''Visitation'' or ''Visitation with Saint Joseph and Saint Zacharias'' is a c.1550 painting by

Tintoretto Jacopo Robusti (late September or early October 1518Bernari and de Vecchi 1970, p. 83.31 May 1594), best known as Tintoretto ( ; , ), was an Italian Renaissance painter of the Venetian school. His contemporaries both admired and criticized th ...

, now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna. Originally an altarpiece in the church of San Pietro Martire in Bologna, where it was first recorded in the seventeenth century, it was transferred to the Pinacoteca in Napoleonic times.

History and description

The work depicts the Visitation, an event described by St Luke in the Bible's New Testament (Luke 1:39–45). In the picture the

Virgin Mary Mary was a first-century Jewish woman of Nazareth, the wife of Saint Joseph, Joseph and the mother of Jesus. She is an important figure of Christianity, venerated under titles of Mary, mother of Jesus, various titles such as Perpetual virginity ...

, followed by

Saint Joseph According to the canonical Gospels, Joseph (; ) was a 1st-century Jewish man of Nazareth who was married to Mary, the mother of Jesus, and was the legal father of Jesus. Joseph is venerated as Saint Joseph in the Catholic Church, Eastern O ...

, is climbing up the hill on the left, to be met in the doorway of a house by her older relative Elizabeth and her husband, the old priest Zechariah. Luke recounts how Mary, carrying the unborn Jesus Christ, visited Elizabeth who, although past child-bearing age, had also been blessed by God with a child, the future

John the Baptist John the Baptist ( – ) was a Jewish preacher active in the area of the Jordan River in the early first century AD. He is also known as Saint John the Forerunner in Eastern Orthodoxy and Oriental Orthodoxy, John the Immerser in some Baptist ...

. When Elizabeth heard Mary arrive she exclaimed, "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy". Tintoretto would return to the theme of the Visitation again c.1588, producing a second version to be found in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco in Venice.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Visitation 1550 paintings Paintings of the Visitation Paintings by Tintoretto Paintings in Bologna