Martin Gayford visits the greatest one-artist show on Earth

For a good deal of this autumn, I was living in Venice. This wasn’t exactly a holiday, I’d like to point out, but a suitable place to work while beginning a new book. The result was, though, that week after week, when I had finished writing, I went for a stroll around the neighbourhood, Dorsoduro, which very quickly came to feel like home. One thing I realised as I wandered around, between buying the groceries and admiring the view, was just how crammed the city was with works by Tintoretto.

There must have been well over 70 within a few minutes of the apartment where I was staying. There are other painters who are rightly classed as ‘Venetian’ — Titian, Veronese, Giorgione and the Bellini family among them. But none is so absolutely centred on the place as Jacopo Robusti (1518–94), otherwise known as the Little Dyer, or Tintoretto. He was born and bred in the city, as the others, except for the Bellinis, were not (Titian came from the foothills of the Alps, Giorgione from Castelfranco, Veronese, as his name suggests, from Verona).