The Stealing of the Dead Body of St. Mark by Tintoretto
Any major city in medieval Europe that sought prestige needed a first-class patron saint. They can’t be achieved without possessing the dead body, the relics, of a saint or at least some parts of it. That was a big business back then! In 828, Venetians set their eyes on St. Mark. They traveled to Alexandria, Egypt to steal his relics from a Coptic Church where he had been buried since the year 68. On their ship in the port, they covered the corpse with pork. The smuggling operation was a success because Muslims inspecting the outgoing shipments would not touch the pork. Their heist was annually celebrated from then on. Tintoretto commemorated the event, around 1548, with this haunting, dream-like painting.
For a dramatic effect, he made it a windy day with thunderstorms. The sky is red-colored and heavily clouded. There are a few puzzling details here. The setting resembles less Alexandria, and more the Venetian Piazza San Marco. But you wouldn’t expect to see a camel in Venice! There are some semi-transparent or ghostly figures on the left side. The corpse looks like he’s been dead for only hours, not 760 years! But, then again, some might respond that the dead bodies of true saints never decompose. Another question is why the body is not headless (the head had also been stolen earlier and when the Egyptians recovered it, they stored it in a different location).
These questions prompted an alternative story: This is the old tale of Egyptian Christians, during a hurricane, stealing the lifeless body of St. Mark from the pagans who intended set it on fire. Tintoretto painted himself behind the camel on the far right. His masterpiece is considered an example of the Mannerist style: Note the lack of balance of the composition (Mannerist feature #3 here). Also note the presence of a geometrical pattern on the ground – a typical Renaissance feature (Feature #2).