A history of Italian painting

by Frank Jewett Mather

Fig. 294. Tintoretto. Tithonus and Aurora. Tempera color sketch.—British Museum.

Jacopo Robusti,[^[84]] the dyer’s son, was born in Venice in 1518. At seventeen he was put with Titian. Once passing through the studio Titian saw on the floor a number of Tintoretto’s sketches. Not trusting himself to speak, he sent word that the newcomer should never again enter his studio. An act which contemporary gossip ascribed to jealousy, is rather to be referred to disgust at Tintoretto’s unbridled vehemence. Whoever has studied Tintoretto’s tempera sketches, Figure [294], in the British Museum may realize how Titian felt. The sketches are superb, but Titian in 1535 was in no way to realize their value. Twenty years later he may have appreciated them.

Fig. 295. Tintoretto. Presentation of Virgin in the Temple.—S. M. dell’ Orto.

Driven out by the best master in Venice, Tintoretto was reduced to the process of self-education, in which he was aided by that brilliant decorative colorist and ever luckless artist, Andrea Schiavone. Tintoretto’s earliest work of note is the decoration of his own parish church of the Orto, which he undertook about the year 1546 for the costs. The gigantic canvases of the Deluge and Worship of the Golden Calf in the Choir made his fame, but we see his peculiar quality better in the Presentation in the Temple, Figure [295]. It was finished only a few years after Titian’s masterpiece in the Scuola della Carità, hence the contrast between the two works on the same theme is enlightening. Titian’s picture is fundamentally a spectacle and a ceremony. Everything goes as arranged and expected. Tintoretto’s picture is a sudden and thrilling event full of unexpected graces. The little Virgin is well within the picture, but keeps her prominence through her position against the sky and even more by reason of the focusing of intense interest on her by all the persons in the composition. It is a charming invention that three mothers and their infant daughters on the steps should share in the glory of her consecration. At the left a prophetic figure suddenly grasps the import of the moment and sways with wide stretched arms towards the hope. From him to the head of the steps rises a pathetic line of cripples and beggars mercifully veiled in half light. These are witnesses to the human misery that the Virgin through her Son is to assuage. The unifying principle, apart from the fine linear design, is the light which floods out of the picture over the beautifully carved steps. Everything is conceived in depth, while Titian’s Presentation is relatively on one plane. Golden browns and yellows of great luminosity are prevailing colors, the crimsons and blues serving merely as relief and accent. With all its richness of illustrative content, the thing is a noble decoration.

A little later, perhaps in 1548, Tintoretto did the first of three canvases for the Scuola Grande di San Marco. It represents the moment when a Christian slave is about to be brained. The liberating figure of St. Mark, Figure [296], swoops down, the maul snaps in the executioner’s hand. With a singular delicacy the entire interest of the bystanders is concentrated on the helpless white body of the martyr. The suspense is breathless. Only the old magistrate high at the right has seen the miraculous breaking of the executioner’s sledge. His gesture carries the eye to the figure of the downward swooping saint, thus the most sensational feature is last seen and comes as a climax. Such dramatic modulations are of the very essence of Tintoretto’s genius. Again, though the sweeping curves of the linear design are splendidly balanced, the light is the ultimate harmonizer. It ripples out in an increasing wave towards the spectator, kindling as it goes the colors of rich stuffs and the bronzed or pearly roundings of brows, shoulders, throats and limbs. The carrying of a uniform rhythm of motion through earth and sky is again Tintoretto’s invention. He uses it here as elsewhere not as a sprightly device—which was later the baroque attitude—but as a necessary factor in emotional expression.

Fig. 296. Tintoretto. Miracle of the Slave.—Venice.

In 1561 Tintoretto finished the great Marriage at Cana for the Salute. The picture is tremendously developed in depth, and the Christ is set in the distance. The foreground figures alone are concerned with the miracle. Very effective is the contrast of the quiet feasters with those who are stirred by the marvel. The lighting is consummately fine. There are passages of extreme loveliness, such as the swaying row of women’s faces on the right of the table, but the whole thing is far from clear; illustrative and decorative features are imperfectly harmonized. In this great scale Tintoretto’s richness and insatiate inventiveness tend to work against him.

Before considering his colossal labor in the School of St. Roch, we should note his avowed ideal. It might be read on the walls of his studio: “The Drawing of Michelangelo and the Coloring of Titian.” In the studio were casts of Michelangelo’s sculptures brought up at great expense from Florence and Rome. And to Michelangelo we owe the slender and alert proportions of Tintoretto’s figures, quite different as they are from the gravity, almost ponderosity of Titian, Palma, and Paolo Veronese. The color is based on late Titian, but is more sonorous, simple, and uncomplicated by minor tones. The brush stroke is unlike anything earlier—sketchy, impetuous, definitive, working by first intention. Accordingly the surfaces are much broken, and, to a near view, lack preciousness. We have neither the fluent enamel of Giorgione and early Titian, nor yet the muffled richness of Titian’s later manner. But in the best Tintorettos the touch is infallibly crisp, right and expressive. To exaggerate these generously avowed influences of the master who repudiated him and the master he never saw would be easy. As a matter of fact, Tintoretto is always more the illustrator than either of his models. If he adopts the grand poses of Michelangelo, he does so not for abstract beauty, but ever seeks a motive for them. If he chooses Michelangelo’s slender, athletic proportions, he invests them with tenderness and enthusiasm. Unlike Titian, he avoids both classical draperies and rich contemporary costumes, choosing compromise forms of dress which, without ceasing to be classical, should seem familiar, and fit for a real world. If he adopts Titian’s coruscating light, he gives it a special poetry. It does not glow evenly through the picture, but flashes intermittently, as an accent or accompaniment to emotion.