Tintoretto

The Italian painter Tintoretto (1518-1594) excelled in grandly agitated and often deeply moving history paintings and dignified portraits of members of the Venetian aristocracy.

The real name of Tintoretto was Jacopo Robusti, but he is better known by his nickname, meaning the "little dyer, " his father having been a silk dyer. The artist was born in Venice and lived there all his life. Even though his painting is distinguished by great daring, he seems to have led a rather retired life, concerned only with his work and the well-being of his family. His daughter Marietta and his sons Domenico and Marco also became painters, and Domenico eventually took over the direction of Tintoretto's large workshop, turning out reliable but un-inspired pictures in the manner of his father. Some of them are, on occasion, mistaken for works of the elder Tintoretto.

Tintoretto appears to have studied with Bonifazio Veronese or Paris Bordone, but his true master, as of all the great Venetian painters in his succession, was Titian. Tintoretto's work by no means merely reflects the manner of Titian. Instead he builds on Titian's art and brings into play an imagination so fiery and quick that he creates an effect of restlessness which is quite opposed to the staid and majestic certainty of Titian's statements. If Tintoretto's pictures at first sight often astonish by their melodrama, they almost inevitably reveal, at closer observation, a focal point celebrating the wonders of silence and peace. The sensation of this ultimate gentleness, after the first riotous impact, is particularly touching and in essence not different from what we find (although brought about by very different means) in the pictures of Titian and Paolo Veronese.

Tintoretto was primarily a figure painter and delighted in showing his figures in daring foreshortening and expansive poses. His master in this aspect of his art was Michelangelo. Tintoretto is supposed to have inscribed on the wall of his studio the motto: "The drawing of Michelangelo and the color of Titian." Unlike Michelangelo, however, Tintoretto worked and drew very quickly, using only lights and shadows in the modeling of his forms, so that his figures look as if they had gained their plasticity by a kind of magic. In the rendering of large compositions he is reported to have used as models small figures which he made of wax and placed or hung in boxes so cleverly illuminated that the conditions of light and shade in the picture he was painting would be the same as those in the room in which it was to be hung.

Early Style

Tintoretto's earliest work to be dated with certainty, Apollo and Marsyas (1545), was painted for Pietro Aretino, who, in a letter written expressly for publication, noted the quickness of its execution and recommended the artist to the world as a genius of note. At about the same time Tintoretto painted the large and deeply moving Christ Washing the Feet of the Apostles (Madrid), in which greatness of gesture and extreme foreshortening are balanced by the dramatic light which pervades the painting and the intensity of feeling which distinguishes the movement of each of the participants in the scene. The picture is so arranged that we see Christ and St. Peter (in the extreme right corner) last, even though—and yet exactly because— they matter most in the story the picture brings to life. The action which binds these key figures together is dramatized chiefly by an exchange of glances. Throughout Tintoretto's career these elements of procedure, though richly varied and always in harmony with the sense of the story he represents, remain central to his art.

Other early paintings of note in Tintoretto's oeuvre are his Last Supper (S. Marcuola, Venice), St. George and the Dragon, Presentation of the Virgin, and St. Mark Rescuing a Slave, where St. Mark is shown coming from heaven and through the air, headfirst into the depth of the picture, to rescue an ever so nobly painted enslaved Christian who is awaiting execution at the hands of a group of pagans dressed in richly shining Turkish costumes.

Mature Style

The works of Tintoretto's mature style, though often even more dramatic than his early one, s are distinguished by a greater compositional unity and a richer splendor of muted colors. As before, the actions of his figures are breathtakingly daring, but now they hardly ever strike us as extravagant, so well and with such majesty do they serve their function in the dramatization of the story. Examples of this style are the Last Supper (ca. 1560; S. Trovaso, Venice), the Last Judgement (ca. 1560; S. Maria dell'Orto, Venice), the Adoration of the Golden Calf (ca. 1560), the Finding of the Body of St. Mark (ca. 1562), and the Removal of the Body of St. Mark (ca. 1562), in which a thunderstorm is painted with the same dramatic intensity as the principal figures.

