You never need an excuse to visit Venice, but here’s one anyway: Tintoretto’s 500th birthday!

The Biennale may be dominated by the giddying whirlwind of modern art, but it’s the great artists and architects of the past who lay on the magnificent and unchanging backdrop, year after year, without ever boring anyone.

And there is none greater than Jacopo Tintoretto, that most Venetian of Renaissance artists. Something of a local hero, he’s left over 700 works spread across the city – it’s..