The masterpieces of the Doge's Palace

Tintoretto: the Paradise

In the Sala del Maggior Consiglio (Chamber of the Great Council), behind the doge's throne, hangs the Paradise by Jacopo Tintoretto and his workshop (1588–1592). In 1582 the Republic had held a competition between Tintoretto, Veronese, Palma il Giovane and Francesco Bassano. The official PDF guide calls it “the largest canvas in the world”; the museum's web pages, more cautiously, one of the longest canvases in the world. According to Wikipedia it measures 24.51 × 7.65 metres.

Below the ceiling runs the frieze of portraits of the doges, commissioned from Jacopo Tintoretto but painted largely by his son Domenico. Canvases by Tintoretto also decorate the Atrio Quadrato (Square Atrium) and the Sala delle Quattro Porte (Room of the Four Doors); in the Anticollegio are his four mythological scenes, including Bacchus and Ariadne.

Paolo Veronese: the ceilings

• Sala del Collegio: the ceiling, one of Veronese's masterpieces, celebrates the Good Government of the Republic, Faith and the Virtues; on the wall is the Allegory of the Battle of Lepanto.
• Anticollegio: the Rape of Europa, currently being restored and replaced by a copy; you can follow the restoration in the Sala del Liagò.
• Sala del Consiglio dei Dieci (Council of Ten): Juno Showering Gifts on Venice, in the ceiling he worked on with Gian Battista Ponchino.
• Sala della Bussola: the ceiling entrusted to Veronese.

Titian

• Sala delle Quattro Porte: Doge Antonio Grimani in Adoration before Faith and St Mark in Glory.
• Quadreria (picture gallery): the Madonna and Child with Two Angels (1525–1530), a detached fresco that was once on the stairs to the Chiesetta di San Nicolò.
• The stairs leading to the doge's chapel: the large frescoed St Christopher, which you can see with The Doge's Hidden Treasures.

The battles of the Sala dello Scrutinio

On the east wall, Andrea Vicentino's Battle of Lepanto; on the south wall, Palma il Giovane's Last Judgement (1594–1595), conceived in dialogue with the Paradise in the next room.

The Quadreria

The Pietà is the only work left in the palace from Bellini's years as the Republic's official painter. Carpaccio's lion has its hind paws on the lagoon and its front paws on the mainland, to show the reach of the Venetian state.

The official PDF guides place Tiepolo's Neptune on an easel in the Sala delle Quattro Porte; the web pages list it in the Quadreria. And the Bosch panels that were once here are now in the Gallerie dell'Accademia.

The lost masterpieces

The fire of 1577 destroyed the works that decorated the Sala dello Scrutinio and the Sala del Maggior Consiglio, by artists such as Gentile da Fabriano, Pisanello, Alvise Vivarini, Carpaccio and Bellini. Of Guariento's fresco for the Great Council, fragments survive in the room that bears his name.