Jacopo Tintoretto

(1) Jacopo Tintoretto

(b Venice, 1519; d Venice, 31 May 1594).

He was the most prolific painter working in Venice in the later 16th century and is recorded away from his native city only in 1580 in connection with a commission for the ruling Gonzaga family at Mantua. In his early career he struggled to achieve recognition, which finally came in 1548 with a work commissioned by the Scuola Grande di S Marco. In his mature years he worked extensively on decorations for the Doge’s Palace (see Venice, §IV, 6(ii)) and for the meeting-house of the Scuola Grande di S Rocco, on which he was occupied from 1564 until 1567 and between 1575 and 1588 (see Venice, §V, 4). In addition to his religious and mythological works, Jacopo also painted many portraits of prominent Venetians. He was, however, never wholly accepted by the leading aristocratic families that dominated Venetian cultural life, and to some extent this hindered his patronage. The swift, abbreviated style that characterizes much of his work caused controversy among contemporaries, and the lack of conventional finish was seen by some as merely a result of carelessness or overhasty execution. Despite a long and busy career, Jacopo Tintoretto apparently never became rich, and in 1600 his widow submitted a plea to the Venetian State for financial help to support her family.

I. Life and work.

1. Before 1548.

His father, Giovanni Battista Robusti, was a cloth-dyer, a common and respectable occupation in Renaissance Venice. Nonetheless, the Robusti do not appear to have enjoyed higher citizen (cittadino originario) status. Jacopo’s adopted nickname, meaning ‘the little dyer’, advertised rather than concealed his artisan background. The details of Tintoretto’s artistic training are not known, although early sources report that he was expelled from Titian’s workshop after a short period, as a result either of the jealousy (Ridolfi, 1642) or incomprehension (Boschini, 1660) of his master. The marked distance from Titian’s chromatic idiom in Tintoretto’s earliest works (e.g. the Holy Family with St Jerome and the Procurator Girolamo Marcello, 1537–40; ex-priv. col., Lucerne, see Pallucchini and Rossi, p. 292; and the Holy Family with SS Zacharias, ?Elizabeth, John, Catherine and Francis, 1540; priv. col., see Pallucchini and Rossi, p. 295) suggests that these romanticizing elaborations have a factual basis. The linear and dynamic values of the paintings indicate that Tintoretto was apprenticed to an artist working in Venice, but influenced by central Italian Mannerism. Bonifazio de’ Pitati, Paris Bordone and Andrea Schiavone have variously been suggested as his teachers.

Jacopo Tintoretto was practising as an independent master as early as 1539. Ridolfi mentioned his collaboration with Andrea Schiavone and other ‘painters of lesser fortune’ in the production of cassone panels. While the connection with Schiavone is certainly important on a formal level, it is also indicative of Tintoretto’s lack of artistic standing at this stage. The sets of cassone panels attributable to Tintoretto (e.g. those depicting six scenes from the Old Testament, c. 1543–4; Vienna, Ksthist. Mus.) are characterized by a rapid, rough technique in which all form is radically abbreviated. This visual shorthand was, to some extent, an established feature of cassone painting in 16th-century Venice and reflected the economic strictures governing the production of this type of work. Tintoretto’s introduction of an analogous technique into the realm of monumental painting distinguished him from his contemporaries.

