The history of Venice cannot be described without talking about its history of art,
its twisting waterways, the sudden bursts of reflected light, and that special Venetian
marriage of land and water. Venice in the 16th century was an age of splendor, although
signs of its decadence were already becoming evident. It was thanks to the ruling aristocracy,
who were Venetians themselves, and to the age-old political and commercial policies
of the state, that the churches and palazzi are still full of art treasures. Despite its
fierce religious independence, the Lutheran Reformation and Counter-Reformation had made
themselves felt even in the Venetian Republic. This was a territory where the Pope, leaving
spiritual rule aside, was considered merely to be a ruler of another foreign state. And
it was the brushwork of Tintoretto that faithfully recorded the dramatic changes that Venice
was going through in that era.
Tintoretto spent all his life in Venice, but there is a strange ambivalence between his
hectic yet sedentary life and his painting. There is a quality of extraordinary restlessness
in it that seems to have affected all Venetian Renaissance painting. From the death registers,
it appears that Jacopo Robusti Tintoretto was born in 1519 in the working-class quarters
of the parish of San Marziale, and that he died on 31 March 1594, after a fortnight's
fever. Tintoretto's name derives from his father's trade. He was a tintore, that is
a dyer of silk. Silk dyeing was a common Tuscan trade, and it is thought that Tintoretto's
family may have originated from Lucca, which would explain why his paintings were displayed
in the nearby ancient Scuola de Lucchese. Unfortunately, all that remains of this building
is an antique well and a holy image of the face of Christ the Redeemer. So Tintoretto
grew up among color, which like a living thing permeates and transforms the aspect of every
object it meets. His precocious talent for painting soon became manifest. So as a result,
according to his biographer Carlo Ridolfi, Tintoretto was sent to studying painting under
the great artist Titian, who you can see here in a self-portrait. However, Titian was so
envious of the young boy's talent that he threw him out of his shop shortly afterwards.
Despite this, Tintoretto never ceased to admire the great master painter, so much so that
he had inscribed over the entrance to his workshop the slogan, Michelangelo's hand with
Titian's color. By 1539, according to one witness of his times, Tintoretto had already
been working for nigh on ten years as a master painter, or mistro de pentor, in his own workshop
in Campo San Cassan. Tintoretto's early works very much reflect his models. These included
Bonifacio de Pitati and his graceful narrative style, Pordenone and his austere full-bodied
anti-Titianesque figures. Shortly after this, the influence of Andrea Schiavone also transpires
in his work. Tintoretto worked very closely with him in the early years. The Venetian
circle in which Tintoretto found himself at the beginning was basically made up of painters
working in the mannerist style. Mannerism was introduced to Venice by artists coming
from Florence and even from Rome after the sack of the city in 1527. Sebastiano del Piombo
and Il Sansovino were two such Roman artists. There was no doubt that Tintoretto was anxious
to study Renaissance works of art, and he had sent at great expense engravings of major
contemporary masterpieces by artists such as Raphael and Michelangelo. He even commissioned
Daniele da Volterra to produce casts of the statues on the Mendician tombs. Although by
the time they arrived in 1557, Tintoretto had little left to learn from them. It was
perhaps this voracious appetite for anything that implied novelty driven by the fact that
he was self-taught that made Tintoretto a main representative of Venetian mannerism.
In 1540, Tintoretto painted, probably together with Schiavone, the compartments of a ceiling
in the Palazzo dei Pisani in Paterniano, with 14 scenes of mythological tales inspired by
Ovid's metamorphoses. These paintings are now conserved in the Estense Museum in Modena.
The plastic aspect of the 14 infillings was necessitated by the fact that they would have
only been viewed from floor level. They are a perfect example of how swift and easy Tintoretto's
style had already become. The flowing progression of each scene highlights with shafts of light
only the central theme of each tale. In order to be able to carry out a pictorial scheme
of this nature, Tintoretto had developed a special rapid brushwork technique. Boschini
called this technique praticon de man, whilst Aretino far more critically remarked that
Tintoretto took less time to paint his figures than to think about what he was painting.
However the very modernity of Tintoretto's art derives from this rapid, rhythmic, almost
whirlwind style that was very much appreciated by later Romantic artists such as Delacroix.
