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Following the development of Jacopo Robusti, one of the major painters of the Venetian tradition in Renaissance, the most outstanding work of his career came at the age of forty six, an impressive production of wall paintings and ceilings filling the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, a late foundation existing at the following of a decree of the Council of Ten in 1478 and associated to a church dedicated to Saint Roch. This precise Scuola was actually the first ever created in Italy which managed to group together a great variety of activities without any limits of a single organization. It was the one civic that cut across the social strata governed by the aristocracy of Venice and then, with members commissioning great artistic works, it became greatly concerned with displays of material magnificence.
The first intrusion of Tintoretto's artwork in the Scuola di Grande began on the 22nd of May 1564 when the brethren decided to decorate the Albergo, the smaller room of the building. A competition was then inaugurated between invited artists for the central oval panel; the subject was to be the Saint in Glory, Saint Roch. According to Giorgio Vasari, Tintoretto among the other painters called, deliberately undermined the competition and placed a fully finished painting at the chosen place when the scholars only asked for designs. Responding to them that this was his method of making designs and that he did not know how to proceed in other manners, Tintoretto emphasized his unscrupulous manner to obtain major commissions. However, this tactic revealed itself successful and he then obtained the Scuola members to commission him for the realisation of the long wall and the two smaller spaces on either side of the door on the opposite wall, finishing these works in an incredible short time of one year.

The Saint Roch in Glory within Tintoretto aimed his commission, appears as an exercise of the Venetian ceiling painting formula of the time, a sophisticated fusion of Venetian's chromaticism with the formal complexity of contemporary Mannerism. Indeed, he adopted a Titianesque palette of gold, cream, yellow and red with a composition which could remember the one of Titian's Assumption of the Virgin. In that way, the young painter clearly wanted, impressing his future commissioners, to show himself inserted in the central Italian manner of his competitors and contemporaries. Once he received the approbation of the brethren, Tintoretto could enter in the great realisation of his works for the Scuola, working under conditions of patronage that allowed the greatest possible freedom of interpretation.
This free hand resulted in the powerful Crucifixion, with this poignant work, Tintoretto entered gloriously in the huge series of the work for the Scuola. Yet, without forcing any of the gestures with an unnatural intensification, he built a tragic dramatic crowded scene. Even Ruskin found the task of describing the painting impossible. It presents, as no other crucifixion has even attempted to produce, a huge crowd of figures watching in quiet detachment Jesus Christ on his cross, a world that hardly even pauses to watch what he has just done. When usually an artist has to be selective, Tintoretto depicted here everything that this world contains and there is no meaningless figures or passages in the landscape that are not fully realized by the painter. And, as usual in the artist's manner, the figures seem to be all closely linked. The mourning group at the foot of the cross is, as the Christ, detached from the surrounding narrative episodes, taking a very poetic timeless quality.
Hence, with the Saint Roch in Glory and the Crucifixion, both the most important works he made in the Albergo room, Tintoretto clearly imposed his way of working in the place, a revolutionary painting without precedent at this time when he let the stages, full of mystery and drama, to act by themselves.
At this point of the year 1566, the scheme was eventually to fill the whole building with more than fifty works on walls and ceilings, the realisation took a pause of nearly eight years. The Scuola members then decided in May 1574 to renew the ceiling of the large upper room and, in view of the Saint's character, the iconography naturally felt on the themes of healing and miracle in both Old and New Testament. Having a planned iconographic theme in mind, Tintoretto proposed to paint the large central panel with the Brazen serpent, the archetype of healing miracle, finished in 1576 by the day of the Saint's feast as a gift to the Scuola.
The painting, the largest ceiling of the room, a restless but controlled turbulence14 shows the heaven power and human behaviour face to face. On the top of a stormy sky filled with the onrush of Almighty accompanied by a cohort of angels, Moses points to the serpent above his head. Below, on a fantastic rocky hill, lie down the Israelites. Tintoretto reached the depiction of a solitary leader in the Moses figure, against the sky, creating his theme into an earthly and celestial division, expressing a powerful struggle between damnation and salvation.
