Jacopo and Domenico Tintoretto
The Risen Christ and St Andrew with the Morosini family

Last quarter of the 16th century
In the Morosini Chapel, Church of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice

Christ's tomb is seen in the lower right, with the burial cloth (John 20:7) and the angel with "clothes as white as snow" (Matthew 28:3). In the scripture this angel announces the resurrection to the women disciples; in the painting, he addresses Cecilia Pisani, the woman in the lower left.

Above the tomb, Christ's body is being lifted by angels in a manner reminiscent of the carrying of Christ from the Cross to the Father in what might be called "Death of Jesus" images.

The man standing with Cecilia Pisani is Vincenzo Morosini. Above them are Andrea and Barbon Morosini, and above them is Andrea's namesake, St. Andrew, identifiable by the cross, the long beard, and the apostolic-era garments. The saint's presence with his cross may also be explained by the concluding remarks of his own prayer while on the cross, "keep me in the resurrection, so that I may receive the merit of my labour."1

My dating of the painting is based on the Wikipedia article on the church, which states that interior decoration began in 1575 (when Andrea would have been 23 years old and Vincenzo 64). Jacopo Tintoretto died in 1594, Domenico in 1635.

More of St. Andrew
More of the Resurrection
This photograph in full resolution (1990 x 3163)

Photographed at the church by Richard Stracke
















1Caxton's translation. Graesse, p. 18, has et resurrecturum [corpus meum] servet et reddat, ut ipsum quoque meritum sui laboris recipias. Ryan, who uses both Graesse and some 20th-century translations, has "[let my body] not curb and hamper me, thirsting as I am to come freely to you" (p. 18).