One should make this room a constant retreat.
The more one studies the picture the more real is the scene and the more amazing the achievement.

I do not say that one is ever moved as one can be in the presence of great simplicity; one is aware in all Tintoretto's work of a hint of the self-conscious entrepreneur; but never, one feels, was the great man so single-minded as here; never was his desire to impress so deep and genuine.

In the mass the picture is overpowering; in detail, to which one comes later, its interest is inexhaustible.

As an example of the painter's minute thought, one writer has pointed out that the donkey in the background is eating withered palm leaves--a touch of ironical genius, if you like.

Ruskin calls this work the most exquisite instance of the "imaginative penetrative." I reproduce a detail showing the soldiers with the ropes and the group of women at the foot of the cross.
The same room has Tintoretto's noble picture of Christ before Pilate and the fine tragic composition "The Road to Calvary," and on the ceiling is the S.Rocco of which I have already spoken--the germ from which sprang the whole wonderful series.
The story of this, the most Venetian of the Venetian painters and the truest to his native city (for all his life was spent here), may more fittingly be told in this place, near his masterpiece and his portrait (which is just by the door), than elsewhere.