Thus, we can see here that, however the anachronistic relation the paintings could have with each other, Tintoretto tried to construct, following his works in the Albergo, a sense of continuity, interpreting the Christian scheme through a new intrusion of human reality in divine interventions.
The Brazen serpent was then joined by two other ceilings16, all the three finally in position by the year 1577. At this point, the Scuola, realising the greatness of their new artist, made Tintoretto its official artist promising to deliver three finished pictures each year on the Saint's feast day for the upper room. Consequently, Tintoretto entered in the second major project for the Scuola di San Rocco, working in this room until the year 1581.
With his precise iconography in mind, the artist then constructed a very concise division of the room in four groups related to the general imposed theme and however the Old and New testaments are mixed up, the artist constructed a clever narration of healing and miracles.
As an introduction to the room, the Temptation of Adam, is an unforgettable depiction of the subject when he pictured the same subject earlier as a simple pastoral picture, this ceiling painting is clearly deeper, full of guilt and mystery. When the body of Eve is going out in the darkness forest, Adam is timidly following her like a suspicious animal, the whole picture is a struggle between good and evil for both of the figures and an introduction to the theme of redemption.
Nevertheless the greatness of his ceiling paintings, Tintoretto only sensibly followed the Venetian solution of ceilings, for he was not by nature a decorator, thus this is not entirely by them that he is remembered.
Indeed, the creative energy that Tintoretto was called upon to use at this period of his career is more visible in the series of the wall paintings of the room which begins with the Nativity, a simultaneous robust and deeply poetic painting. The Virgin is lying uncomfortably in straws exposing the newborn child. Tintoretto's Christ child, like in the whole corpus of his representations of him, is not a traditional type but rather one of great energy and grace but, above all, a child of a great intelligence, cleverly aware of his future sacrifice for the humankind.
Below the holy group, at the first ground of the ruined architecture, the usual disorderliness of a farm statement is set up. All the features for an exceptional event are depicted for a solemnity that belongs to a unique occasion.
The next pair of wall paintings following the Nativity presents the Resurrection and the Ascension, both forming the central panel, a symmetry marking the centre of the wall. Here again, Tintoretto's spirituality strikes directly the eyes of the viewer when, in the Resurrection, the Christ rises up from the tomb in a burst of impressive light. The balanced Ascension is generally conceived in the same spirit but Tintoretto constructed a more original view of the figures. Indeed, the most surprising effect on the painting is the small scale of the figures compared to the landscape below. The painter thus had a double point of view where the simultaneous view of the ascendant Christ is contra balanced with the earth left behind.
Within these paintings, the importance of colour in Tintoretto's work is palpable. Black and grey seem to be the basis of his colour scheme moving away from his master and rival Titian use of colour. With advancing years in his career and the unique language of San Rocco’s artwork, he tended to construct a clear division between lyricism and drama by reserving the opulent Venetian bright colour nearly reaching monochrome. Hence, with these paintings, Tintoretto contributed to the general mood of the room, reaching a nocturnal and mysterious depiction of the religious themes. By both depicting the effect of a rising spirituality and the down sense of earth life, the upper hall constitutes an incredible example of Tintoretto's ability to depict the implications of the supernatural through the veil of the natural.

The large upper room completed, Tintoretto then worked two years in the church of San Rocco until the Scuola decided to commission him again for the realisation of the last room of the building, the lower hall. The iconography theme was decided to be concerned with the life of the Virgin, a series beginning with the Annunciation facing the entrance door and paintings running chronologically along the wall.
