Scuola Grande di San Rocco

Push open the heavy door and the noise of the campo falls away. The air inside is cool and a little dusty. Your footsteps land on a patterned floor of pale and dark stone. Columns rise around you in two long rows, and every wall is dark with paint. It takes a few seconds for your eyes to adjust. Then the figures start to appear out of the gloom, one by one, as if someone is slowly turning up the light.

You are standing in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, in the San Polo district of Venice. A scuola, in the Venetian sense, was not a school. It was a lay confraternity, a brotherhood of ordinary citizens. Members paid dues, cared for the sick and the poor, buried their dead, and marched together in processions. Venice had many of these brotherhoods. The largest and richest were called the Scuole Grandi, and this was one of them.

This brotherhood was devoted to Saint Roch, a medieval holy man who, according to his legend, cared for plague victims and caught the disease himself. Venetians prayed to him for protection whenever plague returned, and it returned often. The confraternity was founded in the late fifteenth century. Soon after, the brothers brought relics of the saint to Venice. They rest today in the church of San Rocco, the building right beside you on the square.

With those relics came money. Donations poured in from frightened, grateful citizens, and the brotherhood decided to build a headquarters to match its new status. Construction started in the early sixteenth century and continued for decades under a succession of master builders. Look again at the façade when you leave. The white Istrian stone, the paired columns, the panels of coloured marble... this was a public statement of wealth, placed on one of the busiest walking routes in the city.

But people do not come here for the stonework. They come for one painter. Jacopo Tintoretto was a Venetian, the son of a cloth dyer, and his nickname means the little dyer. In 1564 the brotherhood held a competition for a ceiling painting in its small boardroom, the Sala dell'Albergo. Several leading artists were asked to submit designs. What happened next is one of the best stories in Venetian art.

The other painters brought sketches. Tintoretto brought a finished painting — and he had already installed it in the ceiling. When the rivals protested, he offered it as a gift. The rules of the brotherhood did not allow members to refuse a gift to the saint. So the painting stayed. Tintoretto joined the confraternity, and over the following decades he covered almost every wall and ceiling of the building. In the end there are more than fifty of his canvases here.

Climb the grand staircase to the upper floor. On the way, notice the large paintings on the stair walls. They show Venice during the terrible plague of 1630, painted by later artists in the seventeenth century. These are worth a pause. They remind you why this building exists at all. The brotherhood was not a club for art lovers. It was an answer to fear, to death in the streets, and to the hope that a saint might help.

At the top, the great upper hall opens around you. This is the Sala Capitolare, where the brothers held their meetings. The ceiling is a grid of heavy gilded frames, packed with scenes from the Old Testament. Moses strikes a rock and water pours out. The Israelites gather manna falling from the sky. In the central panel, people writhe among snakes beneath the bronze serpent. Many of these scenes are about miraculous relief — water, food, healing — exactly what a charity brotherhood offered.

Here is a small surprise. Look for a stand of hand mirrors, usually near the walls. Pick one up, hold it at waist height, and tilt it towards the ceiling. Suddenly the paintings sit comfortably in your hands. You can walk slowly and follow the scenes without straining your neck. It feels a little strange at first, but most visitors who try it end up staying much longer than they planned.

The walls of this hall carry the New Testament. Tintoretto worked fast, with bold, loose brushstrokes. He liked sudden bursts of light against deep shadow, and figures twisting in space. Up close, some faces are only a few quick marks. Step back, and they come alive. Now look down at the carved wooden benches that run along the walls. They were added in the seventeenth century, and they are full of allegorical figures. Locals like to point out one carving said to be a mocking portrait of Tintoretto himself, surrounded by brushes.

Before you leave this floor, walk into the Sala dell'Albergo, the smaller room where the whole story began. Look up for that competition ceiling, with Saint Roch in glory. Then turn around. One entire wall is filled by Tintoretto's Crucifixion, a vast painting crowded with soldiers, horses, workmen with ropes and ladders, and grieving women. Many people consider it his masterpiece. Give it time. Your eye keeps finding new small dramas in the crowd, far from the cross at the centre.

Back on the ground floor, the paintings show the life of the Virgin Mary. These are among Tintoretto's later works, made when he was an old man. Look for the Flight into Egypt, with its wide, gentle landscape and a river glinting in the distance. And here is another detail many visitors miss. Unlike most Venetian brotherhoods, which were dissolved in the Napoleonic era, the confraternity of San Rocco still exists today. It still cares for this building, and it still does charitable work.

As you step back out into Campo San Rocco, the brightness will feel almost loud. Pigeons, tour groups, someone calling across the square. Turn once and look at the façade again, and at the church of the saint beside it. Behind that white stone, the dark rooms carry on in their quiet way, as they have for more than four centuries. Just around the corner is the great brick basilica of the Frari. But maybe take a moment first, here on the stones, before walking on.