Tintoretto Biography The years of apprenticeship Self portrait Jacopo Tintoretto was born in Venice in 1518, as the eldest of 21 children. His father, Giovanni, was a dyer, or tintore; hence the son got the nickname of Tintoretto, little dyer, or dyer's boy, which is anglicized as Tintoret. The family originated from Brescia, in Lombardy, then part of the Republic of Venice. Older studies gave the Tuscan town of Lucca as the origin of the family. In childhood Jacopo, a born painter, began daubing on the dyer's walls; his father, noticing his bent, took him to the studio of 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 ordinary accounts) fifty-six years of age.

Tintoretto had only been ten days in the studio when Titian sent him home once and for all, the reason being that the great master observed some very spirited drawings, which he learned to be the production of Tintoretto; and it is inferred that he became at once jealous of so promising a scholar. This, however, is mere conjecture; and perhaps it may be fairer to suppose that the drawings exhibited so much independence of manner that Titian judged that young Jacopo, although he might become a painter, would never be properly a pupil. From this time forward the two always remained upon distant terms, Tintoretto being indeed a professed and ardent admirer of Titian, but never a friend, and Titian and his adherents turning the cold shoulder to him. Active disparagement also was not wanting, but it passed unnoticed by Tintoretto. The latter sought for no further teaching, but studied on his own account with laborious zeal; he lived poorly, collecting casts, bas-reliefs, &c., and practising by their aid.

His noble conception of art and his high personal ambition were evidenced in the inscription which he placed over his studio Il disegno di Michelangelo ed il colorito di Tiziano ("Michelangelo's design and Titian's color"). He studied more especially from models of Michelangelo's Dawn, Noon, Twilight and Night, and became expert in modelling in wax and clay method (practised likewise by Titian) which afterwards stood him in good stead in working out the arrangement of his pictures. The models were sometimes taken from dead subjects dissected or studied in anatomy schools; some were draped, others nude, and Tintoretto was to suspend them in a wooden or cardboard box, with an aperture for a candle. Now and afterwards he very frequently worked by night as well as by day. Early works Adam and Eve c. 1550 The young painter Andrea Schiavone, four years Tintoretto's junior, was much in his company. Tintoretto helped Schiavone gratis in wall-paintings; and in many subsequent instances he worked also for nothing, and thus succeeded in obtaining commissions.

The two earliest mural paintings of Tintoretto - done, like others, for next to no pay - are said to have been Belshazzar's Feast and a Cavalry Fight. These are both long since perished, as are all his frescoes, early or later. The first work of his to attract some considerable notice was a portrait-group of himself and his brother - the latter playing a guitar - with a nocturnal effect; this also is lost. It was followed by some historical subject, which Titian was candid enough to praise. One of Tintoretto's early pictures still extant is in the church of the Carmine in Venice, the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple; also in S. Benedetto are the Annunciation and Christ with the Woman of Samaria. For the Scuola della Trinity (the scuole or schools of Venice were more in the nature of hospitals or charitable foundations than of educational institutions) 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 Tintoretto was by this time a consummate painter - one of the few who have attained to the highest eminence in the absence of any formal training. Saint Mark paintings Towards 1546 Tintoretto painted for the church of the Madonna dell'Orto three of his leading works - the Worship of the Golden Calf, the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple, and the Last Judgment now shamefully repainted. He took the commission for two of the paintings, the Worship of the Golden Calf and the Last Judgment, on a cost only basis in order to make himself better known. He settled down in a house hard by the church. It is a Gothic edifice, looking over the lagoon of Murano to the Alps, built in the Fondamenta de Mori, which is still standing. 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 church of the Angeli, Murano), the 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 palace, Venice), and the highly and justly celebrated Miracle of the Slave. This last, which forms at present one of the chief glories of the Venetian Academy, represents the legend of a Christian slave or captive who was to be tortured as a punishment for some acts of devotion to the evangelist, but was saved by the miraculous intervention of the latter, who shattered the bone-breaking and blinding implements which were about to be applied. These four works were greeted with signal and general applause, including that of Titian's intimate, the too potent Pietro Aretino, with whom Tintoretto, one of the few men who scorned to curry favor with him, was mostly in disrepute.

It is said, however, that Tintoretto at one time painted a 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 pistol (or a stiletto), as a significant hint that he was not exactly the 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. In 1550 he married Faustina de Vescovi (or Episcopi ?), daughter of a Venetian nobleman and a prominent member of the Scuola de San Marcos. She appears to have been a careful housewife, and one who both would and could have her way with her not too tractable husband. Faustina bore him several children, probably two sons and five daughters. The mother of Jacopo's daughter Marietta, a portrait painter herself, was probably a German woman, who had an affair with Jacopo before his marriage to Faustina.

Scuola di San Rocco The next conspicuous event in the professional life of Tintoretto is his enormous labor 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 Tintoretto to his own genius. The building had been begun in 1525 by the Lombardi, 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 Paolo 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 bylaw of the foundation prohibited the rejection of any gift, it was retained in situ, Tintoretto furnishing gratis the other decorations of the same ceiling. In 1565 he resumed work at the scuola, painting the magnificent Crucifixion, for which a sum of 250 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 accepting whatever pittance the confraternity chose to pay. Scuola di San Rocco St. Andrew and St. Jerome Tintoretto 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 100 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 2447 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, but not the deliberate precision, of finished pictures, and adapted for being looked at in a dusky half-light. 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 (this alone having been marred by restoration) the Assumption of the Virgin are leading examples in the scuola; in the church, Christ curing the Paralytic. It was probably in 1560, the year in which he began working in the Scuola di S. Rocco, that Tintoretto commenced his numerous paintings in the ducal palace; he then executed there a portrait of the doge, Girolamo Priuli.