Jacopo Tintoretto: The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes, oil...Tintoretto’s prestezza (rapid, abbreviated technique) is prominent in a sequence of large religious narrative paintings, including Christ among the Doctors (c. 1540–42; Milan, Mus. Duomo), the Adoration of the Shepherds (c. 1544–5; two versions, Cambridge, Fitzwilliam; Verona, Castelvecchio), the Supper at Emmaus (c. 1545–6; Budapest, Mus. F.A.) and Christ and the Adulteress (c. 1546–7; Dresden, Gemäldegal. Alte Meister). These laterali (horizontal paintings) were probably made to hang on the side walls of Venetian chapels, and Tintoretto’s art is at its most progressive in his early period within this relatively new picture type in Venice (see also The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes; c. 1545–50; New York, Met.). These works typically feature active figure groups, set in a forward plane to maximize an effect of formal monumentality and narrative intensity. The figures are shown in dynamic, twisting or foreshortened poses reminiscent of contemporary Mannerist painting but typically have more mass and energy and lack the courtly elegance of, for example, Parmigianino or Francesco Salviati. The earlier compositions are symmetrical, with the protagonists placed centrally. In subsequent works, such as the two versions of Christ Washing the Feet of the Disciples (c. 1547–8; Madrid, Prado; Gateshead, Shipley A.G.), the insistent off-centre perspective reflects Tintoretto’s concern to make his painting respond to its intended location. It originally hung on the right wall of the presbytery at S Marcuola, Venice, and the perspective assumes that the viewer is positioned to the right, that is, in the nave. The central dramatic exchange between Christ and the Apostle Peter is, accordingly, placed at the extreme right of the pictorial field, at the point nearest the congregation.

Although Tintoretto produced as many as ten façade frescoes in Venice (L. Foscari, Affreschi esterni a Venezia (Milan, 1936), pp. 61–7, 132), knowledge of this activity is limited to the surviving fragments from the Palazzo (Ca’) Soranzo (1540–45; Venice, Cojazzi priv. col., see Pallucchini and Rossi, p. 299) and some 18th-century engravings by Anton Maria Zanetti (ii) of the paintings on this building and on the Ca’ Gussoni (1550–52). Nonetheless, the evidence again suggests a concern with formal monumentality at the expense of more traditional Venetian decorative and chromatic values. The Ca’ Gussoni frescoes were closely based on Michelangelo’s sculptures of Dawn and Dusk in the Medici Chapel in S Lorenzo, Florence, and it is likely that Tintoretto owned small models of these works. A group of early drawings after the Medici figures (Day, Oxford, Christ Church Lib. and Paris, Louvre; Dusk, U. London, Courtauld Inst. Gals and Florence, Uffizi) and other sculptures by Michelangelo (Samson and the Philistines, eight sheets, including Cambridge, MA, Fogg, and Berlin, Kupferstichkab.; St Damian, Sarasota, FL, Ringling Mus. A.) confirms Tintoretto’s early interest in the Florentine artist. His complementary concern with Classical and contemporary sculpture is stressed by early sources (Borghini; Ridolfi, 1642; Boschini, 1660).

When Tintoretto was commissioned to produce paintings of a more mainstream type, his style was comparatively timid. The Apollo and Marsyas (1545; Hartford, CT, Wadsworth Atheneum) is probably identifiable with one of the two ceiling paintings commissioned by Pietro Aretino for his house and for which he thanked Tintoretto in a letter of 15 February 1545. The work is relatively conventional, as are Tintoretto’s earliest portraits, which typically utilize schemes that recall Titian (e.g. the Portrait of a Man Aged 25, 1545; London, Hampton Court, Royal Col.). Their small size and non-official character (e.g. the head and shoulders Portrait of a Bearded Man, 1546; Florence, Uffizi; and the Portrait of a Gentleman, 1546–8; Madrid, Prado) indicate the limited social range of Tintoretto’s portrait clientele at this stage.

Tintoretto painted very few altarpieces before 1548. The conservative Christ Blessing with SS Mark and Gall (1540–45; Venice, Mus. Dioc. S. Apollonia) and St Demetrius with Zuan Pietro Ghisi as Donor (1544–7; Venice, S Felice) feature static figures set in the traditional vertical space. Ridolfi mentioned the artist’s exhibition of ready-made paintings at the Rialto, a common strategy for struggling painters. Tintoretto did, however, gain early support from the smaller, non-noble confraternities. The Presentation in the Temple (1540–43; Venice, S Maria del Carmelo) may have been commissioned by the Scuola dell’Arte dei Pescivendoli (the trade guild of the fishmongers), and a frieze (destr.) in the meeting-house of the Scuola dell’Arte dei Sartori (the trade guild of the tailors) also dates from this period.

