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(piano music)

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Male voiceover: We're in the Brera[br]in Milan and we're looking at

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an enormous painting by Tintoretto, but[br]this is only one of a series of paintings

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on the subject of Saint Mark,[br]the single most important[br]Saint for the city of Venice.

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Female voiceover: This was commissioned[br]for the Scuola of Saint Mark

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or the confraternity of Saint Mark[br]in Venice by a man named Rangone.

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Male voiceover: And he can be seen in[br]the middle of the painting kneeling

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in that fabulous gold brocade.

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Female voiceover: Gesturing[br]down to the body of Saint Mark.

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Now, this whole painting takes[br]place creepily in a cemetery.

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Male voiceover: (laughing) It is creepy.

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Female voiceover: It's really[br]creepy. It's really dark.

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Male voiceover: (laughing)[br]Well it's a night scene.

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Female voiceover: And[br]it's lit by a candle.

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So, you have this vast architectural[br]space created by this rushing,

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exaggerated perspective.

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Male voiceover: But before we get[br]lost in the painting, let's talk about

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what's actually taking[br]place, what's happening here.

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Female voiceover: Okay.

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Male voiceover: So this is the story of[br]the finding of the body of Saint Mark.

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Saint Mark had died and was buried[br]in Alexandria that is in Egypt,

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and the story goes that in the 9th[br]century the Venetian merchants went

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to retrieve the body.

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Female voiceover: These Venetian merchants[br]went to find the body of Saint Mark

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to bring it back to Christendom from[br]Islamic Egypt, from Islamic Alexandria.

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Male voiceover: We have[br]this perspectival space.

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It draws our eye all the way to[br]the back, to that dark back wall,

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and there we see a number of figures[br]both in shadow and silhouette

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finding the body of Saint Mark in[br]a tomb brilliantly illuminated,

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and you can see the[br]stone has been picked up.

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Female voiceover: We have[br]a continuous narrative.

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We have scene two in the foreground[br]on the left where we see the body

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of Saint Mark foreshortened, splayed[br]out on the ground on top of a carpet.

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Male voiceover: Painted with a wonderful[br]looseness that also reminds me of

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Mantegna's dead Christ with a wild[br]foreshortening and the way that we look

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up the body from the[br]feet up towards the head.

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Female voiceover: You see the texture[br]of the oil paint and very dark outlines

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and very stark illumination on that body.

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Male voiceover: You also see[br]Tintoretto's patron, the man[br]who paid for these paintings

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who seems to be gesturing toward the body[br]of Saint Mark in a very protective way.

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Female voiceover: In a[br]way that makes us sense

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that figure does not belong to this time.

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He's not a 9th century Venetian.

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He's a 16th century Venetian.

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Male voiceover: There's a kind[br]of collapsing of time, of space.

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It's a very complicated image.

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Not only was the body found[br]in the back of the painting,

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and then we see the body in[br]the front of the painting

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but then we see this very noble[br]figure in red and blue who stands

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up just to the left of[br]this yellow, dead body

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and that is also Saint Mark.

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Female voiceover: Miraculously alive,[br]making this grand gesture to stop

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the raiding of the tombs that's[br]taking place to the right

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where we see yet another body[br]being removed from a tomb.

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Male voiceover: Okay. So if we look[br]at the architecture you can see

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again this wonderfully recessive[br]space with all of these arches

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and to the right of those arches we[br]can see there's a series of tombs

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that are attached to the walls and in one[br]close to us a figure is gently lowering

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one of these corpses.

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So, there's a kind of[br]desecration at the same time

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that there's a kind of honoring.

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Female voiceover: Finally, on the[br]lower right we see two figures who

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are possessed by demons who seem[br]to be grabbing the body of a woman

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who's moving out of the canvas towards us.

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Male voiceover: And we haven't[br]even talked about the thing

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that makes this painting[br]most remarkable, in my eyes,

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which is the radical use of[br]light, of color, of space.

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I've never seen a painter[br]this early that has taken

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such license with the[br]traditions of painting.

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Female voiceover: The space rushes back.

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The body of Saint Mark[br]is heroic and elongated.

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The contrast of light and[br]dark are dramatic and intense.

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It's as though all the tools of[br]the Renaissance are being used

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for expressive purpose.

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Male voiceover: Look at the[br]way that this produces an image

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that is so different from anything[br]that we would expect from say Raphael.

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Instead, this is a world[br]of mystery where only

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the faintest delineation of form is given.

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Female voiceover: So here we are[br]in the 1560s after the Reformation,

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after the Council of Trent.

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This is Mannerism.

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All of the balance and harmony that[br]we expect from the high Renaissance

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when we think about artists like Raphael.

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We have the opposite here.

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We have a composition that's coming[br]apart, that's stretching at its seams.

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We can see here decades of Venetian[br]artists' experience with oil paint.

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Belleni in the late 15th century,[br]Titian, and here brought to a height

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of painterliness, of real visibility[br]of brushwork by Tintoretto.

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(piano music)