Tintoretto

Italian painter

• Born: c. 1518
• Birthplace: Venice, Republic of Venice (now in Italy)
• Died: May 31, 1594
• Place of death: Venice, Republic of Venice (now in Italy)

Tintoretto was a leading exponent of the mannerist movement in painting, a style that parted with the rational symmetry of the Renaissance and moved toward dramatic imbalance and tension and the creation of mysterious moods by means of chiaroscuro, radical foreshortening, and unorthodox brushwork.

Early Life

Jacopo Robusti derived his artistic pseudonym Tintoretto (teen-toh-RAYT-toh) from his father’s trade as a dyer (tintore). He left Venice only once or twice in his lifetime, for a visit to Mantua and the Gonzaga court in 1580 and a probable trip to Rome in 1547. His marriage at age thirty-six produced eight children, of whom four, most notably Domenico and Marietta, were painters.

Tintoretto may have studied under Bonifazio de’ Pitati (Bonifazio Veronese). Almost uniquely among Renaissance artists, however, he was largely self-taught, copying available models of Michelangelo’s works and devising his own clay or wax models, dressing them, arranging them in different attitudes in cardboard houses, and introducing light through tiny windows in order to study the effect of lights and shadow on the figures. He also suspended the models from above to learn their chiaroscuro effects and foreshortenings when seen from below. As early as 1545, the letters of Pietro Aretino, Tintoretto’s first important patron (for whom he painted Apollo and Marsyas in 1545), criticize his arrogance and apparent hasty sketchiness (which stemmed from the artist’s early work in fresco but was also a genuine factor in his inventive style).

In his own lifetime, Tintoretto’s biography was written by Giorgio Vasari . In 1642, Carlo Ridolfi’s adulatory biography reported that Tintoretto had served an apprenticeship with Titian that ended within days because of Titian’s jealousy of his pupil’s talent coupled with Tintoretto’s youthful pride. The real reason for the dismissal, however, may have been Tintoretto’s careless style. The combined judgment of Titian and Aretino were, in any case, costly in terms of artistic patronage, as they were the arbiters of taste in Venice. Nevertheless, Tintoretto reputedly hung in his studio the motto (coined by Paolo Pino in his Dialogo della pittura, 1548), “The drawing of Michelangelo, the color of Titian.”

As Tintoretto began his career, however, the Tuscano-Roman style and the colorful, horizontal Venetian style of these two masters were locked in a losing struggle with the new mannerist impulse throughout Italy; in Venice, the carriers were Andrea Schiavone, Veronese, and, eventually, Tintoretto.

Tintoretto’s earliest works (1539-1540) are standard sacre conversazioni (Virgin and Child with saints), in the warm reds, golds, and whites expected of a painter of a Venice dominated by Titian. They contain almost nothing of the conscious artificialities of emergent mannerism. His early The Last Supper (1545-1547) is marked by emotional restraint and horizontal symmetry; only the violent foreshortening of the floor is a mannerist device. Tintoretto’s reputed visit to Rome and his first masterpiece culminate this early period of laborious experimentation. His Saint Mark Rescuing a Slave (1548) indeed evinces the muscular forms of Michelangelo and the rich color of Titian. The large monument forecasts the dramatic use of light so prominent in Tintoretto’s narrative style.

Life’s Work

During the 1550’s, the chief elements of Tintoretto’s unique style found their place in his voluminous output. Susanna and the Elders (1550) manifests the use of strong diagonals. In the Genesis scenes for the Scuola della Trinitá (1550-1553), the colors are less brilliant as Tintoretto first joined color, light, and form to create the mood dictated by the subject matter. The Old Testament scenes (1554-1555) brought to Madrid by Diego Velázquez mark an important moment in Tintoretto’s evolving mannerism: The six ceiling paintings feature color that is subtle but sparkling with light and an almost improvisational sketchiness. In the later 1550’s, the artist began to use crowds in procession to accentuate space. In Saint Ursula and Her Virgins and the Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes , the processions fade away into the depths of the paintings, dissolving in the distance in a non finito (unfinished) diaphanous sketchiness.

