The present book does not pretend to be comprehensive. Its selectivity in the use of examples does, though, have the advantage of allowing a thematically focused analysis of Tinteretto's paintings. It is, indeed, the first full-length interpretative study of this complex artist to be published in English since Eric Newton's entertaining (but still Ruskinian) Tintoretto of 1952. It is intended that the contextual analysis offered here will provide the reader with a means of approach to Tintoretto's little-understood oeuvre and the historical issues (political, economic, religious and artistic) it so imaginatively engages.