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TINTORETTO, JACOPO ROBUSTI (1518-1594)
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See also:TINTORETTO, JACOPO ROBUSTI (1518-1594) , one of the greatest painters of the Venetian school, was See also:born in See also:Venice in 1518, though most accounts say in 1512. His See also:father, Battista Robusti, was a See also:dyer, or " tintore "; hence the son got the See also:nickname of " Tintoretto," little dyer, or dyer's boy, which is Englished as Tintoret. In childhood Jacopo, a born painter, began daubing on the dyer's walls; his father, noticing his See also:bent, took him See also:round, still in boyhood, to the studio of See also:Titian, to see how far he could be trained as an artist. We may suppose this to have been towards 1533, when Titian was already (according to the See also:ordinary accounts) fifty-six years of See also:age. See also:Ridolfi is our authority for saying that Tintoret had only been ten days in the studio when Titian sent him See also:home once and for all. The See also:reason, according to the same writer, is that the See also:great See also:master observed some very spirited drawings, which he learned to be the See also:production of Tintoret; and it is inferred that he became at once jealous of so promising a See also:scholar. This, however, is See also:mere conjecture; and perhaps it may be fairer to suppose that the drawings exhibited so much See also:independence of manner that Titian judged that See also:young Robusti, although he might become a painter, would never be properly a See also:pupil. From this See also:time forward the two always remained upon distant terms—Robusti being indeed a professed and ardent admirer of Titian, but never a friend, and Titian and his adherents turning the See also:cold See also:shoulder to Robusti. Active disparagement also was not wanting, but it passed unnoticed by Tintoret. The latter sought for no further teaching, but studied on his own See also:account with laborious zeal; he lived poorly, See also:collecting casts, bas-reliefs, &c., and practising by their aid. His See also:noble conception of See also:art and his high See also:personal ambition were evidenced in the inscription which he placed over his studio—" I1 disegno di See also:Michelangelo ed it colorito di Tiziano " (Michelangelo's See also:design and Titian's See also:colour). He studied more especially from See also:models of Michelangelo's " See also:Dawn," " See also:Noon," " See also:Twilight " and " See also:Night," and became See also:expert in modelling in See also:wax and See also:clay—a method (practised likewise by Titian) which afterwards stood him in See also:good See also:stead in working out the arrangement of his pictures. The models were sometimes taken from dead subjects dissected or studied in See also:anatomy See also:schools; some were draped, others nude, and Robusti was wont to suspend them in a wooden or cardboard See also:box, with an See also:aperture for a See also:candle. Now and afterwards he very frequently worked by night as well as by See also:day. The young painter See also:Schiavone, four years Robusti's junior, was much in his See also:company. Tintoret helped Schiavone gratis in See also:wall-paintings; and in many subsequent instances he worked also for nothing, and thus succeeded in obtaining commissions. The two earliest mural paintings of Robusti—done, like others, for next to no pay—are said to have been " Belshazzar's Feast " and a " See also:Cavalry Fight," both See also:long since perished. Such, indeed, may be said to have been the See also:fate of all his frescoes, See also:early or later. The first See also:work of his which attracted some considerable See also:notice was a portrait-groupof himself and his See also:brother—the latter playing a See also:guitar—with a nocturnal effect; this also is lost. It was followed by some See also:historical subject, which Titian was candid enough to praise. One of Tintoret's early pictures still extant is in the See also: Towards 1546 Robusti painted for the church of the Madonna dell' Orto three of his leading works—the " See also:Worship of the See also:Golden See also:Calf," the " Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple," and the " Last See also:Judgment "—now shamefully repainted; and he settled down in a See also:house hard by the church. It is a See also:Gothic edifice, looking over the See also:lagoon of See also:Murano to the See also:Alps, built in the Fondamenta de' Mori, still See also:standing, but let out cheap to artisans. In 1548 he was commissioned for four pictures in the Scuola di S. Marco—the " Finding of the See also:body of St See also:Mark in See also:Alexandria " (now in the church of the Angeli, Murano), the " See also:Saint's Body brought to Venice," a " Votary of the Saint delivered by invoking him from an Unclean Spirit " (these two are in the library of the royal See also:palace, Venice), and the highly and justly celebrated " See also:Miracle of the Slave." This last, which forms at See also:present one of the See also:chief glories of the Venetian Academy, represents the See also:legend of a See also:Christian slave or See also:captive who was to be tortured as a See also:punishment for some acts of devotion to the evangelist, but was saved by the miraculous intervention of the latter, who shattered the See also:bone-breaking and See also:blinding implements which were about to be applied. These four works were greeted with See also:signal and See also:general See also:applause, including that of Titian's intimate, the too potent Pietro See also:Aretino, with whom Tintoret, one of the few men who scorned to See