The annunciation was a great challenge for artists of the Renaissance. Like Botticelli did before, Tintoretto chose to construct a deep psychological barrier between the figures. This barrier should be seen as physically embodied by the massive wall of bricks that divides the picture vertically in two halves, separating the Virgin in the room from the outside world. Tintoretto's angel is crossing the wall, arriving in a great speed accompanied by several flying putti while the Virgin is sitting into a ruined room. This special movement, which had never been reached in any other annunciations before, is constructed by a combination of several insistent vertical and some horizontal lines to balance the whole composition. It resulted an incredible pictorial steadiness habited by a tornado-like conception of the graceful event, something really meaningful of the freedom of conception which was given to the artist compared to the one he painted for the church of San Rocco earlier. Indeed, the earlier appears to be a logical development form of the annunciation formula since Giotto's version while the later one has a different narration, a deep depiction of a unique event that had never been presented in that way before. Thus, compared to Titian's depiction of an exceptional happy moment, the painter of San Rocco had almost abandoned the Venetian formula only working from his own genius without following any schools.

The Flight into Egypt is the third painting of the room's wall, following chronologically the Annunciation and the Adoration of the Magi. This painting contains all the romantic statement linked with the subject when the holy travellers are seen at the precise escaping moment surrounded by a rich graceful invasive landscape in the background and foreground with a sweetness of sun lighting across the faraway hillsides. The original feature of this painting is embodied by the place of the group in the canvas, when Joseph leads the donkey and the group which, despite its dominant position among the wild environment, is not in the centre of the composition. The holy family is caught by Tintoretto at the precise climax moment of the scene, just before they passed out of the picture. Even Saint Joseph's foot is cut off by the frame, lost in a smoky foreground. We can see here again, the great engagement of Tintoretto's sense of poetic in religious subject as if the presence of the holy family in the composition is only a matter of chance.
The last picture of the room could be seen as one of the most significant as it is also the last work that Tintoretto made for the Scuola. It presents the subject of the Visitation closing his career in the building and concluding the series concerning the life of the Virgin. Surprisingly, the subject was depicted on a slightly small canvas but with an unusually rich surface. For this painting, Tintoretto used only the silhouettes to act as the central force and feature of the composition. To construct these figures of great strength, Tintoretto designed a ground line occupying the whole large base of the frame continuing itself through the dark foliage of a tree on the left. These features of both the tree and the dark foreground line had to be considered as the only environment of the composition as the background is a slight white and grey shadow, a suggestion of a faraway landscape. The special position of the figures is an invention of Tintoretto as the bodies are bowed, their heads inclined, building a slight movement of reverence and solemnity, a graceful position of the human body which would be copied by his contemporaries.
With this deeply poetic painting closing the work for the Scuola, the dark solemnity of the San Rocco style which began twenty years earlier with the Crucifixion, reached its climax in the Visitation of 1587.

The Tintoretto of San Rocco used few technical changes to underline new values in religious painting of the time. Indeed, when his lost of brushwork was just slightly suggestive in his earlier works, his non finito became much more significant in the San Rocco, coming to express a deep spiritual value. With this massive production, Tintoretto turned back from the Titian's precise manner to adopt a rather sketchy paint surface; a poetic chiaroscuro combined with muted tone and a dark ground preparation. In that sense, the Venetian painter adopted a material poverty securing a newly intense spirituality clearly abandoning the richness and impasto of the fashionable Venetian school of the time to which he himself contributed in early works.
He showed, in his wide corpus for San Rocco, the holy figures embracing the value of poverty seen as a symbol for inner spiritual life, mixing human behaviour and state of mind with divine interactions. His manner for the Scuola is clearly not one of a clear narration but rather one of a meaningful withdrawal, his compositions creating only suggestions of what happened. Within this way of working, Tintoretto created his own language of belief in painting; he developed his whole character through these works, expressing a truly inner truth in Art.
When the value of poverty is seen as the precondition for Christian redemption in the San Rocco paintings, Tintoretto's belief could be linked with contextual events, when the idea of poverty emerged in the wide sixteenth century with social and religious reforms became in the heart of Venetian culture.