Marietta Robusti and the Girl Who Becomes an Image

The little girl climbs, hesitantly, the steep staircase of an otherwise invisible monumental building. With her small left hand, perhaps so as not to stumble, she lifts a fold of the long golden dress. Her hair is gathered over her ears, and a diaphanous veil rests on her shoulders. Her small, light-clad figure stands out, backlit, against a sky crowded with clouds. Everything around her disappears into a golden penumbra.

What we see is a public spectacle. Men in purple cloaks admire her; scribes and beggars slumped on the same staircase follow her eagerly with their eyes - something extraordinary is happening to her. A woman, caught by the painter from behind, points her out, as an example, to her daughter - a little girl of the same age, dressed in the same colors. At the top of the staircase a bearded priest waits for her like a prophet. And she, looking straight ahead, climbs with grace and seriousness, moving toward her destiny.

The little girl is Marietta Robusti (Tintoretta)

The episode of the Presentation at the Temple is not mentioned in the canonical Gospels, but in the so-called apocrypha, from the Protoevangelium of James to the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew. The little Mary, offered to the Lord from the moment the Angel announces her imminent conception to Anne, after three years have passed since weaning, is finally led to the Temple by Anne and Joachim. Legend says that they placed her among the Virgins who remained there day and night singing the praises of God. The prodigious child, however, asked help of no one, arousing the admiration of the priests. She climbed the fifteen steps of the Temple alone and did not turn back.

Mary is not the only little girl in the canvas. Not only had the painter replicated her figure in that of the blonde girl seen from behind, at the foot of the staircase, to whom the mother points out Mary as an example. He had replicated her again, and again. There is another little girl, with darker hair, lying in the arms of the young mother seated at the bottom of the staircase, her face brushing the mother's white breast. And there is also a child scarcely more than a newborn, with a downy skull, whom a third woman supports in her arms - while, a few steps below Mary, she climbs the steps of the Temple.