Between 1552 and 1562, Tintoretto contributed, for the cost of materials alone (he was disliked in the artistic community for frequently underpricing his art or working free), several paintings to his beloved parish church, Madonna dell’ Orto. One was his famous Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple . On either side of the high altar, his Laws and Golden Calf and The Last Judgment rose fifty feet high.

During the 1560’s, Tintoretto’s work became increasingly dramatic, psychological, and artistically sophisticated. He achieved these effects by using a less diffuse, more immediate light source allowing more pronounced chiaroscuro, increased use of diagonal composition, and vast panoramic scenes. He continued to be prolific. In the Finding of the Body of Saint Mark , the radically oblique, sharply receding vault of the church and the stark chiaroscuro enhance the miraculous event taking place in the foreground. Similarly, the ominous storm lightening the edge of the clouds is the focus of the Translation of the Body of Saint Mark (both were painted for the Scuola di S. Marco in 1562-1566). Tintoretto concurrently painted for S. Trovaso Church a Crucifixion with massive diagonals and a The Last Supper.

In 1564, Tintoretto started his work in the Scuola di S. Rocco, which was to span twenty-three years. The Scuola was an asymmetrical building, worthy of Tintoretto’s bold designs. There followed a series of large scenes of Christ’s Passion, including an immense and profoundly moving Crucifixion, which the nineteenth century English art critic and historian John Ruskin pronounced “above all praise.” Tintoretto was made a member of the Scuola, a sort of civic-service lodge, and later a lifetime officer.

Contemporaneously (1564-1568), Tintoretto produced a Crucifixion, a Resurrection , and a Descent of Christ into Limbo for S. Cassiano Church, a The Last Judgment for the Sala del Scrutinio in the doges’ palace, and for the Church of S. Rocco, a great Saint Roche in Prison . Between 1576 and 1581, Tintoretto resumed his work in the upper hall of the Scuola di S. Rocco. There, the ceiling received twenty-one Old Testament scenes, while the walls were decorated with ten events from the life of Christ, of which the Baptism and Ascension are noteworthy.

Meanwhile, Tintoretto’s trip to Mantua in 1580 bore fruit in the eight battle scenes completed with the help of assistants. From 1577 to 1584, too, the artist painted, with less enthusiasm, the four small allegories of classical mythology in the Sala del’ Anticollegio of the doges’ palace. He also executed important scenes from Venice’s history in the Sala del Senato, and in the imposing Sala del Maggior Consiglio, an enormous Paradise occupying the years 1584-1587. It was the largest oil painting ever done until that time.

In 1583, Tintoretto returned to the Scuola di S. Rocco, this time producing scenes from the life of the Madonna in the lower hall. His conception was consummate: His space opens out dynamically in all directions and his perspectives are limitless; light dominates and dissolves volume and color, rendering his figures incorporeal and unfinished. The entire project in Scuola di S. Rocco has been compared to the Sistine Chapel and the Raphael stanze. Tintoretto finally put down his brush in 1587 and painted no more for the Scuola di S. Rocco.

Among Tintoretto’s approximately three hundred paintings are dozens of portraits. In these, he aimed to capture the inner spirit or personality of the subject more than his clothing or background. Notable is his self-portrait at age seventy. Additionally, about one hundred drawings survive; they are mainly practice sets by which Tintoretto perfected his chiaroscuro and foreshortening skills and cartoons for mosaics in San Marco Church.

His last works include two large oils for the presbytery of S. Giorgio Maggiore. Of these, The Last Supper epitomized all his earlier achievements and effects and attained a new level of psychological impact: The darkened room is lit by a lamp striking the disciples from behind and by an unnatural glow radiating from the halo of Christ, who intently administers communion; the table thrusts diagonally into the canvas; angels hovering above add their mystical presence. All this is in stark contrast to the realism of the Venetian pitchers on the table, a cat drinking from the water cistern, and the everyday activities of servants taking place in the same room.

Tintoretto’s last work, the Entombment for the chapel of S. Giorgio Maggiore (1594), also employs a double illumination, one the natural sunset, the other artificial, or rather spiritual, which divides the groups of figures by their separate lighting.