The triumph of Tintoretto's art is his paintings for the Scuola di S. Rocco in Venice, which he executed intermittently between 1564 and 1587. The walls and the ceilings are almost completely covered with works invented and, to a great extent, executed by him in their entirety. The paintings celebrate great events of the Old and New Testaments and the lives of the saints. St. Roch, under whose patronage the confraternity to which the Scuola belonged performed its works of charity, is especially honored.

The culmination of the whole work is the vast Crucifixion (1565) in the Sala dell'Albergo. The action is represented at the moment when the sponge is being dipped in vinegar to be lifted up on a stick to Christ. A multitude surrounds the cross—soldiers, followers of Christ, mockers, pagans, and contemporaries of Tintoretto (clearly marked as portraits), who behold the sacred scene as if it were happening now. The cross of the good thief is being pulled into position; a ladder, ready for the deposition, lies on the ground and leads our eye far back into the painting; the bad thief is about to be nailed to his cross, which lies on the ground. Mary, at the foot of the cross, has fainted into the arms of her companions. The work is virtually a night piece built around a glory of light which emanates from Christ on the cross. The whole composition revolves around Christ, and this is accomplished by a most sophisticated arrangement of dramatic gestures, an extraordinarily daring use of foreshortening leading from our space into that of the painting and back, and, above all, a management of lights which connects our time with that of the Crucifixion and the timelessness of the event with the natural world.

The great majority of Tintoretto's large canvases were history paintings with religious subjects. Among his late works, which are distinguished by the joining of a noble naturalism with an ever greater and touching spirituality, is the vast representation of Paradise in the Sala del Gran Consiglio of the Doges' Palace (1588), in which the Madonna and saints, led by St. Mark, recommend the Great Council of Venice and its decisions to the grace of Christ. The countless figures are bathed in a strange, phosphorescent light. Another late work, of incredible daring and yet ultimately quiet in its effect, is the Last Supper (1592-1594; S. Giorgio Maggiore, Venice). Tintoretto fills the air of the great hall with a rush of adoring angels; their presence is made visible by subtle highlights accentuating the darkness of the room.

Secular Paintings

Tintoretto's allegorical works and scenes from ancient and modern history include the ribald Mars, Venus, and Vulcan (ca. 1550), which shows Mars hiding under a bed to escape detection by Vulcan, who, having returned home unannounced, is approaching Venus; the melodramatic and yet affecting Rape of Lucretia (ca. 1556-1559); and a number of paintings for the Doges' Palace in Venice. These include tightly knit battle scenes on land and sea and allegories in praise of Venice that feature, with much dedication to their beauty and grace, the gods of classical antiquity. Perhaps the noblest among the allegorical paintings is Bacchus and Ariadne (1578). The god walks through the sea to offer Ariadne the ring that will unite them in marriage. Above the couple a personification of the air (or Venus) with one hand holds Ariadne's hand and with the other holds aloft Bacchus's gift to his beloved, a starry crown. On the allegorical level this painting may be interpreted as the loving homage of the mainland, represented by Bacchus, to the beauty, grace, and merit of Venice.

Tintoretto was much sought after as a portraitist. His figures are almost always elegant and extraordinarily decorous, the women gentle and the men impressive, both tinged with a certain loneliness. Infinitely moving is his self-portrait as an old man (1588, Paris) in a very simple pose, en face, resigned and wise.

Further Reading

The most useful work on Tintoretto in English is still Hans Tietze, Tintoretto: The Paintings and Drawings (1948), although it shows touches of an expressionist bias. A remarkable and far-reaching study, perhaps confused in its search for standards of taste by which to judge Tintoretto's art appropriately, is F. P. B. Osmaston, The Art and Genius of Tintoret (2 vols., 1915); it is a very dated work but worth reading if only for its bravery in the questions it raises. John Ruskin's discussions of Tintoretto's art in Modern Painters (5 vols., 1843-1860) and The Stones of Venice (3 vols., 1851-1853) are passionately evocative and sometimes severely critical. □