Other works which were destroyed in the great fire of 1577 succeeded - the Excommunication of Frederick Barbarossa by Pope Alexander III and the Victory of Lepanto. After the fire Tintoretto started afresh, Paolo Veronese being his colleague; their works have for the most part been disastrously and disgracefully retouched of late years, and some of the finest monuments of pictorial power ever produced are thus degraded to comparative unimportance.

In the Sala deilo Scrutinio Tintoretto painted the Capture of Zara from the Hungarians in 1346 amid a Hurricane of Missiles; in the hail of the senate, Venice, Queen of the Sea; in the hall of the college, the Espousal of St Catherine to Jesus; in the Sala dell Anticollegio, four extraordinary masterpieces - Bacchus, with Ariadne crowned by Venus, the Three Graces and Mercury, Minerva discarding Mars, and the Forge of Vulcan which were painted for fifty ducats each, besides materials, towards 1578; in the Antichiesetta, St George and St Nicholas, with St Margaret (the female figure is sometimes termed the princess whom St George rescued from the dragon), and St Jerome and St Andrew; in the hall of the great council, nine large compositions, chiefly battle-pieces. Paradise Paradise We here reach the crowning production of Tintoretto's life, the last picture of any considerable importance which he executed, the vast Paradise, in size 74 ft. by 30, 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 or method, so pure an inspiration of a soul burning with passionate visual imagining and a hand magical to work in shape and color, that it has defied the connoisseurship of three centuries, and has generally (though not with its first Venetian contemporaries) passed for an eccentric failure; while to a few eyes it seems to be so transcendent a monument of human faculty applied to the art pictorial as not to be viewed without awe. While the commission for this huge work was yet pending and unassigned Tintoretto was wont to tell the senators that he had prayed to God that he might be commissioned for it, so that paradise itself might perchance be his recompense after death. Upon eventually receiving the commission in 1588 he set up his canvas in the Scuola della Misericordia and worked indefatigably at the task, making many alterations and doing various heads and costumes direct from nature. When the picture had been nearly completed he took it to its proper place and there finished it, assisted by his son Domenico for details of drapery, etc.

All Venice applauded the superb achievement, which has since suffered from neglect, but little from restoration. Tintoretto was asked to name his own price, but this he left to the authorities. They tendered a handsome amount; he is said to have abated something from it, an incident perhaps more telling of his lack of greed than earlier cases where he worked for nothing at all. Death and pupils After the completion of the Paradise Tintoretto 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. In 1592 he became a member of the Scuola di Mercanti. In 1594, he was seized with severe stomach pains, complicated with fever, that prevented him from sleeping and almost from eating for a fortnight. Finally, on May 31, 1594 he died. He was buried in the church of the Madonna dell'Orto by the side of his favorite daughter Marietta, who had died in 1590 at the age of thirty.

Tradition suggests that as she lay in her final repose, her heart-stricken father had painted her final portrait. Marietta had herself been a portrait-painter of considerable skill, as well as a musician, vocalist and instrumentalist, 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 jeweler, Mario Augusta. In 1866 the grave of the Vescovi and Tintoretto was opened, and the remains of nine members of the joint families were found in it. The grave was then moved to a new location, to the right of the choir. Tintoretto had very few pupils; his two sons and Martin de Vos of Antwerp were among them. His son Domenico (1562-1637) frequently assisted his father in the groundwork of great pictures. He himself painted a multitude of works, many of them of a very large scale. At best, they would be considered mediocre and, coming from the son of Tintoretto, are exasperating.

In any event, he must be regarded as a considerable pictorial practitioner in his way. There are reflections of Tintoretto to be found in the Greek painter of the Spanish Renaissance El Greco, who likely saw his works during a stay in Venice. Style of life and assessment Jacopo Robusti, called Tintoretto. Biography. - Olga's Gallery Olga's Gallery Jacopo Robusti, called Tintoretto (1518-1594) Jacopo Tintoretto was born in Venice around 1518 as Jacopo Comin, the eldest of Giovanni Comin's 21 children. The name Tintoretto was derived from the name of his father's profession, tintore, or dyer. Tintoretto began dabbling in painting from an early age, often using his father's dyes to doodle on the walls of the house and his father's workshop. Giovanni, recognizing his son's calling, sought to get him an apprenticeship with an artist. The identity of Tintoretto�s first mentor is unknown, but his second teacher was Titian Vecelli .

This second apprenticeship was rather short-lived and the painter soon drove Tintoretto out. The reasons behind this falling out are unclear. The problem probably lay in Tintoretto�s headstrong, independent attitude. A few historians believe Titian may have become exceedingly envious of his apprentice's talent. However, Titian had a reputation as a patient master who was highly encouraging of budding artists, making this seem somewhat unlikely. In any case, the two painters remained on poor terms all the way until Titian's death in 1576. As a result, Tintoretto was largely self-taught. Although he initially practiced by making copies of Titian�s paintings, several of which survive today, he preferred to paint from clay figurines and live models, often at night when he had more control over the position and angle of light sources. He was also known to spend substantial money on obtaining human corpses and body parts for dissection, to get a better grasp of human anatomy, a penchant he shared with several prominent artists of his day -- most notably Leonardo da Vinci . He was very meticulous about measuring the proportions of objects he was painting in order to more accurately recreate them on canvas.

