Domenico Tintoretto, Jesus in front of Pilate

This picture of Jesus in front of Pilate, painted by Domenico Robusti (1560-1635), son of the more famous Jacopo Tintoretto, was part of a group of 10 big paintings containing episodes of the passion of Christ, carried out by other
important Venetian artists of the time (Aliense, Carlo Caliari, Palma il Giovane, Andrea Vicentino, Paolo Fiammingo) for Belluno's S. Croce church, suppressed in 1806 and subsequently demolished. It was probably the most ambitious counter-reformation type late-Sixteenth Century cycle in Venetian solid ground.
The beginning of this prestigious commission was the opening, in 1580, of the Casa della Dottrina Cristiana, located in S. Croce, by will of bishop Giovanni Battista Valier (1575-96). This group of paintings was meant to be an effective iconographic and doctrinal backup to this new institute, dedicated to teaching the principles of the Catholic Reformation. In this painting, Domenico's style is strongly connected to his father's, and it can be seen in the theatricality of the positions and gestures, in the rendering of the figures (some of which caught in dynamic twists), and in the luministic emphases.