Paolo Pino, a Venetian painter who champions…

Paolo Pino, a Venetian painter who champions the practice of conscious eclecticism among artists, urges in 1548 that the drawing of Michelangelo be wedded to the coloring of Titian.

Tintoretto, seemingly fulfilling Pino’s ideal, displays a new and unique vigor in his earliest known works.

In 1548, Tintoretto is commissioned to paint four pictures for the Scuola di S. Marco: the Finding of the body of St Mark in Alexandria (now in the church of the Angeli, Murano), the Saint's Body brought to Venice, a Votary of the Saint delivered by invoking him from an Unclean Spirit (these two are in the library of the royal palace, Venice), and the Miracle of the Slave.

The latter, which forms at present one of the chief glories of the Venetian Academy, represents the legend of a Christian slave or captive who was to be tortured as a punishment for some acts of devotion to the evangelist, but was saved by the miraculous intervention of the latter, who shattered the bone-breaking and blinding implements which were about to be applied.

These four works are greeted with signal and general applause, including that of Titian's intimate, the too potent Pietro Aretino, with whom Tintoretto, one of the few men who scorns to curry favor with him, is mostly in disrepute.

It is said, however, that Tintoretto at one time painted a ceiling in Pietro's house; at another time, being invited to do his portrait, he attended, and at once proceeded to take his sitter's measure with a pistol (or a stiletto), as a significant hint that he was not exactly the man to be trifled with.

Having now executed the four works in the Scuola di S. Marco, painter's straits and obscure sufferings are at an end.