Solomon and Sheba is one of a set of six biblical paintings that probably served to decorate
a set of wedding chests. These paintings were once attributed to Schiavone but are now thought
to be by Tintoretto himself. At present they are kept in Vienna. In his busy workshop Tintoretto's
artistic personality took shape and his paintings began to appear throughout Venice. His first
Last Supper painted in 1547 is to be found in the ancient church of San Marquella. The
foreshortening with no background places the table of the Last Supper on a steeply inclined
floor flanked by two allegorical figures of faith and charity. The figures of the apostles
are enveloped in the colors of their clothing as if in a flame which culminates with their
animated and bold gesticulations. The light from their halos enhances their profiles like
a flash of lightning. The reverberation caused by the reformation of the Catholic Church
had lost much of its effect by the time it had reached Venice. It did however become
reflected in religious architecture in its triumphal aspects. During the early Renaissance
Venetian architects such as Lombardo and Codusi had already been attempting to bring Venice
into line with the rules of classical architecture that new humanistic studies had taught them.
The various religious congregations of Venice concentrated on their moral obligations by
setting up numerous religious schools in order to conduct works of charity and to offer professional
training to the sons of the common people. In 1548 Tintoretto painted the miracle of
the slave for the wealthy Scuola di San Marco. Saint Mark appears in the picture in a flash
of blinding light with his cloak flying behind him. Below lies the freed naked slave with
his execution turned towards the ruler in order to show him the instruments of torture
that have been shattered by Saint Mark's blow. The crowd is struck dumb and slightly
fearful. Many portraits are recognisable in the crowd scene. Some of them are dressed
in Moorish clothing and you can almost hear the tumult and the muttering of the people
as they gather in a semi-circle around the slave in such a way that the viewer is drawn
directly into the action. In 1550 Tintoretto painted a set of canvases with the story of
the creation for another school called the Scuola della Trinità. Today these canvases
are kept in the Accademia in Venice. In the creation of the animals God Eternal flies
silently between earth, sea and sky. With one single serene commanding gesture he brings
up out of nothing the beasts of the earth, the fish of the water and the birds of the
sky. In the original scene the artist narrates that tragic sweet moment of an irresistible
Eve's offer of terrible temptation. The two naked bodies of Adam and Eve are in full
light. They are an integral part of nature which is both passionate and as violent as
the sin itself. Behind Adam and Eve you can see in the distance as though in a dream the
final fatal scene when Adam and Eve are chased out of the Garden of Eden forever. In Cain
and Abel humanity is all shorn of grace. Abel is lighter than his assassin brother but the
capitated head of a fawn underlines the act of blood. The background is livid and enraged,
a story without enticement. In 1553 Veronese came to Venice to work on the Ducal Palace.
Veronese's clear and very classical artistic style was a source of inspiration for Tintoretto.
Although Tintoretto did not seek to be eclectic, his continual search for new ideas to feed
his almost ungovernable creative energy meant that he inevitably initiated models created
by other artists. Saint Ursula's journey which can be seen in the church of San Lazzaro dei
Mendicanti is an exemplification of this. Veronese's style is echoed throughout the
almost fantastical depiction of the subject matter. Again in the next painting entitled
Susanna and the Elders there is a quiet hint of Veronese and although his biographers have
described Tintoretto as a joyless man he nonetheless was sensitive to the worldly and festive characteristics
of Venice. In his paintings he would draw on both biblical and mythological law to inspire
him to the creation of sensuous female nudes such as Susanna. Susanna has an opalescence
that reflects the whiteness of the cloth with which she is drying herself, the crystalline
shine of the silver flask, the colors of her jewels and her looking glass and the roses
in the hedge before her. All the objects that surround Susanna merely serve to enhance her
nakedness which appears to absorb the natural luminosity of the garden. In the early 1550s
Tintoretto produced a presentation of the Virgin, a large painting for the shutters
of the organ in the church of Santa Maria del Orto. This work really enabled Tintoretto
to compare his stature as an artist against that of Titian. The picture is divided into
two by a clever play of chiaroscuro. The left-hand side of the painting is crowded with activity
while the right remains almost empty, showing only maternal figures in semi-obscurity. The
mother, who is pointing out Maria to her young daughter, serves to enliven the scene and
her pointing arm draws the eye to the tiny figure of the Virgin silhouetted against the
cloudy sky. The church of Santa Maria del Giglio was reconstructed in exaggerated baroque
style halfway through the 17th century as sort of late homage to the Counter-Reformation.
In 1557 Tintoretto painted the four evangelists onto the doors of the organ there. The evangelists
are locked in an intense study of the scriptures. Their extraordinarily energetic and heroic
depiction are redolent of the works of Michelangelo. As well as carrying out commissions for various
churches and schools in Venice, Tintoretto also worked in the private houses of the Venetian
probability. Ridolfi, Tintoretto's biographer, remembers seeing the painting of St George
killing the dragon, which now hangs in the National Gallery in London, in the house of
the senator Pietro Correre. The painting is clear and fresh, with a certain mystical quality.