Tintoretto ( Jacopo Robusti) (b Venice, ?1518; d Venice, 31 May 1594). Venetian painter. His nickname derives from his father's profession of cloth dyer (tintore). He ranks second only to Titian among the Venetian painters of his time and had a prolific and successful career. Whereas most of Titian's later paintings were done for foreign patrons, Tintoretto worked mainly for Venetian clients and in particular was the dominant figure in supplying religious pictures for the city's churches and charitable institutions; he is only once recorded outside Venice (when he visited Mantua in 1580 in connection with a commission from the Gonzaga family) and the bulk of his work remains in the buildings for which it was painted.

Little is known about Tintoretto's character or personal life, and his career up to the time he was about 30 is poorly documented. His biographer Ridolfi says that he began an apprenticeship with Titian but was quickly dismissed because the master was jealous of his draughtsmanship. On stylistic evidence, it has been suggested that he may also have studied with Bonifazio Veronese, Paris Bordone, or Schiavone. He is first documented in 1539, by which time he was working independently, but the first work in which he announced a distinctive voice is St Mark Rescuing the Slave (1548, Accademia, Venice), in which many of the qualities of his maturity, particularly his love of foreshortening, begin to appear. To help him with the complex poses he favoured, he made ‘little models of wax and clay’ (Ridolfi), which he arranged in ‘little houses’ (presumably something like a miniature stage set), enabling him to use artificial illumination to experiment with lighting (Poussin later used a similar method). He sometimes suspended the models from strings, which must have helped with poses of aerial figures. This method of composing explains the frequent repetition in Tintoretto's works of the same figures seen from different angles. He was a formidable draughtsman and Ridolfi says that he had inscribed on his studio wall the motto ‘The drawing of Michelangelo and the colour of Titian’. However, although he clearly admired these two great elder contemporaries, he was very different in spirit from either of them—more emotive, using violent movement and vivid exaggerations of light. His drawings, unlike Michelangelo's detailed life studies, are brilliant, rapid notations, bristling with energy, and his colour is generally more sombre and mystical than Titian's. It is in freedom of brushwork that he most resembles Titian, although his touch is rougher, and the qualities he shares with Michelangelo are an epic imagination and almost superhuman vigour.

St Mark Rescuing the Slave was at first rejected by the Scuola di S. Marco, which had commissioned it (presumably expecting something more traditional), and the resulting publicity helped establish Tintoretto as the most exciting young painter in Venice. From this point his career was essentially the story of a succession of major religious commissions (including further ones from the Scuola di S. Marco after it had overcome its resistance to the controversial picture). His greatest works are the vast series of paintings he produced between 1564 and 1587 for the Scuola di S. Rocco, the wealthiest of the Venetian scuole (literally schools)—charitable institutions that performed such functions as caring for orphans and the sick.

Tintoretto began his long association with S. Rocco with the most famous episode in his career, when in 1564 he won the competition for the initial commission—a ceiling painting of St Roch in Glory—by somehow managing to install a full-sized picture whilst his rivals merely produced the specified sketches (he was renowned for the speed at which he worked). This clever ruse was regarded by some as underhand tactics and Tintoretto was evidently willing to undercut competitors' prices and even to work without pay if it helped to gain him the commissions he wanted. Unlike Titian, he seems to have been unconcerned with money as an end in itself, and his religious paintings are the expression of a deeply devout nature. In S. Rocco he created one of the greatest of all interpretations of the Christian story. The work was carried out in three phases: first he decorated the albergo (committee room) with scenes of Christ's Passion (1565–7); this was followed by the great hall (1575–81), which has Old Testament scenes on the ceiling and New Testament scenes on the wall; and finally came the lower hall (1583–7), which has scenes of the life of the Virgin Mary and the Nativity of Christ. There is an extraordinary range and depth of feeling in these paintings, from the cosmic drama of the Crucifixion (1565) to the tender intimacy of the Nativity scenes. Henry James wrote that ‘We shall scarcely find four walls elsewhere that enclose within a like area an equal quantity of genius’, and said of the stupendous Crucifixion: ‘Surely no single picture in the world contains more of human life; there is everything in it, including the most exquisite beauty.’