Significance

The legendary rivalry between the older Titian and Tintoretto has occasioned an ongoing division among art critics. Both artists are truly representative of Venetian artistic tradition, but Titian had known the glorious time of Venice; his art reflects the sensuous richness of the city. Tintoretto, however, was born in a Venice humbled by the League of Cambrai (1508); he grew up in a Counter-Reformation atmosphere of religious revival. Thus, a religious mysticism pervades his art.

Contemporaries also took sides. Vasari and Aretino favored Titian. In the seventeenth century, the age of the Baroque, the tide moved to Tintoretto, who was much admired by El Greco and Ridolfi. The eighteenth century saw Tintoretto unfavorably, through the neoclassical eyes of the Age of Reason. Ruskin represents the nineteenth century preference for Tintoretto over Titian and even over Michelangelo. The nineteenth century Swiss art historian Jakob Burckhardt, however, regarded Tintoretto as crude, barbaric, and artistically immoral, “abandoning himself to the most shameless superficiality.”

Today, Tintoretto remains a giant; he has been regarded variously as one who succeeded in spiritualizing reality, a forerunner of modern illusionism or of German Expressionism. The theatrical quality of his later works comports well with modern artistic sensibilities, which share his delight in foreshortening, his artificial use of lighting to emphasize action or suggest spirituality, his penchant for oblique composition, his use of subdued subaqueous color, his non finito sketchiness, and his preoccupation with the human body caught unfolding and poised in mid-action.

Bibliography

Berenson, Bernhard. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: A List of the Principal Artists and Their Works, with an Index of Places, Venetian School. 2 vols. London: Phaidon Press, 1957. Volume 1 includes a complete list of Tintoretto’s works and their locations; volume 2 contains seventy-six black-and-white plates. Both volumes present a list of all the principal Venetian artists, their works and their locations, and 1,334 representative plates.

Honour, Hugh. The Companion Guide to Venice. London: Fontana Books, 1970. Tintoretto’s art is affectionately discussed as discovered by the author in the churches and galleries of Venice. En route, the reader is exposed to the cultural and political history of Venice in its living stones and works of art and in its relationship to the rest of Italy. Street plans and museum layouts bring the world of Tintoretto into clarity.

Krischel, Roland. Jacopo Tintoretto, 1519-1594. Translated by Anthea Bell. Cologne, Germany: Könemann, 2000. Short but detailed study of Tintoretto’s life and work, emphasizing the influence of Venetian culture and ideals on his painting. Includes illustrations, chronology, glossary, and bibliography.

Newton, Eric. Tintoretto. New York: Longmans, Green, 1952. A superlative biography with details not found elsewhere. Throughout, Newton draws from Ridolfi and urges caution in accepting Ridolfi’s interpretations. Includes a chronological list of Tintoretto’s paintings and seventy-six black-and-white plates.

Nichols, Tom. Tintoretto: Tradition and Identity. London: Reaktion Books, 1999. Emphasizes the originality, and indeed the radicality, of Tintoretto’s works and their difference from the traditional Venetian School of Titian. Includes illustrations, bibliographic references, and index.

Ridolfi, Carlo. The Life of Tintoretto, and of His Children Domenico and Marietta. Translated and introduced by Catherine Enggass and Robert Enggass. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1984. A translation of volume 2 of Ridolfi’s 1642 classic work. Ridolfi, the preeminent art historian of his day, provides an account from a time nearly contemporaneous with that of his subjects.

Rosand, David. Painting in Sixteenth-Century Venice: Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto. Rev. ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Wide-ranging study of Renaissance Venice’s most famous painters, discussing the formal qualities characteristic of the Venetian School, the techniques of painting employed by Tintoretto and his fellows, and the social, economic, and political factors influencing the art they produced. Includes thirty-two pages of plates, illustrations, appendix of primary documents, bibliographic references, and index.

Tintoretto. Tintoretto: The Paintings and Drawings. Edited by Hans Tietze. London: Phaidon Press, 1948. A short biography and appreciation of Tintoretto. Especially useful for its three hundred black-and-white illustrations and excellent detailed commentary on each plate.