In 1547 Tintoretto painted his earliest known version of the Last Supper (Venice, S Marcuola), a subject he depicted at least eight times during his career. With the exception of the versions for the Scuola di S Rocco (1578–81) and the Benedictines of S Giorgio Maggiore (1591–2), these paintings were commissioned by parish-based Scuole del Sacramento. These small, socially humble confraternities were committed to the upkeep of the reserved sacrament. The paintings they typically commissioned were laterali to decorate either the chapels where the sacrament was kept or the Scuola’s church meeting-place. The S Marcuola Last Supper follows established models and has a symmetrical composition, with the table parallel to the picture plane. However, the newly popular location—in a small parish church—is reflected in the figure types of the apostles. Tintoretto’s rapid brushwork emphasizes the rough textures of their drapery, flesh and hair. Comparisons with Leonardo’s prototype (1494–8; Milan, S Maria delle Grazie; see fig.) show that Tintoretto de-individualized the apostles in order to stress their shared social and spiritual characteristics. This, like the limits set on the apostles’ vocabulary of expression and gesture, allowed the painter to create a convincing image of popular religious experience.

2. 1548–55.

Jacopo Tintoretto: St Mark Rescuing the Slave, oil on canvas,...The canvas of St Mark Rescuing the Slave (1547–8; Venice, Accad.), commissioned from Tintoretto by the Scuola Grande di S Marco, was initially rejected and sent back to the painter. This reaction suggests the unprecedented nature of the image in the Venetian tradition, and it was this work that finally brought the artist recognition throughout Venice. Every element in the picture serves to amplify the subject’s dramatic and emotional impact. Full bodily movement replaces facial expression as the prime indicator of individual response, while different incidents within the story are shown simultaneously so as to reinforce narrative meaning. In St Roch Healing the Plague Victims (1549; Venice, S Rocco), commissioned by the rival Scuola Grande di S Rocco, Tintoretto used chiaroscuro for the first time as an important compositional device. The distribution of light draws attention to the sick at the expense of St Roch himself, and while this inversion of accepted pictorial convention has formal precedents in central Italian Mannerism, here its significance is expressive and ascetic rather than arbitrary and aesthetic. More generally, the essentially communicative and moral intention of Tintoretto’s formal manipulations distance his work from contemporary Mannerism.

Tintoretto’s work in the following years has been described as ‘an expression of orthodoxy’ (Tietze), and a new deference to established pictorial values in Venice is already noticeable in, for example, St Martial in Glory with SS Peter and Paul (1548–9; Venice, S Marziale), which uses a conservative pyramidal design. In the paintings decorating the organ shutters at the church of the Madonna dell’Orto, Venice (outer doors: the Presentation of the Virgin, 1552–3; inner doors: the Martyrdom of St Paul and St Peter’s Vision of the Cross, 1556), glowing reds and golds replace the cool colours that predominate in earlier works. The Presentation of the Virgin is also typical of this phase in its explicit reference to Titian’s well-known version of the subject (1538; Venice, Accad.). Ridolfi’s anecdote about Tintoretto’s eclectic ambition to combine Michelangelo’s disegno with Titian’s colore is relevant only in this period. Paintings such as the Original Sin and Cain Killing Abel (both 1550–53; Venice, Accad.), from the cycle of paintings commissioned by the Scuola della Trinità, demonstrate a continuing Michelangelesque interest in the nude in movement, but the figures are set in Venetian-style landscapes that bind them within a naturalistic ambience of light and air.

A group of cabinet paintings with mythological or apocryphal subjects (e.g. Susanna and the Elders, 1550–55; several versions, including Paris, Louvre, and Vienna, Ksthist. Mus.; the Rescue of Arsinoë, 1554–6; Dresden, Gemäldegal. Alte Meister; Venus, Vulcan and Mars, 1550–55; Munich, Alte Pin.) also draws on established Venetian models. The female protagonists typically assume complex, diagonal postures, abandoning the traditional arrangement of form in order to accord with the underlying axis of the picture frame, and the paintings are generally highly finished and detailed, employing bright and varied colours. Tintoretto’s portraits from this period are characterized by precise individualization, bold chiaroscuro and the suggestion of rapid movement (e.g. the Portrait of Lorenzo Soranzo, 1553; Vienna, Ksthist. Mus.). Portraits of important patricians (e.g. that of the Soranzo Family, 1550–65; Milan, Castello Sforzesco, and Nicolò Priuli, c. 1549; Venice, Ca’ d’Oro) testify to the increasing social range of his patronage.