The princess flees in her terra, encouraging the viewer to follow her with his eyes, while
St George with one impetuous leap of his horse pierces the dragon through with his weapon.
The tragic pathos of the scene is embodied by the dead soldier lying between the two
like a crucifix. Above the sky is filled with scudding clouds set into motion by the shining
vortex of light emanating from God. In a second painting on the same theme, the scene is more
grotesque. The princess rides on the dragon, now reduced to a mere plaything, past an astonished
St George and St Louis. It is a strange depiction of humanity, where religious ritual combines
with courtly chivalry. Although Tintoretto received increasing demands from the Venetian
nobility to execute private commissions, the church remained his main patron. Fourteen
years after he had completed The Miracle of the Slave, Tintoretto was asked by the Scuola
di San Marco to produce two other paintings to accompany his earlier cycle of The Life
of the Saint in the rooms on the upper storey. One work, The Abduction of the Body of St
Mark, is now on display in the Accademia in Venice. The perspective is dizzying. The action
of the picture takes place in the center of an imaginary square. Across the stage move
tenuous eastern-looking figures in flight. The only tangible sense of reality is created
by the group of tomb robbers as they make off with the body of the saint. At Milan is
conserved the Ritrovamente del Corpo di San Marco. The saint himself indicates to the
Venetians his own corpse, which is being lowered into the tomb, and simultaneously appears
very white between him and the commissioner in school clothes. Light and shadow rival
each other for the figures, and in different forms the elements of the eternal decoration
gather in the dramatic commotion of the scene. Venice, notwithstanding that it was marginalized
from the thickening of relationships between Europe and the New World, discovered by Columbus
at the end of the preceding century, continued to be rich. Queen of maritime traffic with
the Orient, the lagoon city was more exposed, among other things, to the plague, the terrifying
voyage companion of mankind's history. The plague was above all communicated by sea.
To exercise this curse, some Venetians departed from Montpellier, where the corpse of San
Rocco, protector against plagues, was situated. They adventurously stole it and parted for
worship, and around the sainted relics was founded a confraternity named after the saint
with church and school. In 1564, to embellish the school, a competition between the artists
in the city was announced, which consisted of the creation of an arch with the image
of the saint. Three months were given to present the model. Tintoretto, as Vasari accounts,
painted in those few months the finished painting and had it mounted. In addition, he declared
that he didn't want pain for this work of devotion. This was enough for the majority
of counselors to decide to give him the work. Thus, Tintoretto made the school, in over
20 years of work, one of the most extraordinary containers of 16th century art. The first
great piece in the long series to be carried out was a great crucifixion. It is a careful
work of almost architectonic composition, and it took up the entire wall of one room.
In the center, the Roman army, standing for humanity, mill around the cross-bearing,
crucified savior. The perspective of the painting is broken up into a myriad of pieces according
to the light and the groups of figures on the scene. The perspective both separates
and unites, dividing characters up according to the parts they have to play in the tale.
The whole painting is fused with the most complex possible activity of light, drawing
one's gaze first here and then there. A light veil of shadow seems to cast itself over the
whole scene of activity, growing darker towards the ominous and threatening sky in the background.
The next picture is a nativity. The intense eye for detail that this pastoral nativity
displays betrays the influence on Tintoretto of the religious paintings of Jacopo Bassano
with his rustic rural settings. The nativity is divided into two levels. In the top half,
the Holy Family is bathed in a divine light, which filters through the roof above their
heads. Below, two shepherds hand up to the Holy Family the gifts that the common folk
have brought to give to the baby Jesus. The third painting is a Last Supper. The evangelic
element is connected in a series of immeasurable rooms. In close-up, two large figures may
be beggars, which allude to the compassionate activity of the schools, and the dog, which
recalls the legend of San Rocco, pilgrim in Italy, who met the evil of those sick with
plague and cured them, and went to live in a wood near Piacenza, where he was fed by
a dog, which every day robbed a cake for him. The apostles, their faces defined as in portraits,
seem to be animatedly in discussion. Christ is far off at the other end of the table with
Peter, his face radiant with light. While Tintoretto was working in the squalor
of St. Rocco, he was also involved in a number of other artistic projects in the city. Venice
was not only crumbling at its architectural foundations, but also at its moral base. Tintoretto
was almost committing bigotry when he undertook immorally flagrant commissions to paint mythological
scenes such as Venus and Vulcan. In the picture, a mirror shows us a spying husband, rendered
suspicious by the languid attitude of his bride. Love pretends to be asleep, while the
lover, Mars, is clumsily hidden under a piece of furniture, only to be betrayed by the barking
of the little lap dog. It is a very common scene of adultery, rendered light-hearted
by touches of irony. In Tintoretto's religious repertoire, the
theme of the Last Supper is recurrent. Perhaps this was due to the variety of people and
human sentiments that the scene involves, and because he meant he had chance to paint
everyday scenes from ordinary life. In 1570, Tintoretto painted a Last Supper for the Church
of San Polo. The drama of the scene is created by the figure at Christ's feet. The geometric
perspective is very classical, but this dissolves into a series of fluid lines charged with
emotion. It is the sort of painting that needs careful study and repeated viewing to understand
the passionate restlessness of the event unfurling before one's eyes.
