The Miracle of Saint Mark

A legend about Saint Mark tells how the servant of a knight of Provence disobeyed his master's command that he was not to venerate the relics of Saint Mark, and was ordered to be stretched on the rack and have his legs broken. He lies naked on the ground surrounded by his torturers and a crowd of onlookers. Saint Mark, clutching his Gospel, swoops headfirst into the scene from above and miraculously causes the torturers' hammers and axes to break against the servant's body.

This picture is a much smaller copy of Jacopo Tintoretto's The Miracle of Saint Mark, painted for the Scuola Grande di San Marco (Confraternity of Saint Mark) in Venice in 1547/8. Analysis of the pigments shows that it cannot have been painted earlier than the eighteenth century, and was probably painted later. It is likely to be the work of a talented amateur painter, possibly its first recorded owner, Blanche Lindsay (1844-1912), who bequeathed it to the National Gallery in her will.

Credit: Bequeathed by Lady Lindsay, 1912