However, although he was clearly gifted and mastered the craft quickly, Tintoretto was slow to make a name for himself, largely because Venice at the time was saturated with artists, especially Titian and his students. Priding himself on his independence, Tintoretto also did not seek any sponsors, hoping to achieve fame on the merits of his skill alone, which may have contributed to his slow rise to recognition. One of his first breakthroughs into the public eye is said to have come after a cleverly designed exposition of two of his paintings, both now lost, at an open-air public art show. Although the exhibition was held in broad daylight, Tintoretto made sure his pieces were brightly illuminated by artificial lighting. The originality of the display brought it much attention, and the art was praised highly by viewers and critics. Although this success didn�t establish him lasting fame, it encouraged Tintoretto to persist in his attempts. Because he came from a relatively wealthy family, he could afford to work for free, in the hope that this would gain him paid commissions down the line.

Though no such works survive to our knowledge, we know from anecdotes that he once painted a quick ornament on a large clock just as it was being fitted onto a public building, and on a different occasion decorated the walls of a church for no reimbursement except the cost of his supplies. At first these feats netted him little more than a handful of smaller commissions at several small churches, but in 1548 he was finally contracted his first major painting, the Miracle of St. Mark . However, although it is a today a highly-regard work of art, it received a rather cold reception from the monks who commissioned it. In retribution, the quick-tempered artist ordered his servants to remove it from the church. He held it in his workshop until he received a letter of apology, as well as commissions for three more paintings, including Finding of the body of St. Mark (circa 1562). In 1560, Tintoretto was among several artists to be invited by the Brotherhood of Saint Roch, a very wealthy and powerful religious order, to compete for the job of decorating a round ceiling in one of the rooms of their guild house.

Allegedly, the artists were meant to present designs for the Brotherhood to evaluate, but while his competitors busied themselves with their sketches Tintoretto instead set to work on the actual painting, The Apotheosis of Saint Roch (1560-64), which he completed in record time and took the liberty of surreptitiously installing on the ceiling in question. Understandably, this surprise didn't go over well with either the other artists involved or the Brotherhood, but Tintoretto, seeing their hesitation, exploited one of the Brotherhood's rules, which stated that they could never reject a gift, and offered them the work free of charge. With no choice but to accept, the Brotherhood kept the painting and proceeded to commission more works from Tintoretto over many years, effectively keeping him busy for the rest of his life.

Tintoretto's paintings for the Brotherhood included some of his most famous pieces, such as Assumption of the Virgin (circa 1555), Crucifixion (1565), Saint Roch in Prison Visited by an Angel (1567), Adoration of the Magi (1582), Flight into Egypt (1582-87), Massacre of the Innocents (1582-87), Annunciation (1583-87), Circumcision (circa 1587), and Visitation (circa 1588). Despite the long list of commissions coming in from the Brotherhood of Saint Roch, as well as other work, Tintoretto continued striving for more recognition. He participated in another high profile competition, this time for the honor of decorating the Great Council Hall (Sala del Consiglio) of the Ducal Palace in Urbino. In a stroke of luck for the painter, the winner of the contest, Veronese , died before he could get to work, and Tintoretto, as the runner-up, was called upon to replace him.

He produced a number of paintings for this project, the most noteworthy of which was Paradise (1588-circa 1589). It was also his last major commission and is one of the largest oil paintings in the world at 30 by 74 feet. It's considered by some to be his crowning achievement, and according to some accounts, this sentiment was shared by Tintoretto himself. Tintoretto fell ill several years later and, after lingering for about three weeks in pain, died on May 31, 1594. His death, close on the heels of Titian's and Veronese's, marked the end of a great era in Venetian painting. Bibliography: Fine Artists: Jacopo Comin (Robusti) -Tintoretto Mannerist Painter 1518-1594 Fine Artists: Jacopo Comin (Robusti) -Tintoretto Mannerist Painter 1518-1594 "Art ain't about paint. It ain't about canvas. It's about ideas. I have found how to get my ideas out and I won't stop.

I got ten thousand left."-Thornton Dial Jacopo Comin was one of the last great painters of the Renaissance . Although Tintoretto was prolific, and one of the most successful Venetian painter in the generation after Titian's death, little is known of his life. For his phenomenal energy in painting Tintoretto was termed Il Furioso, and his dramatic use of perspective space and special lighting effects make him a precursor of Baroque art. In his youth, Tintoretto was also known as Jacopo Robusti because his father had defended the gates of Padua in a rather robust way against the imperial troops during the Cambray War from 1509 to 1517. Tintoretto's real name "Comin" has only recently been discovered by Miguel Falomir, the curator of the Museo del Prado in Madrid, and was made public during the retrospective of Tintoretto at the Prado in 2007. Comin translates to the spice cumin in the local language. Tintoretto was born in Venice in 1518, as the eldest of 21 children.

His father, Giovanni, was a dyer, or tintore; hence the son got the nickname of Tintoretto, little dyer, or dyer's boy, which is anglicized as Tintoret. The family originated from Brescia, in Lombardy, then part of the Republic of Venice. In childhood Jacopo, a born painter, began daubing on the dyer's walls. His father took him to the studio of Titian to see how far he could be trained as an artist. Tintoretto had only been in the studio for ten days when Titian sent him home. It seems that the great master saw some of Tintoretto's very spirited drawings, and it is inferred that he became at once jealous of so promising a scholar. It may also have been that the drawings exhibited so much independence of manner that Titian judged that young Jacopo, although talented as a painter, would never be a proper pupil. Almost all of Tintoretto's life was spent in Venice and most of his work is still in the churches or other buildings for which it was painted. Tintoretto appears to have been unpopular because he was unscrupulous in procuring commissions and ready to undercut his competitors.