In May 1574, the confraternity of St. Rock requested Tintoretto to paint the ceiling
of the main room on the upper storey. The following year saw him begin an accretion
of a major work of art, known as the Brazen Serpent.
Between 1583 and 1587, Tintoretto took up the decoration again of the squala and managed
to complete the rooms on the ground floor. In the main room, Tintoretto painted a flight
in Egypt, which is exceptional in that the scenes are almost entirely dominated by the
landscape setting. A weary Joseph and Mary seated on the donkey and cradling the holy
infant in her arms form a little group on their own. On the right-hand side of the picture,
one can see through the branches of the tree the misty river winding through cultivated
fields which symbolize the ordered lives of the country folk waiting patiently for the
coming of Christ. In the same room, two narrow pendant vertical
panels depict a Mary of Egypt in the wilderness and a Magdalene. In the first picture, Mary
of Egypt raises her eyes from her reading in a reflective gaze. We see the night through
her eyes. It has become a pale suffusion of light. Mary Magdalene in the second picture
is instead very intent on her reading, so much so that she seems to have become almost
absorbed by the wood around her. Tintoretto's brushwork here is more and more fluid and
sparing in color. There is a shimmering luminosity which permeates the whole painting. In many
of the paintings, the characters have finely drawn features and faces. Tintoretto was used
to painting portraits for people right from the early years of his career. In the beginning,
it is easy to note the strong influence of Titian, but later Tintoretto became a very
innovative and talented portrait artist in his own right. His portraits of the nobleman
of Venice of his time are harshly realistic. The toils of time and life are evident on
their faces. There is no artistic invention or rhetoric, for those were the people whose
destiny it was to lead population and the city along the weary path of life. The sitter's
secrets are laid bare in front of the artist before him. The solitude of the great, the
bitterness of life are ingrained on their features. It seems as though while Tintoretto
painted these great men, the story of their lives was passing before their eyes. Glancing
from one portrait to another, you can see the lost illusions of youth, the awareness
of all the errors made and the opportunities missed. Nonetheless, there is a trace of pride
and a certain sense of consolation. The men in the portraits have their names written
down in history, for they have been instrumental in the development and growth of a great and
powerful republic. In 1558, Veronese died and so Tintoretto took over the decoration
of the ducal palace. For the great council chambers of the palace, he painted a vast
paradise full of intricate and difficult complex forms. The work itself, which was somewhat
criticized, was actually painted in sections in vast rooms in the Scuola della Misericordia.
These sections were then carefully sewn together by Tintoretto's son Domenico and positioned
on the wall of the council chambers where the finishing touches were added. Shortly
after this, Tintoretto was called upon once again to produce a last supper for the church
of San Giorgio in Isola. This was to be the last great masterpiece of his hectic life.
In the painting, Christ, seated at a long table, names the apostles. Two sources of
light define the scene. There is the light from the camp above suspended from the sky
and a spiritual light which emanates from the figure of Christ. Even the angels are
merely tenuous figures of light, whilst the other characters, the apostles, the servants
and the beggars, are much heavier and realistic. They represent the everyday side of humanity
that are often seen in Tintoretto's representations of holy scenes. Ironically, in the final year
of his life, Tintoretto painted a deposition in the chapel dedicated to the dead. The light
in the painting is pale and barely illuminates the bleeding figure of Christ at the focal
point of the scene. In the distance, Mary, mother of Jesus, has collapsed with grief
and behind her winds the inexorable journey to Calvary. One gets the impression that Tintoretto
painted this picture for himself. Tintoretto devoted the whole of his artistic
energy to his Christian subject matter. His inspiration is both intense in the purity
of his spiritual ideal and sensuous in its profanity. His life seems to be a dramatic
series of light, shadow and color and of startling visions. But although Tintoretto spent the
whole of his life in Venice, his real surroundings never once appear in any of his paintings.
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