In The Crowning with Thorns, painted for the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, the space is compressed in the scene by arranging the figures on a shallow plane delimited by the wall of a building.

With the inclusion of the bust of Tiberius Caesar, a direct reference to the Roman authorities who condemned Christ, Titian also pays homage to the classical past.

In Christ's foot extended on the steps, however, Titian pulls out all the Venetian stops and one can sense the blood flowing through the veins under the flesh.

The pattern of the canes slices through the massed figures like the strokes of a knife, forming a Trinitarian triangle to the right of Christ's head.

[1] According to Robert Haven Schauffler, the German painter Fritz von Uhde once considered it to be "the greatest picture ever painted.