Jacopo Robusti Tintoretto: Saint Mark cycle - Saint Mark Rescuing a Saracen from a shipwreck (1562-66)

(Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, Italy)

Part 3 of Saint Mark cycle by the Italian master Jacopo Comin, better known as Tintoretto (1519-1594). This part shows a scene in the Golden Legend's  (the Legenda aurea by Jacobus de Voragine, a 13th century book containing biographies of saints) account of the miracles of St. Mark. In this episode a ship with Saracens was wrecked by a storm. One of the sailors vowed to Saint Mark that he would convert to Christianity if the saint would save him. In an instand the saint appeared and plucked the saracen sailor out of the sinking ship and brought him to safety to a nearby skiff. in the words of the Golden Legend:

"The merchants of Venice went on a time by the sea in a ship of Saracens towards Alexandria; and when they saw them in peril, they hewed the cords of the ship, and anon the ship began to break by the force of the sea. And all the Saracens that were therein fell in the sea, and died that one after the other. Then one of the Saracens made his avow to Saint Mark and promised him that if he delivered him from this peril he would be baptized. Anon a man all shining appeared to him, which took him out of the water and remitted him again into the ship, and anon the tempest ceased. When he was come into Alexandria he remembered no thing Saint Mark, which had delivered him from peril, he went not to visit him, ne he did him not do be baptized. Then appeared to him Saint Mark, and said to him that he remembered evil the bounty that he did to him when he delivered him from the peril of the sea, and anon the Saracen came again to his conscience, and he went to Venice, and was there baptized and named Mark, and believed perfectly in God, and ended his life in good works"

The other 2 parts of this cycle:
Part 1: Finding the body of Saint. Mark/ Saint Mark Working Many Miracles
Part 2: Saint Mark's Body Brought to Venice

Painting from the collection of Pinacoteca di Brera in Italy and is from 1562-1566.