TINTORETTO, JACOPO ROBUSTI one of the greatest painters of the Venetian school, was born in Venice in 1518, though Ridolfi says in 1512. His father, Battista Robusti, was a dyer, or "tintore"; hence the son got the nick name of "Tintoretto," little dyer. His father, noticing his artistic bent, took him to the studio of Titian. Ridolfi is our authority for saying that Tintoretto had only been ten days in the studio when Titian sent him home once and for all. The reason, accord ing to the same writer, is that the great master observed some very spirited drawings by the boy and it is inferred that he became at once jealous of so promising a scholar. This, how ever, is mere conjecture. From this 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 turning the cold shoulder to Robusti, who sought for no further teaching, but studied on his own account with laborious zeal from casts, bas-reliefs etc. He placed over his studio the inscription "Il disegno di Michelangelo ed it colorito di Tiziano" (Michelangelo's design and Titian's colour). He is said to have studied more especially from models of Michelangelo's "Dawn," "Noon," "Twilight" and "Night," and from Sansovino's statues, and to have modelled in wax and clay small figures, which he suspended in a box with an aperture for a candle. Thus, according to Ridolfi, Robusti's art was self-taught. More recent criticism, however, has averred that he probably proceeded to some other painter's studio on leaving Titian's. Berenson and Thode have suggested that Bonifazio may have been his master while Hadeln thinks Bordone more likely. However, he had a hard struggle to obtain recognition. He assisted Schiavone in his studio and undertook every commission which offered itself. One of Tintoretto's early pictures still extant is in the church of the Carmine in Venice, the "Presentation of Jesus in the Temple." In 1547 he painted the "Last Supper" in the Church of S. Marcuola. The "Christ Washing the Apostles' Feet" painted for the same church is now in the Escorial. For the Scuola della Trinita, he painted four subjects from Genesis. Two of these, now in the Venetian Academy, are "Adam and Eve" and the "Death of Abel," both noble works of high mastery, which leave us in no doubt that Robusti was a consummate painter.
In 1548 he was commissioned for four pictures in the Scuola di S. Marco—the "Finding of the body of St. Mark in Alexandria" (now in the Brera, Milan), the "Saint's Body brought to Venice," the "miraculous preservation of a Saracen sailor at sea by the Saint" (these two are in the library of the royal palace, Venice), and the highly and justly celebrated "Miracle of the Slave." These works were greeted with general applause, including that of Titian's intimate, the too potent Pietro Aretino. The painter's straits and obscure endurances were over. He married Faustina de' Vescovi, daughter of a Venetian nobleman, and settled in a house in the Fondamenti de Mori near the church of the Madonna dell' Orto. Here he painted three of his leading works—"The Worship of the Golden Calf," "The Presentation of the Virgin" and the "Last Judgment." The next conspicuous event in the professional life of Tintoretto is his enormous labour and profuse self-development on the walls and ceilings of the Scuola di S. Rocco, a building which may now almost be regarded as a shrine reared by Robusti to his own genius. The building had been begun in 1524 by Sante Lombardi, after the design of Bart. Buono and was very deficient in light, so as to be particularly ill-suited for any great scheme of pictorial adornment. The painting of its interior was commenced in 1560. In that year five principal painters, including Tintoretto and Paul Veronese, were invited to send in trial-designs for the centre-piece in the smaller hall named Sala dell' Albergo, the subject being S. Rocco received into Heaven. Tintoretto produced not a sketch but a picture, and got it inserted into its oval. The competitors remonstrated, not unnaturally ; but the artist, who knew how to play his own game, made a free gift of the picture to the saint, and, as a by-law of the foundation prohibited the rejection of any gift, it was retained in situ—Tintoretto furnishing gratis the other decorations of the same ceiling. (This is one version of the
anecdote : there is another version, which has the like general bearing.) In 1565 he resumed work at the scuola, painting the magnificent "Crucifixion," for which a sum of 25o ducats was paid. In 1576 he presented gratis another centre-piece—that for the ceiling of the great hall, representing the "Plague of Serpents"; and in the following year he completed this ceiling with pictures of the "Paschal Feast" and "Moses striking the Rock." Robusti next launched out into the painting of the entire scuola and of the adjacent church of S. Rocco. He offered in November 1577 to execute the works at the rate of 1 oo ducats per annum, three pictures being due in each year. This proposal was accepted and was punctually fulfilled, the painter's death alone preventing the execution of some of the ceiling-subjects. The whole sum paid for the scuola throughout was 2,447 ducats. Disregarding some minor performances, the scuola and church contain fifty-two memorable paintings, which may be described as vast suggestive sketches, with the mastery of finished pictures, "Adam and Eve," the "Visitation," the "Adoration of the Magi," the "Massacre of the Innocents," the "Agony in the Garden," "Christ before Pilate," "Christ carrying His Cross" and the "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 Tintoretto commenced his numer ous paintings in the ducal palace; he then executed there a por trait of the doge, Girolamo Priuli. Other works which were destroyed in the great fire of 15 77 succeeded—the "Excommuni cation of Frederick Barbarossa by Pope Alexander III." and the "Victory of Lepanto." After the fire Tintoretto started afresh, Paul Veronese being his colleague. In the Sala dello Scrutinio Robusti painted the "Capture of Zara"; in the hall of the senate, "Venice, Queen of the Sea" and two others ; in the Sala del Collegio 4 pictures among which the "Espousal of St. Catherine"; in the Sala dell' Anticollegio, four decorative masterpieces—"Bacchus, with Ariadne crowned by Venus," the "Three Graces and Mercury," "Minerva discarding Mars," and the "Forge of Vulcan"—which were painted towards 1578; in the Antichiesetta, "St. George and St. Louis, with St. Margaret," and "St. Jerome and St. Andrew"; in the hall of the great council, nine large compositions, chiefly battle-pieces. We here reach the crowning production of Robusti's life, the last picture of any considerable importance which he executed, the vast "Paradise," in size 74 f t. by 3o, reputed to be the largest painting ever done upon canvas. It is a work so stupendous in scale, so colossal in the sweep of its power, so reckless of ordinary standards of conception, so pure an inspira tion of a soul burning with passionate visual imagining and a hand magical to work in shape and colour, that it has defied the connoisseurship of three centuries, and has generally (though not with its first, Venetian contemporaries) passed for an eccentric failure. All Venice applauded the superb achievement. Robusti was asked to name his own price, but this he left to the author ities. Robusti died on May 31, 1594. The register of deaths in S. Marciliano states that Tintoretto died of fever, aged seventy five years, eight months and fifteen days—thus bringing us to Sept. 16, 1518 as the true date of his birth. He was buried in the church of the Madonna dell' Orto by the side of his favourite daughter Marietta (c. 1556-1590) who had herself been a por trait-painter of considerable skill, as well as a musician, vocal and instrumental. In 1866 the grave was opened, and the re mains were moved to the chapel on the right of the choir.