also:curry favour with him, was mostly in disrepute. It is said, however, that Tintoret at one time painted a See also:ceiling in Pietro's house; at another time, being invited to do his portrait, he attended, and at once proceeded to take his sitter's measure with a See also:pistol (or a See also:stiletto), as a significant hint that he was not exactly the See also:man to be trifled with. The painter having now executed the four works in the Scuola di S. Marco, his straits and obscure endurances were over. He married See also:Faustina de' Vescovi, daughter of a Venetian nobleman. She appears to have been a careful housewife, and one who both would and could have her way with her not too tractable See also:husband. Faustina See also:bore him several See also:children, probably two sons and five daughters. The next conspicuous event in the professional See also:life of Tintoret is his enormous labour and profuse self-development on the walls and ceilings of the Scuola di S. Marco, a See also:building which may now almost be regarded as a See also:shrine reared by Robusti to his own See also:genius. The building had been begun in 1525 by the Lombardi, and was very deficient in See also:light, so as to be particularly See also:ill-suited for any great See also:scheme of pictorial adornment. The See also:painting of its interior was commenced in 156o. In that See also:year five See also:principal painters, including Tintoret and See also:Paul Veronese, were invited to send in trial-designs for the centre-piece in the smaller See also: This proposal was accepted and was punctually fulfilled, the painter's death alone preventing the See also:execution of some of the ceiling-subjects. The whole sum paid for the scuola throughout was 2447 ducats. Disregarding some See also:minor performances, the scuola and church contain fifty-two memorable paintings, which may be described as vast suggestive sketches, with the mastery, but not the deliberate precision, of finished pictures, and adapted for being looked at in a dusky See also:half-light. " Adam and Eve," the " Visitation," the " See also:Adoration of the Magi," the " See also:Massacre of the Innocents," the " Agony in the See also:Garden," " Christ before See also:Pilate," " Christ carrying His See also:Cross," and (this alone having been marred by restoration) the " See also:Assumption of the Virgin " are leading examples in the scuola; in the church, " Christ curing the Paralytic."
It was probably in 156o, the year in which he began working in the Scuola di S. Rocco, that Tintoret commenced his numerous paintings in the ducal palace; he then executed there a portrait of the See also:doge, See also:Girolamo Priuli. Other works which were destroyed in the great See also:fire of 1577 succeeded—the " See also:Excommunication of See also:Frederick See also:Barbarossa by See also:Pope See also: All Venice applauded the superb achievement, which has in more See also:recent times suffered from neglect, but fortunatelyhardly at all from restoration. Robusti was asked to name his own See also:price, but this he See also:left to the authorities. They tendered a handsome amount; Robusti is said to have See also:abated something from it, which is even a more curious instance of ungreediness for See also:pelf than earlier cases which we have cited where he worked for nothing at all. After the completion of the " Paradise " Robusti rested for a while, and he never undertook any other work of importance, though there is no reason to suppose that his energies were exhausted had his days been a little prolonged. He was seized with an attack in the See also:stomach, complicated with See also:fever, which prevented him from sleeping and almost from eating for a fortnight, and on the 31st of May 1594 he died. A contemporary See also:record states his age to have been seventy-five years and fifteen days. If this is accurate, the 16th of May 1519 must have been the day of his See also:birth; but we prefer the authority of the See also:register of deaths in S. Marciliano, which states that Tintoret died of fever, aged seventy-five years, eight months and fifteen days—thus bringing us to the 16th of See also:September 1518 as the true date of his birth. He was buried in the church of the Madonna dell' Orto by the See also:side of his favourite daughter See also:Marietta, who had died in 1590, aged See also:thirty; there is a well-known tradition that as she See also:lay dead the See also:heart-stricken father painted her portrait. Marietta had herself been a portrait-painter of considerable skill, as well as a musician, vocal and instrumental; but few of her works are now traceable. It is said that up to the age of fifteen she used to accompany and assist her father at his work, dressed as a boy; eventually she married a jeweller, See also:Mario See also:Augusta. In 1866 the See also:grave of the Vescovi and Robusti was opened, and the remains of nine members of the See also:joint families were found in it; a different locality, the See also:chapel on the right of the See also:choir, was then assigned to the grave. Tintoret painted his own portrait at least twice, one of the heads being in the Uffizi See also:Gallery of See also:Florence and the other, done when his age was advanced, in the Louvre. It is a very serious See also:face, somewhat See also:blunt and rugged, but yet refined without the See also:varnish of elegance—concentrated and resolute, its native ardours of frankness and See also:energy welded down into lifelong laboriousness, with a pent look as of smouldering fire. The eyes are large, dark and round; the grizzled See also:hair See also:close and compact. The face has been held to See also:bear some resemblance