By 1553 Tintoretto had contributed a painting (probably showing Pope Alexander III Excommunicating Barbarossa) (c. 1553; destr. 1577) to the prestigious Alexander cycle in the Sala del Maggiore Consiglio in the Doge’s Palace and assumed the task of supplying votive pictures for retiring officials of the Magistrato del Sale at the Palazzo dei Camerlenghi (e.g. St Louis of Toulouse with St George and the Princess, 1552; Venice, Accad.). Paolo Veronese, however, dominated the field of official commissions at this time, and his success elicited a prompt response from Tintoretto, who, in a series of small ceiling paintings (Susanna and the Elders, Esther and Ahasuerus, Judith and Holofernes, Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife and the Finding of Moses, all c. 1554–5; Madrid, Prado) and in several portraits (e.g. the Portrait of a Bearded Man, c. 1553–5; Montreal, Mus. F.A.), showed his willingness to experiment with the newcomer’s decorative use of colour. Tintoretto’s interest was not merely aesthetic, however, and Ridolfi reported that he ‘stole’ Veronese’s commission for an altarpiece for the church of the Crociferi by promising to paint in his rival’s manner. The resulting painting, the Assumption of the Virgin (c. 1554–5; Venice, Accad.), distinctly recalls the work of Veronese in style, employing opaque patches of strong local colour to connect planes and deny movement into depth.

3. 1556–74.

In the later 1550s Tintoretto renewed his experiments with pictorial space, as can be seen in a number of portraits that combine complex, foreshortened architectural settings and landscape backgrounds, for example the Portrait of a Soldier Aged 30 (1555–60; Vienna, Ksthist. Mus.). In the Pool of Bethesda (1559; Venice, Scu. Grande S Rocco), the compressed space becomes a metaphor for the sufferings of the crowd of lepers who struggle within it. The painting demonstrates Tintoretto’s increasing interest in large-scale compositions in which individual form is subordinated to broader sequences, where the overall sense is articulated by a reduced number of key movements or gestures. In the enormous choir paintings (c. 1560–63) at the Madonna dell’Orto this devaluation of individual form is implemented through chiaroscuro. In the Last Judgement, from this cycle, free-floating figures are arranged in contrasting subgroups of twos or threes, with broken strips of light closely following their forms. Their illuminated movements thus act as directional pointers, encouraging the eye to move quickly across them.

Jacopo Tintoretto: Removal of the Body of St Mark, oil...In the cycle of paintings commissioned by Tommaso Rangone for the Scuola Grande di S Marco in 1562—the Finding of the Body of St Mark (Milan, Brera), the Removal of the Body of St Mark and St Mark Saving the Saracen (both Venice, Accad.)—space is created solely to enhance the scenic or dramatic effect. In both the Finding and the Removal the linear logic of the emptied, boxlike perspective vistas is undermined by an irrational play of light and shade. Both paintings suggest the simultaneous existence of different levels of reality through the use of a range of pictorial techniques. The detailed modelling of the foreground group in the Removal contrasts strikingly with the sketchily rendered piazza and the fleeing Alexandrians beyond, while in the Finding, the most commanding physical presence is that of the visionary figure of St Mark, whose miraculous appearance brings about a radical confusion of material and spiritual realities.

