catacomb – a location that for us today evokes Alexandria, due to the necropoli discovered there in the 19th century, but which before then had been entirely forgotten. Had they perhaps not yet been entirely forgotten in the time of Tintoretto?
Acts of Violence
At right, among a row of tombs suspended from a wall, two figures perched above are lowering the remains of St Mark toward a third reaching up from below – a descent which resembles a second death. The corpses are remarkably well preserved: this must be a top-of-the-line necropolis, able to preserve bodies as successfully as the one in Palermo.
The kneeling Doge at center, who of course is not meant actually to have been present at the scene, marvels at the apparition of the standing saint in pink, elongated like a figure from El Greco. This apparition of St Mark with his transcendently superhuman proportions, seems on the point of returning into the heavens. With his open hand, he signals a cessation. It is time to leave the dead in peace, to end this massacre of the massacred.
Subterranean Life
Subterranean Life
The outstretched hand of the heavenly St Mark also indicates the composition's perspectival vanishing point. These catacombs, superbly classical in their architectural form, are not viewed on a straight axis but at a steep slant, which reinforces the agitation of the scene. The patterned paving stones seem to rise toward the lighted rectangle in the deep background, where searchers with torches are probing even further underground.
In the foreground, at right, three figures tangle together in stupefaction: a woman in white, a man in black, and another man of such pallor that he seems to be wondering if he also is not a corpse. A little behind them another man raises a candle to relieve the gloom. A harsh light, Caravaggesque in effect, rakes down from an unseen opening or trap door above, its strongest rays landing just in front of the Doge.
Movements of the Brush
There are painters who conceal the marks of their work. The surface does not reveal how their pictures were executed. These are the smooth technicians, like Ingres and the Academy artists who succeeded him, or like the Flemish primitives. In the 16th century, as Mannerism took hold, the "hand" of the painter became a signature. This aesthetic grew especially pronounced in Venice, notably in the later work of Titian. The new preference soon caught on across Europe, as can easily be seen in Rubens, Velázquez, Frans Hals – artists then emphasized and valorized the signs of a moving brush.
– translated and adapted from Le Musée imaginaire de Michel Butor: 105 œuvres décisives de la peinture occidentale (Paris: Flammarion, 2019)