In addition to his religious works, Tintoretto painted portraits and occasional mythological scenes (Origin of the Milky Way, c.1575–80, NG, London). Although portraiture was never central to his activity, he was the best Venetian portraitist of his time apart from Titian and was particularly good at depicting old men, showing the dignity and weariness of age (a self-portrait of c.1590 is in the Louvre). In his later work particularly he must have used a good deal of studio help; his son Domenico (c.1560–1635) became his foreman, and another son, Marco (1561–1637), and a daughter, Marietta (c.1554–90), were among his other assistants. However, he showed no diminution of powers in old age, and his career ended with one of his greatest masterpieces, the Last Supper (1592–4, S. Giorgio Maggiore, Venice), a scene of incandescent spirituality.

Tintoretto had considerable influence, most notably on El Greco, who absorbed the visionary energy and intensity of his work. He continued to be a respected figure in Venice throughout the 17th century, but his reputation was lower elsewhere, and in the rational climate of the 18th century his work tended to be dismissed for an alleged lack of intellectual control (even in his lifetime Vasari had admired his powerful imagination but lamented his ‘haphazard’ design and indifference to traditional ideals of finish). In the age of Romanticism, however, his intense individuality brought him back into favour. No one played a more important role in his rehabilitation than Ruskin, whose first encounter with the Scuola di S. Rocco in 1843 left him ‘perfectly prostrated’. See also Veronese.

Tintoretto ( Jacopo Robusti) (1518?–94). Venetian painter. His nickname derives from his father's profession of cloth dyer (tintore). He ranks second only to Titian among the Venetian painters of his time and had a prolific and successful career. Whereas most of Titian's later paintings were done for foreign patrons, Tintoretto worked mainly for Venetian clients and in particular was the dominant figure in supplying religious pictures for the city's churches and charitable institutions; he is only once recorded outside Venice (when he visited Mantua in 1580 in connection with a commission from the Gonzaga family) and the bulk of his work remains in the buildings for which it was painted. Little is known about his character or personal life, and his career up to the time he was about 30 is poorly documented. His biographer Ridolfi says that he began an apprenticeship with Titian but was quickly dismissed because the master was jealous of his draughtsmanship. On stylistic evidence, it has been suggested that he may also have studied with Bonifazio Veronese, Paris Bordone, or Schiavone. He is first documented in 1539, by which time he was working independently, but the first work in which he announced a distinctive voice is St Mark Rescuing the Slave (1548, Accademia, Venice), in which many of the qualities of his maturity, particularly his love of foreshortening, begin to appear. To help him with the complex poses he favoured, Tintoretto used to make ‘little models of wax and clay’ (Ridolfi), which he arranged on something like a miniature stage set, enabling him to use artificial illumination to experiment with lighting (Poussin later used a similar method). He sometimes suspended the models from strings, which must have helped with poses of aerial figures. This method of composing explains the frequent repetition in Tintoretto's works of the same figures seen from different angles. He was a formidable draughtsman and Ridolfi says that he had inscribed on his studio wall the motto ‘The drawing of Michelangelo and the colour of Titian’. However, although he clearly admired these two great elder contemporaries, he was very different in spirit from either of them—more emotive, using violent movement and vivid exaggerations of light. His drawings, unlike Michelangelo's detailed life studies, are brilliant, rapid notations, bristling with energy, and his colour is generally more sombre and mystical than Titian's. It is in freedom of brushwork that he most resembles Titian, although his touch is rougher, and the qualities he shares with Michelangelo are an epic imagination and almost superhuman vigour.

