Beyond Color: Tintoretto and the Making of the Crucifixion

In a 1545 letter to Jacopo Tintoretto, Pietro Aretino praised on the recently completed Contest Between Apollo and Marsyas and Argus and Mercury, two canvases adorning the ceiling of his residence. “Often one finds—Aretino observed—that haste and imperfection go together, so that it is an especial pleasure to find speed in execution accompanied by excellence. Certainly, the brevity of execution depends upon knowing exactly what one is doing.” Aretino would soon change his mind. Just a few years later, while the paint on The Miracle of the Slave was still fresh, he cautioned Tintoretto not “to indulge in pride,” unless he could learn to “temper [his] haste” and “carelessness, so prevalent in eager, heedless youth.” Soon afterwards, Giorgio Vasari, among others, would pile it on by harshly criticizing Tintoretto for creating paintings “more by chance and vehemence than with judgement and design.”

The notion of Tintoretto’s rapid and seemingly careless execution has long influenced, and at times distorted, the critical reception of his work. Yet Aretino’s early observation about the artist’s mastery and compositional foresight—his implication that Tintoretto’s paintings were carefully planned, arguably through preparatory studies and designs—merits renewed attention, particularly considering the recent findings that emerged from the conservation of the Crucifixion at the Scuola Grande di San Rocco. Restored between March 2023 and March 2025 with funding from Save Venice through the support of Arnold M. Bernstein, scientific analysis of the Crucifixion offers a rare glimpse into Tintoretto’s working methods and invites a fresh appraisal of his artistic practice.

Infrared reflectography is commonly used to prepare and guide restorers in their work. But that is not all. For art historians, it is an extraordinary resource: it allows them to go beyond the pictorial surface and explore what lies beneath. There, hidden by brushstrokes, we encounter traces of the creative process, the incessant work that ultimately brings the work into being. In other words, reflectography allows us to observe the artist at work, to follow the creative process step by step. In the case here under discussion, it enables to witness Tintoretto at the earliest stages of his work as he first establishes the compositional framework and then defines and introduces the figures one by one, gradually animating the entire scene.

Let us imagine, then, Tintoretto at work: the large canvas spread out on the ground, the charcoal running swiftly across its surface. First, the painter marked out some X shapes, arranged along two long parallel bands, then drew straight lines that intersected and extended vertically across the entire area; these were complemented by horizontal lines until a complete grid emerged. In this way, the Crucifixion first took shape: 60 square meters entirely covered by a grid measuring approximately 68 centimeters per side, equivalent to 2 Venetian feet. It was here, from this grid, that it all began.

It is well known that in the Renaissance, grids were used to transfer and enlarge drawings made by painters in preparation for both individual figures and entire compositions. In the case of the Crucifixion, given the extent of the grid covering the entire surface of the canvas, we must therefore imagine the existence of a compositional drawing used as a guide during the painting process. In other words, the grid corresponded, on a larger scale, to that of a now lost compositional study designed by Tintoretto to facilitate the enlargement and transfer of the design onto the canvas.

With the compositional framework already sketched out on the canvas, Tintoretto had to focus on the figures. Once again, infrared reflectography allows us to observe him populating the scene, inserting, one after another, the characters he had previously studied on countless sheets of paper. Though it may appear mechanical, the procedure was in fact a highly delicate and precise operation, intended to secure the accurate placement of each figure within a pictorial field that, especially in the Crucifixion, lacked a true perspectival system. Thus, starting from the foreground, the group of mourners at the foot of the cross was transferred using a slightly smaller grid than that of the overall composition, measuring roughly 55–60 centimeters. From there, following the progressive receding of the space, Tintoretto employed increasingly smaller grids: from 17 centimeters for the character with the basin of vinegar placed beside the cross to 12-14 centimeters for the dice players huddled in the rock niche, down to a grid of just 10 centimeters for the bad thief and the figure at his side drilling the cross.

Finally, the grid used to define Christ is of particular interest. Despite His position behind the group of mourners— whose bodies in fact conceal the lower portion of the cross — the figure of Christ was transferred onto the canvas using the same grid employed for the overall composition: a squaring measuring 68 centimeters, in contrast to the 55–60-centimeter grid used for the mourners. This was by no means a random choice, but rather the result of intense consideration. The oversizing of Christ had a specific function: to correct the inevitable visual distortion of the viewer who, approaching the monumental canvas, first perceived the group in the foreground, risking losing sight of the true focus of the scene. Thus, thanks to this device, the figure of the crucified Christ re-emerges in all its centrality, imposing itself forcefully on the composition. The effect, even today, is surprising: Christ not only dominates the space, but seems almost to reach out towards us, looming, towering, and embracing the viewer with a power that transcends the canvas itself.