Jacopo Tintoretto: Christ before Pilate, oil on canvas, 5.5?3.8 m,...Tintoretto further developed this visionary-epic style of religious narrative in the paintings (1565–7) for the Sala dell’Albergo of the Scuola Grande di S Rocco and in such other Scuola paintings as the Descent into Limbo and the Crucifixion (both 1568; Venice, S Cassiano). Vasari reported that Tintoretto gained the initial commission for the Sala dell’Albergo paintings only by ‘illegal’ means: he donated and installed the ceiling canvas of St Roch in Glory (1564; in situ), so undermining the proposed competition. The painting’s overt reference to Titian’s famous Assumption of the Virgin (1516–18; S Maria Gloriosa dei Frari) perhaps reflects an attempt to appeal to the conservative tastes of the members of the Scuola. In the following year Tintoretto was admitted to membership of the confraternity and thereafter played an active role in its organizational and devotional life. The security of his position seems to have encouraged the experimental style in such subsequent paintings as the Crucifixion (1565), the Road to Calvary, the Ecce homo and Christ before Pilate (all 1566–7; in situ). The composition of the enormous Crucifixion is conceived as a flattened circle, arranged around the iconic figure of Christ. The picture holds in suspension different realities: the naturalistic depiction of physical effort in the groups raising the thieves’ crosses contrasts with the spiritual effort embodied in the hieratic group of mourners at the centre. The combination of idealized pathos with raw artisan action allows the painting the socially inclusive, epic quality that became a feature of Tintoretto’s subsequent work at S Rocco.

In this period Tintoretto also received further commissions from the Scuole del Sacramento for paintings of the Last Supper. In the S Felice version (1559; Paris, St-François-Xavier) one edge of the table continues to lie parallel to the picture plane, but its form recedes into depth, with Christ removed to the further end. Despite the apparent symmetry of the composition, important concessions are made to the painting’s location—on the left wall of the Cappella Maggiore—and to its patrons. The gesture of the apostle at the foreground left facilitates visual entry from that point, and the traditionally sacred space is used to include contemporary portraits of the Scuola’s Guardian (erased probably as early as June 1560; Pallucchini and Rossi, i, p. 179), Scrivener and Vicar. In the S Simeon Grande painting (c. 1561–3), the asymmetry is much more radical, with the table set at an oblique angle to the picture plane and Christ removed from his traditional central position. In the versions at S Trovaso (c. 1556–7) and S Polo (c. 1570) Tintoretto most radically broke with the compositional frontality that traditionally reinforced in the Last Supper the quality of a hieratic and timeless icon.

In the S Trovaso painting, made to hang on the right wall of the chapel, the shift in compositional axis is undertaken in accordance with an imagined viewer positioned obliquely to the picture plane, at the chapel entrance. This subjectivizes the image, suggesting that the composition unravels as an extension of the observer’s own sight line. The Last Supper is set in a dingy basement, crowded with apostles who are shown less as biblical patriarchs than as contemporary Venetians of the lower classes. This reflects the expected social scope of the painting’s viewing public. However, other planes of reality are also suggested. The artisan apostles are set in the foreground, nearest to the transition point between fictive and real space. As the eye moves into depth, gestures, responses and figure types are increasingly removed from these naturalistic coordinates. In the S Polo version the intrusion of the outside world into the hieratically fixed space of the Last Supper is again emphasized, by the inclusion of a servant, two beggars, a donor portrait and a landscape. The centrifugal composition explodes outwards from the dynamic central figure of Christ, forcing the viewer’s attention back to the subsidiary figures towards the edges of the picture.

In the context of patrician patronage Tintoretto’s mature style was very different. After the election of Doge Girolamo Priuli (reg 1559–67), who was a friend of Rangone, Tintoretto’s career as a state painter flourished. He took over from Titian the role of producing ducal portraits (e.g. Doge Girolamo Priuli, c. 1559; three versions, Los Angeles, CA, Getty Mus.; Detroit, MI, Inst. A.; Venice, Accad.) and was subsequently commissioned to produce a whole range of official imagery. Tintoretto’s first ceiling decoration for the Venetian State, the canvases depicting Doge Girolamo Priuli with ?St Mark, Peace and Justice, surrounded by four Old Testament scenes and the Seasons (c. 1564–5, Venice, Doge’s Pal., Sala dell’Atrio Quadrato), is characterized by a tightness of handling and high finish that combine with strong local coloration to generate a primarily decorative effect. A similar restraint is evident in such official votive pictures as the Virgin and Child with SS Sebastian, Mark and Theodore, Venerated by Three Treasurers (c. 1567; Venice, Accad.), which utilize orderly, decorous compositions and where relatively static forms are placed parallel to the picture plane.