St Mark Rescuing the Slave was at first rejected by the Scuola di S. Marco, which had commissioned it (presumably expecting something more traditional), and the resulting publicity helped establish Tintoretto as the most exciting young painter in Venice. From this point his career was essentially the story of a succession of major religious commissions (including further ones from the Scuola di S. Marco after it had overcome its resistance to the controversial picture). His greatest works are the vast series of paintings he produced between 1564 and 1587 for the Scuola di S. Rocco, the wealthiest of the Venetian scuole (literally schools)—charitable institutions that performed such functions as caring for orphans and the sick. Tintoretto began his long association with S. Rocco with the most famous episode in his career, when in 1564 he won the competition for the initial commission—a ceiling painting of St Roch in Glory—by somehow managing to install a full-sized picture whilst his rivals merely produced the specified sketches (he was renowned for the speed at which he worked). This clever ruse was regarded by some as underhand tactics and Tintoretto was evidently willing to undercut competitors' prices and even to work without pay if it helped to gain him the commissions he wanted. Unlike the notoriously avaricious Titian, he seems to have been unconcerned with money as an end in itself, and his religious paintings are the expression of a deeply devout nature. In S. Rocco he created one of the greatest of all interpretations of the Christian story. The work was carried out in three phases: first he decorated the albergo (committee room) with scenes of Christ's Passion (1565–7); this was followed by the great hall (1575–81), which has Old Testament scenes on the ceiling and New Testament scenes on the wall; and finally came the lower hall (1583–7), which has scenes of the life of the Virgin Mary and the Nativity of Christ. There is an extraordinary range and depth of feeling in these paintings, from the cosmic drama of the Crucifixion (1565) to the tender intimacy of the Nativity scenes. Henry James wrote that ‘We shall scarcely find four walls elsewhere that enclose within a like area an equal quantity of genius’, and said of the stupendous Crucifixion: ‘Surely no single picture in the world contains more of human life; there is everything in it, including the most exquisite beauty.’

In addition to his religious works, Tintoretto painted portraits and occasional mythological scenes (Origin of the Milky Way, c.1575–80, NG, London). Although portraiture was never central to his activity, he was the best Venetian portraitist of his time apart from Titian and was particularly good at depicting old men, showing the dignity and weariness of age (a self-portrait of c.1590 is in the Louvre). In his later work particularly he must have used a good deal of studio help; his son Domenico (c.1560–1635) became his foreman, and another son, Marco (1561–1637), and a daughter, Marietta (c.1554–90), were among his other assistants. However, he showed no diminution of powers in old age, and his career ended with one of his greatest masterpieces, the Last Supper (1592–4, S. Giorgio Maggiore, Venice), a scene of incandescent spirituality.

Tintoretto had considerable influence, most notably on El Greco, who absorbed the visionary energy and intensity of his work. He continued to be a respected figure in Venice throughout the 17th century, but his reputation was lower elsewhere, and in the rational climate of the 18th century his work tended to be dismissed for an alleged lack of intellectual control (even in his lifetime Vasari had admired his powerful imagination but lamented his ‘haphazard’ design and indifference to traditional ideals of finish). In the age of Romanticism, however, his intense individuality brought him back into favour. No one played a more important role in his rehabilitation than Ruskin, whose first encounter with the Scuola di S. Rocco in 1843 left him ‘perfectly prostrated’. See also Veronese

Tintoretto (1518–94), Venetian painter, so called from his father's occupation as a dyer. His main religious work was done for the Scuola di San Rocco, a charitable body in Venice. He painted a series of 64 huge canvases to cover the walls and ceilings of their Lower Hall and the rooms of the upper floor of the Hall (1576–88). The Lower Hall has scenes from the life of the BVM and pictures of St Mary Magdalene and St Mary of Egypt; the upper floor scenes from the life and passion of Christ. They concentrate on the dramatic moment, have sharp perspectives and contrasts of light and shade, as well as strong colours.

Tintoretto (1518–94) Italian painter, b. Jacopo Robusti. Tintoretto was the outstanding Venetian painter in the generation that succeeded Titian. Among his notable works are The Finding of the Body of St Mark (1562), The Last Supper (1592–94), and the huge Paradiso (1588–90) in the Doge's Palace, Venice. Some of Tintoretto's finest paintings are in the series of the life of Christ (1565–87).

http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk; http://www.nga.gov

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