By 1539 he was sufficiently mature to be established independently, painting pictures composed in a traditional Venetian manner with the figures arranged parallel to the picture plane and unlinked by any strong movement or variation in the arrangement. His early masterpiece is "The Miracle of St Mark Freeing the Slave" , (shown here) in which many of the qualities of his maturity, particularly his love of foreshortening, begin to be distinguishable. To help him with the complex poses he favored, Tintoretto used to make small wax models which he arranged on a stage and experimented on with spotlights for effects of light and shade and composition. This method of composing explains the frequent repetition in his works of the same figures seen from different angles. Tintoretto was a formidable draughtsman and, according to Ridolfi, he had inscribed on his studio wall the motto `The drawing of Michelangelo and the color of Titian'. However, he was very different in spirit from either of his avowed models. Tintoretto was more emotive, using vivid exaggerations of light and movement.

His drawings, unlike Michelangelo's detailed life studies, are brilliant, rapid notations, bristling with energy, and his color is more somber and mystical than Titian's . Tintoretto's greatest works are the vast series of paintings he did for the Scuola di San Rocco in Venice from 1565 to 1587 - scenes from the life of Christ and scenes from the Old testament in the upper level, and scenes from the life of the Virgin in the lower hall. The complicated scheme was probably not conceived by Tintoretto himself, but he interpreted it with a vividness and economy of color and detail that give a wonderful cohesion to the whole scheme. Its personal conception of the sacred story overwhelmed Ruskin, who devoted eloquent pages to it, and Henry James wrote of the stupendous "Crucifixion" (shown here): 'Surely no single picture in the world contains more of human life; there is everything in it, including the most exquisite beauty.' The unorthodox rough brushwork of such paintings incurred the censure of Vasari, but later generations recognized it as a means of heightening the drama and tension.

Like Titian, Tintoretto kept a huge workshop, his chief assistants being his sons Domenico and Marco, and his daughter Marietta. The system in the Tintoretto workshop differed from that in use in the Titian and Veronese workshops in that instead of limiting his assistants to close versions, copies or preparatory work on a commission, he employed them mainly on enlargements and extensively altered variants of his original compositions. His son Domenico became his foreman and is said to have painted many portraits, although none can be attributed to him with certainty. The later paintings can thus be divided into those which are largely studio productions on the one hand and the visionary inspirations from Tintoretto's own hand on the other. A prime example of the latter is "The Last Supper", the culmination of a lifetime's development of this subject, from the traditional frontal arrangement of his youth to this startling diagonally viewed composition. Tintoretto had great influence on Venetian painting, but the artist who most fruitfully absorbed the visionary energy and intensity of his work was El Greco . At Michael Arnold Art we offer a complete online art experience © Michael Arnold Art .

All rights reserved Tintoretto Biography - Childhood, Life Achievements & Timeline Painters Tintoretto Biography Tintoretto was a famous Italian painter and an important proponent of the Renaissance school. This biography profiles his childhood, painting career, achievements and timeline. Quick Facts Jacopo Comin, Jacopo Tintoretto, Jacopo Tintoretto (Jacopo Robusti) Famous as Domenico Tintoretto Tintoretto [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons Tintoretto was a famous Italian painter and an important proponent of the Renaissance school. His body of work is mostly marked with startling and theatrical gestures, muscular characters with a clear and resolute viewpoint. The use of light and colour in his paintings exemplifies conventional âVenetian Schoolâ of paintings, as he was considered one of the most remarkable Venetian painters of the sixteenth century after Titian. He worked under the guidance of Titian for a brief period. He looked up to the exceptional structural procedure of Michelangelo and was fascinated by the use of bold colour by Titian and tried to blend the two techniques in his productions.

His studio was decorated with the inscription, âMichelangeloâs design and Titianâs Colorâ. Tintoretto was a very ambitious painter and his exceptional spirit and vigour in the art earned him the title, âIl Furiosoâ. His notable works include âThe Last Supperâ, âParadiseâ, âSusanna and the Eldersâ, âVulcan Surprising Venus and Marsâ, âThe Law and the Golden Calfâ, âSaint Mark Rescuing the Slaveâ and âChrist and the Adulteressâ. He was also called Jacopo Robusti in his young age while his original name Jacopo Comin (where âCominâ in local language refers to cumin) was later found out by âMuseo del Pradoâsâ curator Miguel Falomir. It was declared publicly during his retrospective at the Prado.

Childhood & Early Life He was born sometime in late September or early October, 1518 in Venice as the eldest son of a cloth dyer ( also called a tintore) Giovanni Battista Robusti among twenty-one children. He thus got his nickname Tintoretto which means the âthe dyerâs boyâ or the âlittle dyerâ. When the young Jacopo started scribbling and sketching the walls of the dyer, his knack for drawing was noticed by his father who sometime around 1533 took him to the famous painter Titian. Titian however sent Tintoretto back for good after only ten days of training. Hypothetically two possibilities of such action of Titian did the rounds, that he became envious seeing the fabulous productions of the young artist or that Jacopoâs art reflected such independent manner that he might not become a proper pupil. Though he remained an enthusiast of Titianâs work, he never became Titianâs acquaintance, while Titian and his followers maintained a refrained attitude towards him.