Tintoretto must also have worked on numerous separate sheets to study the poses and gestures of the many figures that, one by one, animate the painting. How these figures initially conceived, and how did Tintoretto transferred them onto the canvas?

The process began with the study of the nude model, as shown for example in a sketch at the Gallerie degli Uffizi (inv. 12935 F) depicting oner of the men who help to lift the cross of the good thief. With quick but precise strokes, he would capture the anatomy in charcoal, sometimes enhanced by shading and rapid highlights added in white lead. Once the desired pose was fixed and the contours defined with a pointed chalk or ink, the sheet would be ready to be squared up—only then could the drawing be transferred to the canvas on a larger scale. But sometimes Tintoretto remained unsatisfied. He would then return to the model and dress him to study the folds of fabric, the interplay of light and shadow, the way light fell and darkness spread. Only at that point would Tintoretto return to the canvas, ‘clothing’ his figures directly with the brush and transforming his preparatory studies into living, breathing presence.

This creative process is also clear in the Crucifixion and can be observed thanks to infrared reflectography. A striking example is the figure digging the hole for the cross of the bad thief, where the muscles of his back can be seen flexing through his shirt under the strain of the spadework. A comparable approach can also be observed in the figure on the opposite side, shown in profile as he helps lifting the cross of the good thief: beneath his garments emerge the same summary brushstrokes that articulate the entire anatomical structure—from the taut calves and thighs to the pronounced groove of the spine along the muscular back. Particularly striking is the highly personal way of sketching the musculature, rendered with quick strokes that unmistakably echo Tintoretto’s intensive life studies of the nude. Clearly, Tintoretto transferred the anatomical study of these two figures directly onto the canvas using grids, before returning to them at a later stage to ‘clothe’ them by painting their garments.

The findings to date attest to the remarkable, almost obsessive precision with which Tintoretto conceived the Crucifixion. Particularly surprising, therefore, is the fact that infrared analysis has revealed not merely minor adjustments, but a true pentimento—a revision undertaken at an advanced stage of execution, aimed at correcting an error rooted in the initial design process.

This intervention concerns the foreground figure at the far left, shown pulling a rope attached to the cross of the good thief. Tintoretto assigned this figure a key compositional function: its oblique posture facilitates the viewer’s visual entry into the scene and, through a series of internal compositional cues, directs the gaze toward the figure of Christ. In an earlier version—clearly legible in infrared reflectography—the figure was depicted pulling two ropes rather than one. The first rope originally terminated in the left hand, coiling around the wrist; the second, subsequently painted out, extended diagonally across the space between the cross and the right hand, passed over the right thigh, and likewise wrapped around the wrist. It is plausible that, once the canvas was installed on the wall and observed from a distance, the pose appeared anatomically implausible: the right arm, already exaggeratedly flexed backward, would have lacked any effective range of motion to assist in raising the cross—which, by the way, is still far from being lifted. Confronted with this inconsistency, yet compelled to retain the figure’s oblique dynamism, Tintoretto chose to remove the right rope and instead redirected the left one behind the figure’s back, allowing it to reach the right hand. In doing so, he generated a convincing muscular tension, reestablishing anatomical logic and scenographic plausibility. The right hand—no longer straining ineffectively backward—now engages in a forward-driving motion, consistent with the act of lifting the cross as the rope slides across the back.

Dunkerton, Jill. Tintoretto’s Painting Technique. In Miguel Falomir (ed.).Tintoretto. Exhibition catalogue (Madrid, 2007). Madrid 2007, pp. 139-158

Hochmann, Michel. Tintoretto: il ruolo del disegno nella pittura. Bilancio delle ricerche. In Amalia D. Basso (ed.). Nell’anno di Tintoretto: riflessioni, ricerche, restauri, conference proceedings (Venice, 8-10 Novembre 2018). Saonara 2022, pp. 103-110

Lepschy, Anna L. . Tintoretto Observed. A documentary survey of critical reactions from the 16th to the 20th century. Ravenna 1983

Marciari, John. Drawing in Tintoretto’s Venice. New York and London, 1998

Nichols, Tom. Tintoretto. Tradition and Identity. London 1999

Poldi, Giovanni. Solidità e leggerezza. Peculiarità degli underdrawing di Jacopo Tintoretto, Amalia D. Basso (ed.). Nell’anno di Tintoretto: riflessioni, ricerche, restauri, conference proceedings (Venice, 8-10 Novembre 2018). Saonara 2022, pp. 111-120

Rosand, David. Painting in Sixteenth-Century Venice. Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto. Cambridge 1997

Echols, Robert and Frederick Ilchman (eds.). Tintoretto 1519-1594. Exhibition catalogue (Venice 2018-2019; Washington 2019). Venice 2018

Whistler, Catherine. Venice & Drawing 1500-1800. Theory, Practice and Collecting. New Haven and London, 2016