The style of Tintoretto’s mature portraits is as varied as that in his narrative paintings. The public context of the official portraits (e.g. Doge Pietro Loredan, c. 1567–70; two versions, Melbourne, N.G. Victoria; Budapest, Mus. F.A.) precluded expressive experimentation, but the portraits of figures from the Venetian intellectual–artistic milieu (e.g. Jacopo Sansovino, c. 1566; Florence, Uffizi) are less formal, and their style and technique are adapted to the personality and interests of the sitter. Nonetheless, the public–private distinction increasingly broke down. In the Venetian Senator (c. 1570; Lille, Mus. B.-A.), the focusing of concentration on the face and the simplicity of pose and setting newly suggest an inwardness that stands in expressive contrast to the sitter’s public office.

4. 1575 and after.

Tintoretto’s most prolific period was the final two decades of his life. In addition to his extensive work at the Scuola Grande di S Rocco (1575–88), he played a major role in the redecoration of the Doge’s Palace after the fires of 1574 and 1577. The range of his patronage also broadened following Titian’s death in 1576, with commissions from the courts at Prague (c. 1577–8), Mantua (1578–80) and the Escorial (1583 and 1587). While such foreign expansion may have been an attempt to take on Titian’s mantle as Venetian painter to the aristocracies of Europe, Tintoretto’s production of religious paintings, mythologies and portraits for a local clientele did not diminish.

(i) The meeting-house of the Scuola Grande di S Rocco.

Following his work (1565–7) on the Sala dell’Albergo, Tintoretto was commissioned to decorate the rest of the meeting-house in a piecemeal fashion. The artist himself played an active role in generating a demand for paintings and developing an iconographic programme. His series of petitions (July 1575–March 1577) offering to provide paintings for the Sala Superiore ceiling at a greatly discounted price culminated with a proposal (Nov 1577) to execute paintings for the walls and any further work the Scuola might require. He undertook to produce three paintings a year in return for an annuity of 100 ducats. The production of cheap paintings at speed played an important role in determining the style and technique subsequently employed. It was apparently Tintoretto’s suggestion that the initial ceiling painting should show the Brazen Serpent (1575–6), an Old Testament type of the Crucifixion that could stand as an introduction to the Sala dell’Albergo Passion cycle. The large ceiling canvases that followed allude to the Christian Sacraments of Baptism (1577; Moses Striking the Rock) and the Eucharist (1577; Gathering of the Manna). The placing of the latter nearest to the altar, however, suggested a new longitudinal emphasis orientated away from the Sala dell’Albergo. The paintings feature complex, foreshortened figure groups silhouetted against a broken, flickering light that emanates from a supernatural source deep within the picture. Space is arbitrary, with local recessions replacing any continuous perspective system. Landscape is reduced to a schematic minimum, with the effect of further loosening naturalistic form.

The decision to commission paintings for the walls necessitated an iconographic reorientation, five transversal axes being established by the correspondences between the Old Testament scenes on the ceiling and those from the Life of Christ on the walls (1578–81). The iconographic connection was reinforced by the partial repetition in the wall sequence of the compositional schemes in the central ceiling paintings. The rotating composition of the Brazen Serpent is broadly repeated in the Ascension and Resurrection below, while the diagonal horizon in the Gathering of the Manna is picked up in the related wall scenes showing the Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes and the Raising of Lazarus. Moreover, individual forms originating in the three central ceiling canvases reappear, albeit with variations, in thematically related wall scenes (e.g. God in the Brazen Serpent is partially repeated in the Christ of the Ascension).

The iconographic and formal dominance of the ceiling also has the effect of freeing the paintings on the walls from the lateral scansion traditional to narrative cycles in Venice, allowing each painting an unprecedented independence from its neighbour. In many paintings, compositional dislocation is taken to new extremes (e.g. the Nativity and the Agony in the Garden). Working in conjunction with the dominant chiaroscuro, which subdues local colour and simplifies form throughout the cycle, the episodic space subdivides each composition into distinct temporal and narrative units, isolating separate moments within the text. Thus, conventional sequential representation is replaced by narrative simultaneity, requiring the viewer to reconstruct the connecting links.

