Venice became an important part of the southern Renaissance with the paintings of the Bellini brothers in the latter half of the fifteenth century, and flourished in the sixteenth century with their successors Giorgione, Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese. Venetian painting distinguished itself by emphasising colour over line and form, but there were also important differences in media.

From long before the Renaissance, the largest paintings in Europe were made using fresco on the walls and ceilings of churches and other religious buildings. Because Venice had been built on marshy islands in a lagoon, the walls of its buildings remained damp and proved unsuitable for classical fresco technique. Supplies of wood were also limited, and the fabrication of large wooden panels was impractical. It was in Venice that the largest paintings were thus made in oil paints on stretched canvas.

In other circumstances, what are considered to be large canvases might attain five or six metres (16-20 feet) in their longer dimension. This article shows a selection where that exceeds ten metres (33 feet), and in one case twenty-two metres (72 feet), all but one created by Jacopo Tintoretto and his workshop.

In 1559-60, Tintoretto painted two commissions for the church of Madonna dell’Orto, where he was to be buried. Each nearly fifteen metres (50 feet) high, they’re among his most spectacular.

The Last Judgment was probably painted first, and shows apocalyptic scenes from Biblical eschatology, notably the book of Revelation. To some extent, paintings of the last judgement are inevitably chaotic, as that is part of the event, but Tintoretto’s overall composition here isn’t as well-conceived as in the second of the pair. The painting has several focal passages, in particular the horizontal winged angel wearing orange shorts just over half way up, and the figure of Christ at its apex.

The lower sections show a dark base filled with contorted bodies blending in with rock and water, an underworld without the usual fire. Above is a band of sea green, in which there is a reprise of the flood, and bodies are washed along in a great wave. The middle then takes to the air, where figures sit on clouds still bringing rain to those in the waters below. The central crucifix seen at the foot isn’t part of the painting.

In the upper section, above the angel in orange, rays of light are streaming down from Jesus at the apex. Individual figures are now more readily distinguished, and some of them recognisable. At each side are winged angels with long trumpets, and a double band of black clouds marking the threshold of heaven. On the right, a martyr wearing a deep blue loincloth sits with his crucifix against his shoulder: he could be Saint Andrew.

Higher still is the mother of twins, her back to the viewer, looking up towards the heaped black cloud on which Jesus Christ sits at the centre, with the Virgin Mary on one side and Saint John the Baptist on the other. Particularly in the upper section, many of the figures are foreshortened and distorted.

The second, the Making of the Golden Calf, shows one of the more memorable stories of Moses, from the book of Exodus in the Old Testament. During that epic journey from bondage in Egypt to the Promised Land, Moses left the Israelites for a period of forty days and nights, when he ascended Mount Sinai to be given the Ten Commandments. While he was away, the people demanded that Moses’ brother and deputy Aaron made them a graven image to worship.

He gathered all their gold, which was melted down and cast into the form of a calf, which they then worshipped. God told Moses that they had already fallen from his ways, so Moses descended from Sinai. He was so angry with the Israelites that he broke the two tablets containing the commandments. He burnt the golden calf, ground it to powder, scattered it on water, and made the people drink it. The only people who didn’t worship the calf were the tribe of Levi, who became the first priestly class.

Tintoretto’s overall design of this simpler narrative is clearer and well-organised. The lower half of the painting shows the golden calf and the Israelites worshipping and feasting around it. Just over half way up is Moses on the summit of the mountain, being delivered the tablets with the commandments, and above that is heaven, with the Israelites’ God.

The graven image of the golden calf is being carried with difficulty by four men. Piles of golden jewellery, coins, and chain are still apparently being melted down. Sitting on a rock bench above, under an ornamental awning, are several young women, who are being dressed and prepared for ceremonies to take place with the idol. More people are seen feasting on the grass over to the left.

In the upper section of the painting, Moses is stood on the top of the mountain, his arms outstretched to the sky, ready to receive the tablets containing the commandments. God still holds those, immediately above Moses, and two winged angels are just taking the tablets from him, to pass down to Moses. Around them and above are several other figures, flying around the clouds.

One last remark about these two exceptionally tall paintings: recognising that viewers would have to look up sharply to see their upper sections, Tintoretto projected their figures and other details as if they were ceiling panels. The higher up each canvas you look, the more the figures appear to be above you. That is an ingenious projection to enhance their visual impact.

In 1565, commissioned by the Scuola Grande for its albergo, Tintoretto painted one of the major religious works of the century: his vast Crucifixion, more than 5 metres (17 feet) high, and 12 metres (40 feet) across.

He applied the lessons learned in his tall works for the Madonna dell’Orto. He makes use of space and uses a narrative technique based on the traditional ‘multiplex’ form popular during the Renaissance, in which its single image shows events at more than a single point in time, in an ingenious and modern manner. Naturally, the painting centres on Christ crucified, but the two thieves executed beside him are not shown, as would be traditional, already hanging from their crosses.