to that of Michelangelo, but this does not go very far. Robusti appears also as one of the figures in the two vast pictures by Paul Veronese—the " See also:Marriage in See also:Cana " and the " Feast in the House of See also:Levi." Audacious and intrepid, though not constantly correct, as a draughtsman, majestically great as a colourist, prodigious as an executant, Tintoret was as See also:absolute a type of the born painter as the See also:history of art registers or enables us to conceive. Whatever he did was imaginative—sometimes beautiful and suave (and he was eminently capable of painting a lovely female countenance or an heroic man), often imposing and romantic, fully as often turbulent and reckless, sometimes trivial, never unpainter-like or prosaic. When he chose—which was not always—he painted his entire personages characteristically; but, like the other highest masters of Venice, he conceded and attended little to the expression of his faces as evincing incidental emotion. In several of his works—as especially the great " Crucifixion " in S. Rocco—there is powerful central thought, as well as inventive detail; but his See also:imagination is always See also:concrete: it is essentially that of a painter to whom the means of art—the See also:form, colour, See also:chiaroscuro, manipulation, scale, See also:distribution—are the typical and necessitated realities. What he imagines is always a visual integer, a picture—never a See also:treatise, however thoughtfully planned or ingeniously detailed. Something that one could see—that is his ideal, not something that one could narrate, still less that one could deduce and demonstrate. In his treatment of See also:action or gesture the most See also:constant peculiarity is the sway and swerve of his figures: they See also:bend like saplings or rock like See also:forest-boughs in a See also:gale; stiffness or immobility was entirely See also:foreign to his See also:style, which has therefore little of the monumental or severe See also:character. Perhaps he See also:felt that there was no other way for combining " the colour of Titian with the design of Michelangelo." The knitted strength and the transcendent fervour of energy of the supreme Florentine might to some extent be emulated; but, if they were to be See also:united with the glowing See also:fusion of See also:hue of the supreme Venetian, this could only be attained by a See also:process of relaxing the excessive tension and modifying See also:muscular into elastic force. In this respect he was a decided innovator; but he had many imitators, comparatively feeble if we except Paul Veronese. Tintoret scarcely ever travelled out of Venice. He loved all the arts, played in youth the See also:lute and various See also:instruments, some of them of his own invention, and designed theatrical costumes and proper-ties, was versed in See also:mechanics and See also:mechanical devices, and was a very agreeable See also:companion. For the See also:sake of his work he lived in a most retired See also:fashion, and even when not painting was wont to remain in his working See also:room surrounded by casts. Here he hardly admitted any, even intimate See also:friends, and he kept his modes of work See also:secret, See also:save as regards his assistants. He abounded in pleasant witty sayings whether to great personages or to others, but no smile hovered on his lips. Out of doors his wife made him See also:wear the robe of a Venetian See also:citizen; if it rained she tried to indue him with an See also:outer garment, but this he resisted. She would also when he left the house wrap up See also:money for him in a handkerchief, and on his return expected an account of it; Tintoret's accustomed reply was that he had spent it in See also:alms to the poor or to prisoners. In 1574 he obtained the reversion of the first vacant See also:broker's patent in a fondaco, with power to bequeath it—an See also:advantage granted from time to time to pre-eminent painters. For his phenomenal energy in painting he was termed " II Furioso." An agreement is extant showing that he undertook to finish in two months two historical pictures each containing twenty figures, seven being portraits. The number of his portraits is enormous; their merit is unequal, but the really See also:fine ones cannot be surpassed. Sebastiano del Piombo remarked that Robusti could paint in two days as much as himself in two years; Annibale See also:Caracci that Tintoret was in many pictures equal to Titian, in others inferior to Tintoret. This was the general See also:opinion of the Venetians, who said that he had three pencils—one of See also:gold, the second of See also:silver and the third of See also:iron. The only pictures (if we except his own portrait) on which he inscribed his name are the " Miracle of Cana " in the church of the Salute (painted originally for the brotherhood of the Crociferi), the " Miracle of the Slave," and the " Crucifixion " in the Scuola di S. Rocco; the last was engraved in 1589 by See also:Agostino Caracci. Generally he painted at once on to the canvas without any preliminary. Some of his dicta on art have been recorded as follows by Ridolfi: " the art of painting remains increasingly difficult "; " painters in youth should adhere to the best masters, these being Michelangelo and Titian, and should be strict in representing the natural forms "; " the first glance at a picture is the See also:crucial one "; " See also:black and See also: See also:Cassano) a " Crucifixion," the figures seen from behind along the See also: (W. M. Additional information and CommentsThere are no comments yet for this article.
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