His untiring zeal led him learn the art on his own while living poorly and practicing with the few tools like bas-reliefs and casts that he could collect. He practiced and acquired expertise in wax and clay modelling that he self-studied from the various models like âNoonâ and âTwilightâ of his other role-model Michelangelo. Career From around 1539 he began working independently as a painter. He started getting commission from churches, civic buildings and from the Venetian elites and worked on several altarpieces, portraits and mythological scenes. His body of work is mostly marked with startling and theatrical gestures, muscular characters with a clear and resolute viewpoint. The use of light and colour in his paintings exemplifies conventional âVenetian Schoolâ of paintings. Though his independent style of work set him apart, his work was often linked with Mannerist style of painting prevalent during the Late Renaissance. To perceive the effect of light and shadow in his paintings that involved theatrical scenes with several figures in motion, he used to build up the scenes creating small stages with clay and wax figures.

Some of his early works including two mural paintings; âCavalry Fightâ and âBelshazzar's Feastâ and a painting of him along with his brother are no more. In 1546 he worked in the church âMadonna dellâOrtoâ and produced three prominent paintings, âPresentation of the Virgin in the Templeâ, âLast Judgmentâ and âWorship of the Golden Calfâ. His three remarkable productions that gave him acclaim were âFinding of the body of St Markâ, âMiracle of the Slaveâ and âSt Mark's Body Brought to Veniceâ which are now in the âGallerie dell'Accademiaâ, a museum gallery in Venice. These are three of the four paintings he created after receiving a commission from the âScuola di S. Marcoâ in 1548. His notable works in the âScuola di S. Marcoâ put an end to his endurance and he began getting sufficient work mainly on religious subjects.

Two such paintings are âThe Miracle of the Loaves and Fishesâ that he worked on from 1545 through 1550 and âSusanna and the Eldersâ from 1555 to 1556. Probably during 1560 he executed several paintings for the re-embellishment of the âDoge's Palaceâ including a portrait of Girolamo Priuli, the then doge. Many of his works were lost when the palace was gutted by fire in 1577. He worked for the confraternity building of the âScuola Grande di San Roccoâ from 1565 to 1567 and later from 1575 to 1588 creating several pieces for its ceilings and walls. His oeuvre encompassed different religious subjects including that from the life of Jesus Christ, scenes from the âOld Testamentâ and several sequential mythological paintings. Two such works are âCrucifixionâ and âPaschal Feast and Moses striking the Rockâ.

He then embarked upon painting the entire âScuola Grande di San Roccoâ and its neighbouring âSan Roccoâ church. In this pursuit, in November 1577 he placed a proposal of producing three paintings in a year with a yearly rate of 100 ducats which was granted. There are 52 of his noteworthy paintings in the church and the scuola. âChrist curing the Paralyticâ remains one of his remarkable works in the church, while those in the scuola include âAdoration of the Magiâ, âChrist carrying His Crossâ and âAdam and Eveâ. He began working anew with his colleague Paolo Veronese after the devastating fire in the âDoge's Palaceâ and executed some of his magnificent paintings.

Some of them are âThree Graces and Mercuryâ (1578), âEspousal of St Catherine to Jesusâ (from 1581 to 1584), âQueen of the Seaâ (from 1581 to 1584) and âCapture of Zara from the Hungarians in 1346 amid a Hurricane of Missilesâ (from 1584 to 1587). He became a member of the âScuola dei Mercantiâ in 1592. Some of his works that are held in the âUffizi Galleryâ are âLeda and the Swanâ, âPortrait of a Man with a Red Beardâ, and âChrist and the Samaritan Woman at the Wellâ. Two of his notable works on âGenesisâ namely, âAdam and Eveâ and âDeath of Abelâ are held in the âVenetian Academyâ.

âPresentation of Jesus in the Templeâ and âAnnunciation and Christ with the Woman of Samariaâ are kept in the church of the Carmine in Venice and in âS. Benedettoâ respectively. A recent research revealed that the painting âThe Embarkation of St Helena in the Holy Landâ which was wrongly attributed to painter Andrea Schiavone till 2012 was actually a work of Tintoretto as one of the three paintings of a series illustrating the saga of âSt Helena And The Holy Crossâ. Major Works The most distinguished and memorable painting of his life remains his magnanimous production, âParadiseâ for the âSala del Gran Consiglioâ of the Doges' Palace. It remains the most enormous painting ever done on a canvas with a size of 22.6 x 9.1 metres. A miniature sketch of the colossal painting that was offered by him as a proposal is at the âLouvre Museumâ in Paris and work on the main painting was initiated sometime in 1588 after receiving commission.

His later works contained more mysterious and darker displays exemplified by one of his masterpieces, the âLast Supperâ that he worked on from 1592 to 1594 for the church of âSan Giorgio Maggioreâ. The painting exhibits Christ and the apostles assemble around a table in a dark and shadowy hall while the adoring angels fill up the air subtly highlighting the darkness of the hall. Personal Life & Legacy He married Faustina de Vescovi in 1550 and the couple probably had seven children- two boys and five girls. His daughter Marietta Robusti was probably born out of his affair with a German woman. On May 31, 1594 he died and was buried beside his darling daughter Marietta in the âMadonna dell'Ortoâ church. Translate this page to Spanish, French, Hindi, Portuguese Pictures of Tintoretto Tintoretto (1518 - 1594) - Find A Grave Memorial Citt� Metropolitana di Venezia Veneto, Italy Italian Renaissance Artist.