Instead, to the right of Christ, the ‘bad’ thief is still being attached to his cross, which rests on the ground. To the left of Christ, the ‘good’ thief is just being raised to the upright position. There is nothing in the well-known gospel accounts to make this anachronistic, but it’s most probable that the crucifixions were more simultaneous.

Spaced out around the canvas are relevant sub-stories from that whole. At the foot of Christ’s cross is his group of mourners, including the Marys. Each of the crosses has attendant workers, busy with the task of conducting the crucifixion, climbing ladders, hauling on lines, and fastening each victim to his cross. This mechanical and human detail brings the scene to life and adds to its credibility, and grim process.

The crowd on the left is more spread out than in an earlier version. In the distance is a flag bearing the letters SPQR representing the Roman Empire, and its link through Pilate. Most faces are turned towards Christ, with their eyes wide in awe.

On the right, in a small rock shelter suggestive of a tomb, two men are gambling with dice. To the right of them, a gravedigger has just started his work with a spade. The ruling class, perhaps Herod himself, have turned up on horseback, and they too stare wide-eyed at Christ.

When the Doge’s Palace, or Palazzo Ducale, in Venice was destroyed by fire in 1577, it took with it a fresco from around 1365 by Guariento. Although initially unsuccessful in obtaining the commission to provide a replacement, with the death of Veronese in 1588, Tintoretto was invited to do so. By this time the artist was seventy, so much of the painting was performed by his son Domenico Robusti.

The room in which this painting was to be hung, the Sala del Maggior Consiglio, is one of the most majestic and imposing in the whole building, and was used for meetings of the Grand Council of Venice, at which it considered legislation and elected the city’s magistrates.

The resulting painting, which is seven metres (almost 23 feet) high and twenty-two metres (72 feet) across, was probably designed by Jacopo and largely entrusted to his son Domenico and the workshop to paint. In conformity with the rules of the commission, its composition focusses on the Coronation of the Virgin, inspired by Dante’s Paradise, as shown in the detail below.

At the top, the Virgin Mary, behind whom is her traditional symbol of the white lily, stands with Jesus Christ, in their matching red and blue robes. Between them is the white dove of the Holy Ghost, and all around are cherubic heads of infant angels. To the right are the scales of justice, also used for the weighing of souls.

Even at the height of his powers, and with his exceptionally fast brushwork, completing such a huge work would have been a major feat for Jacopo.

Paolo Veronese also made a name for himself with his earlier large canvases, but in 1573 exceeded them all in The Feast in the House of Levi, which wasn’t its original title.

Veronese painted this thirteen metre-long (42 feet) scene for the refectory of the Dominican Friary of the Basilica di Santi Giovanni e Paolo, but it was intended to show the Last Supper, Christ’s last meal with his disciples before he was betrayed and crucified, at which he laid out the sacrament of Communion, a key part of Christian life ever since.

However, he over-reached himself, and the painting was deemed so offensive that he was brought before the Inquisition accused of blasphemy. Thankfully the Inquisition didn’t impose any penalty on Veronese himself, but required that he ‘correct’ the painting within a period of three months. This he did by changing its title, not its content, to The Feast in the House of Levi.

Christ is shown in the centre of the painting, further emphasised by his halo. In addition to the standard row of disciples, Veronese adds a rich collection of other figures, described by the Inquisition as “buffoons, drunken Germans, dwarfs and other such scurrilities”, more in the manner of a Venetian feast.

Many of the great Masters are known to have painted preparatory studies prior to starting on full-size finished studio paintings. Unfortunately, most of those studies were either destroyed by the artist in their lifetime, or by their heirs following their death. Seeing studies alongside a finished work tells a great deal about the artist’s intent and methods, and some exhibitions have made a point of including as many studies as possible. This article shows a small selection of some whose images I have been able to gather.

Some of the best surviving studies are the oil sketches made by Peter Paul Rubens, some of which were given to assistants in his studio for completion.

Towards the end of his life, he painted this brilliant oil sketch of The Rape of Hippodame (c 1637-38). At the right, Eurytus is trying to carry off Hippodame, the bride, with Theseus just about to rescue her from the centaur’s back. At the left, Lapiths are attacking with their weapons, and behind them another centaur is trying to abduct a woman. Rubens typically sketched on small wood panels, here 26 x 40 cm (10 x 16 inches), with wonderfully painterly brushstrokes.

That became this finished painting, The Rape of Hippodame (Lapiths and Centaurs) (1636-38), which remains faithful to the sketch and its composition. Facial expressions, particularly that of the Lapith at the left bearing a sword, are particularly powerful.

Studies were better preserved in the nineteenth century, when tastes changed and some realised worthwhile sums in posthumous sales of the contents of studios.

Among the most studied are those made by Géricault when he was working up his landmark painting of The Raft of the Medusa. This oil study on canvas was probably made as he was completing his preparations during the autumn of 1818, and reveals some of his compositional thinking, for instance over the size of the ship that rescued the survivors.

