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A document showing payment for this picture is dated 1563. Since the payment was an advance, the work was actually completed in successive years. It was painted to go over a door in the courtyard of the Procuratie, Venice. The damage from exposure to the elements is still visible; Tintoretto himself restored it in 1590, when it was moved to the inside of Scamozzo's new building. It has been at the Brera since 1808.
Tintoretto achieved the highly oratorical effect of this work by the studied compression of the attendant figures bending over the body of the dead Christ. In its original placement over a door, the large, heavy corpse, waxen and running with blood, loomed ominously above the spectator.
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