Jacopo Tintoretto in Process

The Last Judgment and the Making of the Golden Calf in the Church of the Madonna dell'Orto in Venice are two of the tallest canvas paintings ever created, each measuring some 14.5 m (47.6 feet) high. At this scale these pictures are clearly statements, made by an artist accustomed to confrontation. Jacopo Tintoretto (c.1518-1594) executed the pair of paintings around 1558-60 for the choir of his neighborhood church, in a commission that he apparently initiated himself, asking payment only for materials. The novelty of their monumentality and indeed their preeminence within Tintoretto's oeuvre were noted by early biographers. The paintings have received little attention in modern scholarship, however, which has tended to prioritize instead as his greatest accomplishments the Miracle of the Slave (1548) - Tintoretto's first picture in a series for the Scuola Grande di San Marco - and the dozens of canvases for the Scuola Grande di San Rocco (1564-88). Moreover, the initial paintings for both of these scuola cycles have been regarded in the literature as among the artist's most pivotal moments, overshadowing his work in the intervening decade of the 1550s, particularly the Last Judgment and the Making of the Golden Calf and a group of important paintings leading up to them.