MILAN – Today the world of art celebrates one of the greatest painters of the Italian Renaissance, Jacopo Robusti known as Tintoretto, who died on May 31, 1594. From his first works there is a strong imprint of the figurative culture of mannerism. In his vast production, the essential lines of his research emerge which, favoring decentralized compositions, diagonal lines, daring views and a particular intense luminism, reached a great narrative and emotional strength. The speed of execution also plays an important role in his painting, and the rare preparatory drawings that have survived seem to confirm his practice of referring to three-dimensional models illuminated by the artificial light of torches or lamps. The beginnings
Jacopo Robusti, known as Tintoretto was an Italian painter, one of the greatest exponents of the Venetian school and probably the last great painter of the Italian Renaissance. The nickname “Tintoretto” derives from his paternal profession, dyer of fabrics. Noting the natural inclination of his son for drawing, his father Battista Robusti, I place him as an apprentice in the workshop of the great painter Tiziano Vecellio, still in his teens, to see if he had the qualities of the artist.
Some historians say that, after only ten days, Titian would have thrown him out of his school, probably not out of jealousy, but out of artistic and temperamental differences, given the rebellious spirit of the young pupil. The success
An official document dated May 22, 1539 in which Tintoretto signs himself “master”, therefore in possession of his own workshop located in Venice, in Campo San Cassian. And the following year, 1540, the signature on a famous “Sacra Conversazione”, while the two ceilings with mythological subjects painted for Pietro Aretino’s Venetian house are his. Considering from these episodes, it is then possible to estimate that the famous Venetian artist has seen his notoriety, or his mastery, grow and establish itself in these years. To corroborate this thesis, there is also the first, true commission of which there is a certain trace, concerning Tintoretto. Vettor Pisani, nobleman and owner of a bank, around 1541, on the occasion of his wedding, called the young 23-year-old painter to restore his residence in San Paternian: sixteen tables centered on the theme of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Around 1546 Tintoretto painted three of his main works for the church of the Madonna dell’Orto: Adoration of the Golden Calf, the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple and the Last Judgment.At the school of San Rocco
The greatest effort of Tintoretto is represented by the canvases of the School of San Rocco. The painter devoted himself to it in three stages: from 1564-66 are those of the Albergo; those of the upper hall from 1576-81; those of the ground room of 1583-87. Maturity
In 1555, the artist, now also nicknamed “Il furioso”, due to his stroke and the dramatic use of perspective, painted the famous altarpiece with “The Assumption” in the Jesuit Church of Venice, and “Giuseppe e la wife of Putifarre ”, another famous work, later purchased by Diego Velasquez for Philip IV. From the following year, however, and the painting “Susanna and the Elders”. In 1548 he was hired for four images in the Scuola Grande di San Marco. In his works the Titian imprint continues to be evident, especially in the chromatic choices and Michelangelo’s perfection in the anatomy of the bodies. In May 1564 the councilors of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco decided to have the ceiling of the “Albergo” – the meeting room of the “council” – decorated at their own expense,
Tintoretto, invited to participate in the competition, presents a model for a canvas representing “The glory of San Rocco”. Thus began a collaboration, destined to last twenty years (ending only in 1587), which will ensure that the rooms of the Scuola di San Rocco are filled with the artist’s works, to the point of constituting an immense figurative poem, the importance of which has been sometimes compared to that of the Brancacci Chapel in Florence or the Sistine Chapel in Rome. The last years
In 1588, on the death of Veronese, he took over from the latter in the decoration of the wall of the Sala del Maggior Consiglio. The resulting work, an immense canvas of more than 7 meters in height and 24 in length, depicts Paradise with the Christ Pantocrator in the center. Tintoretto died at the age of seventy-five after having made three last works for the Basilica of San Giorgio Maggiore: the Jews in the desert and the fall of the manna, the Last Supper and the Deposition in the sepulcher (1592 – 1594). Style
His pictorial art is characterized by great expressive energy and the bold use of perspective. In his works we often find great dramatic compositions and bold contrasts of light and shadow. These characteristics made him both a great innovator of the Venetian Renaissance and a precursor of Baroque art.