His work is characterized by its muscular figures, dramatic gestures, and the bold use of perspective in the Mannerist style, while maintaining color and light attributable to the Venetian School. He was born Jacopo Comin in Venice, Republic of Venice, in present-day Italy, the oldest of 21 children but was also known as Jacopo Robusti in his youth, stemming from his father's defense of the gates of Padua against the imperial troops during the War with the League of Cambrai (1509 to 1516). His father was a dyer, or tintore by trade, from where he received the nickname of Tintoretto. As a child he began painting on the dyer's walls and his father took notice and around 1533 sent him to the art studio of the famed Italian painter Titian to determine if he possessed any artistic talent. After ten days Titian sent him home for reasons that are unclear. He sought no further teaching but studied on his own account with intensity and laborious zeal, working by night as well as by day.

He studied models of artist Michelangelo's "Dawn," "Noon," "Twilight," and "Night" and soon became proficient at wax and clay modeling. He became a close friend of painter Andrea Schiavone, with who he assisted in wall-paintings. Around 1546 he painted for the Church of the Madonna dell'Orto three of his leading works; the "Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple," the "Worship of the Golden Calf," and the "Last Judgment" (which was repainted). He accepted commission on a cost only basis for the latter two in order to make himself more prominent. In 1548 he was commissioned to paint four pictures in the Scuola Grande di San Marco; the "Finding of the Body of Saint Mark," the Saint Mark's Body Brought to Venice," "Saint Mark Rescuing a Saracen from Shipwreck," and the "Miracle of the Slave," which were well-received and finally established his place as a renown painter.

In 1560, after competing with four other artists and being selected to perform the work, he began his labor-intensive painting of the walls and ceilings of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, a project that would take 17 years to complete, with over 50 paintings at the scoula and adjacent Church of San Rocco.

Among his notable works there are the "Crucifixion," the "Plague of Serpents," the "Paschal Feast," "Moses Striking the Rock," "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," the "Assumption of the Virgin," and "Christ Curing the Paralytic." Later, in the Sala Delio Scrutinio, he painted the "Capture of Zara from the Hungarians in 1346 amid a Hurricane of Missiles," "Venice, Queen of the Sea," and the "Espousal of Saint Catherine to Jesus;" in the Sala dell Anticollegio he painted "Bacchus, with Ariadne Crowned by Venus," the "Three Graces and Mercury," "Minerva Discarding Mars," and the "Forge of Vulcan;" and in the Antichiesetta "Saint George and Saint Nicholas, with Saint Margaret" and "Saint Jerome and Saint Andrew.

Perhaps the crowning achievement of his life was the vast "Paradise," a 74 feet by 30 feet painting, reputed to be the largest painting ever accomplished on canvas, begun in 1588. Upon its completion, he rested and never painted any other significant work. In 1594 he became ill with severe stomach pains along with a fever that prevented him from sleeping and almost eating for two weeks and he died in Venice at the age of 75 and was entombed next to his favorite daughter, Marietta, who had died four years earlier. (bio by: William Bjornstad) Tintoretto: Venetian Mannerist Painter Training as an Artist Born Jacopo Robusti, little is known of his early life. Tintoretto was a nickname, derived as a result of his father's profession, a dyer (for which the Italian word is tintore). He was born in Venice, the eldest of 21 children. It is believed that he showed an early talent for drawing so his father took the young teenager to the studio of Titian to be apprenticed in painting . However, after only 2 weeks, Titian sent his new pupil home.

It has been speculated that the great master was jealous of his young apprentice's talent. However, it is more likely that Titian thought his pupil showed far too much independence to become a manageable pupil. Although we do not know if Tintoretto studied with any other painters, his early works show the influence of other artists, notably Andrea Schiavone, who specialized in small scale religious and mythological pictures. Tintoretto's early cinquecento works adhered quite strictly to the Mannerist tradition by following the conventions laid down by Parmigianino (1503-40), by their narrrative style and by their conformity with the ideas of Andrea Schiavone, as evident in the Virgin and Child with Six Saints (private collection, New York), the 14 ceiling panels of Mythological Scenes (Modena), the six Old Testament Scenes ( Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna ) and Apollo and Marsyas (Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut).

This early Emilian influence, which is also evident in Jesus among the Elders (1542, Museo del Duomo, Milan), led Tintoretto to develop a great admiration for Michelangelo (clearly visible in his works of the late 1540s) - a reverence that has given rise to the theory that Tintoretto travelled to Rome in 1547. There is no record of such a trip, but Michelangelo's art was well known in Venice at this time, through prints of his drawings and engravings. As it was, Tintoretto spent hours studying models, including models carved by Michelangelo. Like Titian, he became an expert in modelling in wax and clay, which was of great assistance to him in creating figures when arranging the content of his pictures. Sometimes he even used dead bodies as models, suspending them from a wooden box. Major Religious Commissions In his early career, Tintoretto reportedly worked for very small fees, and gained a large number of commissions as a result. But problems could still occur.

About 1548 he was commissioned by the Scuola Grande di San Marco - one of Venice's six Scuole Grandi or Major Guilds - to produce St Mark Freeing the Slave, which he duly did, only to have it rejected because it was insufficiently traditional. Fortunately, the resulting publicity gave him the reputation of being the most dynamic young painter in the city. This work marks the beginning of his connection with the religious confraternities, patrons who were to provide him with a constant supply of work. Henceforward, his career was basically the story of one major commission after another. The Scuola Grande di San Marco eventually accepted St Mark Freeing the Slave and in 1562 commissioned a further three-part cycle representing miracles worked posthumously by St Mark, including: St Mark Working Many Miracles, St Mark Rescuing a Saracen from Shipwreck, The Stealing of the Dead Body of St Mark, (all 1562-66, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice).

