Tarquin and Lucretia

Painted in 1578–80, Tarquin and Lucretia is one of the most powerful of Tintoretto’s late mythological canvases — the moment from Livy when the young Tarquin, dagger drawn, forces his way into the bedchamber of the virtuous Lucretia. The picture is all angular thrust and clashing diagonals: the rearing intruder in dark crimson, the pale body of Lucretia straining against the sheets, the great bed curtains swelling overhead like a storm. Tintoretto builds the violence out of light itself, slashing white across the drapery and setting the whole scene in a furnace of deep reds and browns, an essay on outrage that shocked and fascinated Venice in equal measure. The painting is held in the Art Institute of Chicago.