Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery (detail)

As X-ray examination of the painting has shown, Jacopo sketched the beautiful adulteress naked first, and then added clothes. The model for the only female character in this important early work by Tintoretto was the central figure of a woman in a tapestry design by the Flemish artist Pieter Coecke van Aelst, showing St Paul preaching to the women of Philippi. Several copies of his tapestry series on the story of the Apostles were available after 1528, and it is quite possible that one came to Venice or Mantua, where Jacopo could have seen it.