The 15th century Scuola Grande di San Rocco - more popular than most guilds owing to the fact that its patron saint (Saint Rocco of Montpellier) supposedly offered protection from the plague - was located on the Campo di San Rocco. Tintoretto was commissioned to decorate the interior, a huge project which took him 24 years to complete. During the 3-year period 1564-1567, he painted the 27 canvases on the ceiling and walls of the Sala dell'Albergo (committee room) on the subject of Christ's Passion; then during the 5-year period 1576-1581 he decorated the Sala Superiore (the Great Hall), with New Testament subjects on the walls and Old Testament scenes on the ceiling; during the 5 years from 1582 to 1587 he painted the eight large canvases in the Sala Inferiore (Ground Floor Hall) showing scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary and the Nativity of Christ; and finally in 1588 the altarpiece.

These works include his awesome Crucifixion (1565), Christ before Pilate (1565) and The Birth of Christ (1578-81). While the Scuola has numerous paintings by such great artists as Titian and Giorgione (1477-1510), it is the many paintings of Tintoretto that continue to inspire awe to this day. His rough, unorthodox use of brushstroke was criticized at the time, but future generations have appreciated it as a means of heightening drama and tension. In 1575, the Venetian municipal authorities commissioned Tintoretto and Veronese to redecorate the Palazzo Ducale (Doge's Palace) with a series of allegorical works, votive pictures and examples of history painting . Tintoretto assigned many of these pictures to his workshop, while he himself painted the four allegorical paintings Three Graces and Mercury, Minerva Sending Away Mars from Peace and Prosperity, Ariadne, Venus and Bacchus, and Vulcan's Forge (all 1576-77, Palazzo Ducale, Venice).

In the final two years of his life, when he was 75, he completed what many art historians consider to be his greatest masterpiece - the mystical, incandescent Last Supper (1592-4) - for the church of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice. For more about Tintoretto's Mannerist-style altarpiece painting, see: Venetian altarpieces (c.1500-1600). Portraiture In addition to frescoes and oils for ecclesistical patrons, Tintoretto also painted a large number of portraits, not least because of the social networking benefits they conferred, as well as the income they generated.

Influenced by Titian, the greatest Venetian portraitist of the High Renaissance, Tintoretto's portrait art includes works like: Portrait of a White-Bearded Man (1545, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), as well as portraits of Jacopo Sansovino (before 1546, Uffizi, Florence) Procurator Antonio Cappello (1551, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice); Doge Girolamo Priuli (1559, Private collection); Giovanni Paolo Cornaro (1561, Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Ghent); Doge Pietro Loredano (1570, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest); and Vincenzo Morosini (1580, National Gallery, London). For more information, please see: Venetian Portrait Painting (c.1400-1600). Style of Painting Tintoretto is noted for his blend of stylistic features: elongated forms, a dynamic articulation, linear arabesques linked to a forceful plasticity, all translated into a completely personal language and animated by an original handling of light.

Plus, there is a new conception of spatial depth, and an achievement of the "spectacular" through preliminary rough sketches and arrangements using small wax figures. This method of creating a painting is characteristic of the Last Supper (Venice, Church of S. Marcuola), Christ Washing the Feet of His Disciples (1547, Prado), and especially of the Miracle of St Mark Rescuing a Slave. In San Roccco Healing the Plague Victims (1549, Venice, Church of S. Rocco) the subjugation of colour to chiaroscuro produces the sense of a miracle and marks the first step towards Tintoretto's mastery of light.

From 1550 to 1552 his contact with the Venetian painting of the day shows in the way he adapted his style to that of Titian and in the new feeling for landscape that appears in Scenes from the Old Testament for the Scuola della Trinita (of which three, The Creation of Animals, Original Sin and The Death of Abel, are now in the Accademia), culminating in such masterpieces as Susannah and the Elders (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) and St George Rescuing the Princess (National Gallery, London), with their sparkling colours. From 1553 to 1555 he began lightening his palette under the influence of Paolo Veronese: Assumption of the Virgin (Church of S. Maria Assunta, Venice); six Scenes from the Old Testament (Prado); and Journey of St Ursula (Church of S. Lazzaro dei Mendicanti, Venice, ). (See: Titian and Venetian Colour Painting c.1500-76.) Tintoretto exploited an original, more intimate vein in a Last Supper in the Church of S.

Trovaso, Venice, which is stamped with religious fervour and executed in a popular style deriving from a simple observation of nature. Mature Works Tintoretto's maturity coincided with much greater boldness in his painting. During the period 1562 to 1566, the time of his second phase of work with the Scuola di S. Marco, he produced three pictures. In two of them, behind the 'theatrical' action which takes place in the foreground of the painting, there are striking architectonic perspectives. His talent for bravura appears in the amazing luminosity of the arches in the Discovery of the Body of St Mark (Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan) and in the deserted immensity of the square in the Removal of the Body of St Mark (Venice, Accademia). The third picture, St Mark Rescuing a Slave (Venice, Accademia), is remarkable for the dramatic restlessness of the crowded composition, with its violent movement and bold foreshortening .

In this same decade he painted two gigantic canvases, The Adoration of the Golden Calf and The Last Judgement, for the apse of the Church of the Madonna dell'Orto, preceding these by the organ shutters (The Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple; The Vision of St Peter; The Martyrdom of St Paul for the same church. Mastery of Mannerism At The Scuola di S. Rocco The cycle of paintings in the Scuola di San Rocco remains the supreme testimony to Tintoretto's art. The work was executed con furia and it is in the spontaneity and the extraordinary rapidity of the brushstrokes, more than in the sometimes dizzying movement of the figures, that the dynamic force of his art rests. In parallel with the work in the Scuola di S. Rocco, Tintoretto engaged in numerous other projects. But the same powerful emotion, coming from his visionary effects of light (St Roch in Prison, 1567, Choir of the Church of S. Rocco) or the rhetorical force of the action (The Last Supper, Church of S. Paolo), is evident in the best works of this period.