The wall scenes are, typically, heavily populated, while individual figures are radically abbreviated. Facial expression is concealed through foreshortenings and cast shadows, and the range of movements and gestures employed is relatively limited and repetitious. These formal devices negate any individuality and generate a sense, instead, of the shared material and spiritual status of those who experience Christ’s miracles. In many of these works the figure of Christ, displaced from the compositional centre, occupies a secondary position towards the picture margins, while the role of the recipients of miraculous salvation is promoted (e.g. the Pool of Bethesda and the Last Supper). As in the earlier S Polo version of the Last Supper, that in the Sala Superiore also includes beggars, one of whom is, by a trick of perspective, placed next to Christ. An ideal of sacred poverty is a leitmotif throughout the cycle.

The prominence given to groups of the sick, poor and hungry in the wall paintings of this room was probably designed to refer to the charitable activities of the Scuola, but the pictorial inversions also suggest Tintoretto’s reformist insistence on the essential equality of man in Christ. The form of Christianity conceived in the Sala Superiore overturns all social distinctions and is, in this sense, both open and popular. In keeping with this emphasis, the eight wall scenes in the Sala Terrena (Aug 1581–Aug 1587) stress the poverty of the Holy Family. Although it has sometimes been assumed that the iconography of the Sala Terrena paintings is confused, the focus on Christ’s infancy acts as a precursor to the Christocentric theme of the paintings in the rooms above. The secondary emphasis on the Virgin is wholly in keeping with the teachings of the Counter-Reformation. Two smaller canvasses may show the prophetic meeting between the Virgin and St Elizabeth in Egypt (as recorded in the apocryphal gospel of St James), while the Assumption of the Virgin prefigures the Ascension of Christ in the Sala Superiore above.

In the Annunciation visionary spirituality dynamically obtrudes into the context of artisan life, and analogous social relocations of the sacred narrative inform the Flight into Egypt and the Adoration of the Magi. Fluid variations of style and technique characterize the Sala Terrena cycle, suggesting the interpenetration of different levels of reality. The sketchy treatment of the visionary landscapes in the Marian paintings contrasts with the closely detailed naturalism of the Flight into Egypt. Colour and light are also manipulated with a new expressive freedom. The drained, monochromatic tones of the Massacre of the Innocents contrasts with the explosive golds of the Assumption.

The detailing of physiognomy and costume in the Adoration of the Magi and the Presentation in the Temple suggests workshop participation. However, unlike in the contemporary cycles painted for aristocratic patrons, Tintoretto’s own hand remained dominant at the Scuola. In his final petition of 1577 he stressed that his work was undertaken ‘to show my great love for this venerated Scuola of ours, and the devotion I have for the glorious St Roch’. His personal involvement in the life of the confraternity continued long after the decorations were complete. But concerted opposition to Tintoretto within the Scuola is recorded as late as February 1578. This may have had a basis in artistic taste and cultural position rather than private animosity. The cittadini originarii who dominated the Venetian Scuole Grandi typically emulated their aristocracy in artistic matters, and it seems likely that Tintoretto’s assertively independent style, with its popularizing emphasis on the original communal ideals of the confraternity, was not to the taste of certain of the more socially ambitious members. In addition to the total of two painted ceilings and twenty-eight wall paintings executed for the meeting-house, Tintoretto also painted the altarpiece of the Vision of St Roch (1588; in situ) and a painting for the Scuola staircase landing showing the Visitation (1588).

(ii) Other works.

A new degree of stylistic and technical variability is evident in Tintoretto’s later work. In laterali for Venetian parish churches (e.g. six histories of St Catherine, 1582–5, Venice, Patriarcato, on deposit; Christ Washing the Feet of the Disciples, 1588–90, Venice, S Moisè), Tintoretto utilized a broken chiaroscuro, disjointed spatial arrangements, a limited, sombre palette and a rough surface finish. At the Doge’s Palace, he developed a richly coloured decorative modification of this style, using heavy forms set in a forward plane to c