The end result is this vast canvas, its figures shown life-sized, which has had huge impact on everyone who has seen it since its completion in 1819. It appears completely authentic, and given the work that Géricault put into making it so, that’s perhaps not surprising. But most gain the impression that the raft was almost square in form, as a result of the tight cropping applied, and that even with those few survivors on board, it was overcrowded. This is because Géricault chose to pack all his figures into one small section of the raft.

I was fortunate enough to visit an exhibition of some of John Constable’s works, in which his studies were shown alongside finished paintings. Here I show just one example. Had Constable lived fifty years later, he might have been persuaded to stop his paintings when they were still late oil studies, rather than take them to their finished conclusions.

This early sketch of Hadleigh Castle (1828-29) already contains some surprisingly detailed passages: at the far left, a shepherd, his black dog by his side, with a small flock of sheep grazing near the ruined tower. There’s a brown and white blob on the seaward slope, probably a cow grazing there. Wheeling in wrinkles of impasto above the tower are a few birds resembling small runnels of liquid metal like solder. By this time, many artists were painting their oil studies on cheaper millboard, as Constable did here. Millboard is made by pasting together many sheets of fine paper, so isn’t as durable as cheaper stretched canvas.

By the finished work, the splendid Hadleigh Castle, The Mouth of the Thames – Morning after a Stormy Night (1829), the basic disposition of those figures has changed little, but Constable has changed each to suit his image. The shepherd, still carrying his long crook, is separated from his dog, and has lost his sheep, which have become scattered rocks. The single cow on the sloping grass has gained a couple of friends, and a cowherd. Beyond them are another couple of tiny specks of figures, and there are more by the wood in the lower right corner.

William Powell Frith’s late study for Derby Day was probably painted in about 1856, and is very close to the finished work shown below, although covering only about a tenth of its area.

Jacob Bell commissioned Frith to paint his finished Derby Day (1856-58) for the huge fee of £1,500, and the artist was paid a further £1,500 for rights to make prints. It was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1858, and proved so popular that a guard rail had to be installed in front of it to protect the work from the admiring crowds.

Georges Seurat’s preparations are also revealed in his surviving studies, and are very different given his Pointillist technique. Some of the later Divisionists made conventional studies, and there are some experimental examples using larger tiles of colour (see below). Seurat instead rehearsed parts of the overall view when preparing his masterwork.

Seurat’s first and greatest masterpiece, generally known as La Grande Jatte, uses the technique of optical mixing of colour. Rather than blending pigments on the canvas, it’s constructed of tiny dots that are high in chroma, and allow for optical mixing, one of the fundamental techniques in Seurat’s new scientific painting. His theory was that the mixing of colour would then occur in the retina of the viewer, and he tried this in a pure landscape study (above), and in his huge finished painting (below).

He painted his finished version in three phases. In the first, the dots he applied were mixed from available and fairly conventional pigments, including duller earths. In the second phase, he used a limited number of brighter and higher chroma pigments. In the third and final phase he added coloured borders which are distinctive of his paintings.

By the late nineteenth century oil studies were being supplemented by photographs.

Thomas Eakins’ preparatory studies for Swimming (1885) grew from a series of photographs taken by the artist and his friends. But photos never replaced his own sketches: for this work, Eakins made several figure studies, details such as the dog, and different landscape backgrounds, then brought them together in oil sketches.

Once he was happy, he embarked on his final version. In at least some cases, including his paintings of shad fishing from 1881-82, the figures in his Arcadia (c 1883), and Swimming (1885), he put final photographic images into a ‘magic lantern’ projector, which he then projected at the canvas.

He developed a sophisticated system not only for using the projected image to make a graphite underdrawing, but as the painting progressed, to incise key points and lines of reference in the paint surface. This enabled him to create paintings that were accurately calibrated to his reference images: a great advance on the traditional system of enlargement using grids, and one factor in his detailed realism. This technique was discovered by Mark Tucker and Nica Gutman.

Together with other photos and various studies, Eakins then painted Swimming (The Swimming Hole) in 1885.

Albert Bierstadt was more traditional in his preparatory studies for The Last of the Buffalo in 1888.

This late study was painted on canvas, and is 63 x 91 cm (25 x 36 inches). It concentrates on the action to be embedded in a broader landscape.

Bierstadt’s finished painting is larger still, and sets that action in a more characteristic grand panorama, with bleached skulls and dying buffalo in the foreground. In the middle distance are hundreds of animals in the herd, suggesting that extinction was by no means the only outcome.

Finally, a pair of paintings by the less-known Divisionist Henri-Edmond Cross shows an alternative approach to Seurat’s, where his study is built of small daubs of colour, which are then reduced in size for the Pointillism of his final version.

His Clearing in Provence from about 1906 was painted on paper, and has subsequently been mounted on canvas for display in the Israel Museum, Jerusalem.

That sketch formed the basis of the woodland setting Cross used in The Glade, painted in oils in 1906. Colour changes are prominent, and the chroma has been considerably enhanced. The size has grown, and it’s on a more permanent support of stretched canvas.

Seen through modern eyes, many of the oil studies of the past deserve to be seen more widely, rather than being kept in storage.