In 1576 during his second phase of work in the Scuola di S. Rocco, (notably The Bronze Serpent, Moses Striking Water from the Rock, The Gathering of the Manna and other Biblical scenes) Tintoretto attains the poetic highpoint of his art, and displays complete mastery of the Mannerist style. The fantastic effects of light accentuate the vertiginous space, receding diagonals and other dramatic features, and fuse the separate parts together. A strong moral feeling underlies the drama. Tintoretto and The Essence of Mannerist Painting Typical of many Mannerist artists , Tintoretto sought a pictorial language which made it possible for viewers to sense the spiritual content - the divine. The reality-fixated High Renaissance artists , who so casually introduced mythological figures and Christian saints into this world, proved unhelpful in this regard. The Mannerists' aim had explicitly not been to create a deceptively real picture space which the viewer imagined he could enter at any time; their aim, rather, was to create paintings which were not a depiction of this world, with an aura of strange, divine spheres.

Because there is no way of visualizing such a supernatural world, the painters were thrown back on the imagination. Like Tintoretto, they staged their stories like theatre-directors. Employing unreal, stage-like lighting with dramatic effects of light and dark, and with highly independent perspectives or daring foreshortenings, they tried to distance their representations from real life. They transformed religious scenes into enthralling scenarios. A brief comparison of the Last Suppers of Leonardo da Vinci and Tintoretto clearly shows the difference in vision and approach: in contrast to Leonardo's balanced, symmetrical frontal composition, Tintoretto's pictorial space is given a dynamic quality by the table placed diagonally to the picture surface. In Leonardo's painting Jesus was what the Christian faith said he was: quite human and quite divine at the same time. In Tintoretto's picture this peaceful coexistence falls apart again. There is a clear difference between the hustle and bustle of the world in the foreground, where the servants are busily fetching food and drink, and the theological story in the depth of the painting.

These two levels are united only by the lighting and the ecstatic vitality of the pictorial structure as a whole, which is lent compositional equilibrium by a barely visible band of angels swirling above the whole scene. That supernatural atmosphere, a suggestive style of painting - in which real and unreal, the world, of the spirit and the perceptible world can no longer be distinguished - had been totally alien to the painters of the Renaissance. In the Baroque, from about 1600, the intellectual pictorial worlds, created by the Mannerists as early as the 16th century, reach their apogee. The painters of the Baroque either leave earthly reality behind, or create a confusing interplay of illusion and reality. The compelling effect of this kind of illusionistic painting as made possible by the perfect mastery of aerial and linear perspective was recognized above all by the Church Fathers. In the face of the rumblings of the Reformation in the north, which were growing menacingly loud, this type of suggestive art struck the Catholic Church as an extraordinarily appropriate way of making faith attractive.

Thus at the Council of Trent, which signalled the Counter-Reformation in the Catholic countries, it was decided in 1562 that henceforward the mystical and supernatural sides of religious experience would be given prominence. Tintoretto was the supreme exponent of this idiom, and a major contributor to Catholic Counter-Reformation Art in Venice. Workshop and Legacy From the late 1570s, an increasing number of Tintoretto's commissions - aside from those at the Scuola di San Rocco - show a decline in quality caused by most of the actual painting being performed by assistants. (These included his sons Domenico (1560-1635) and, Marco (1561-1637) The four Allegories in honour of the Doges of Venice in the Sala dell' Anticollegio in the Doge's Palace (completed in 1577) are by Tintoretto's own hand, and have a serenity and expressive flexibility typical of the artist.

However, in the eight scenes depicting the Splendour of the Gonzagas, commissioned by Guglielmo Gonzaga a little before 1579 and finished in May 1580 (Alte Pinakothek, Munich), the enormous amount of work done by assistants is distressingly obvious, despite the important contribution of his son, Domenico. His last monumental work was Paradise (c.1588, Palazzo Ducale, Venice) which remains one of the biggest pictures ever painted, measuring 74 feet by 30 feet. Tintoretto painted without respite until his last months, crowning his career with the magnificent Last Supper in the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore. Tintoretto exerted a huge influence on Mannerist as well as Baroque art , but above all, on the work of El Greco. His works can be seen in a number of the best art museums across the globe. For a general view of the influence of Venice painters, see: Legacy of Venetian Painting on European art.

In his Lives of the Most Eminent Italian Architects, Painters and Sculptors, the historian Giorgio Vasari (1511-74) wrote that Tintoretto was "the most extraordinary brain that the art of painting has produced."  For more about art and design in Venice, see: Venetian Renaissance architecture (1400-1600).  For information about the best artists, see: Homepage . 1000+ images about Venetian painter: Tintoretto on Pinterest | Oil on canvas, Nyc and A lady Pinterest • The world’s catalog of ideas Venetian painter: Tintoretto Tintoretto (1518 – May 31, 1594), real name Jacopo Comin, was an Italian painter and a notable exponent of the Renaissance school. For his phenomenal energy in painting he was termed Il Furioso. His work is characterized by its muscular figures, dramatic gestures, and bold use of perspective in the Mannerist style, while maintaining color and light typical of the Venetian School. 17 Pins262 Followers

Question: Which painter was born Jacopo Comin, later changed to Jacopo Robusti?
Answer: Tintoretto