The Artist
In 1568, the Tuscan artist, critic, and biographer Giorgio
Vasari introduced his readers to Tintoretto by describing
the artist as “swift, resolute, fantastic, and extravagant, and
the most extraordinary brain that the art of painting has
ever produced, as may be seen from all his works and from
the fantastic compositions of his scenes...” His praise was
followed by a serious reprimand, that Tintoretto “left as
finished works sketches still so rough that the brush-strokes
may be seen, done more by chance and vehemence than
with judgment and design.” Although Vasari predictably
emphasized Central Italian reason and disegno over freedom
of application and invention, his portrayal of Tintoretto as a
prolific, brilliantly inventive, and unconventional artist who
covered the walls of Venice with dynamic, loosely painted
and rapidly executed paintings is a fair assessment that was
shared by many of his fellow Venetians.
JACOPO ROBUSTI, (CALLED TINTORETTO)
ITALIAN (VENETIAN SCHOOL), 1519−1594
The Trinity Adored by the Heavenly Choir
c. 1590
Oil on canvas
Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation
Provenance: Prof. Dal Zotto Collection, Venice; ContiniBonacossi Collection, Florence; Samuel H. Kress Collection,
New York, acquired 1933 (K. 266); Columbia Museum of
Art since 1954.
Of the major artists working in Venice in the sixteenth
century, only Tintoretto was born in that city. Jacopo
Robusti, called Tintoretto, was the son of a cloth dyer
(tintore) and his nickname, derived from his father’s
occupation and possibly his short stature, literally means
“little dyer.” The details of his early training are uncertain.
Presumably a precocious display of talent at an early age
landed Jacopo in the workshop of Titian, then the leading
painter in Venice. According to Tintoretto’s biographer Carlo
Ridolfi, writing in 1642, Titian kicked Jacopo out of the
studio after only 10 days, jealous of his talent. More likely it
was Jacopo’s impatience and brashness which ran counter to
Titian’s idea of a methodically efficient and tightly monitored
studio.
From there, the young Tintoretto must have entered one
of the other leading workshops in the city in order to
further refine his talents and gain the experience necessary
to eventually run a highly successful workshop in the city.
The shops of either Andrea Schiavone or Paris Bordone
have been suggested in this role, however stronger evidence
points to the studio of Bonifacio de’ Pitati, an artist from
Verona, who was running the largest workshop in Venice
by the 1540s (cat. #38). Ridolfi himself mentions that
Tintoretto “practiced” (praticato) with Bonifacio and echoes
of Bonifacio’s compositions, narrative sense, and figure types
recur throughout Tintoretto’s formative years and well into
the 1540s.
In 1539, at the age of 20, Tintoretto was practicing as
an independent artist. Although he left Venice only once
in 1580 to deliver a painting to the Duke of Mantua,
Tintoretto exhibited a voracious appetite for absorbing
various influences from outside of Venice. An early interest
in the sculpture of Michelangelo can be found in numerous
drawings after Dawn, Dusk, Night, and Day from the Medici
Chapel at San Lorenzo in Florence and Tintoretto adapted
Michelangelo’s Medici Madonna, from the same chapel
decoration, for the central figure in his first signed and dated
painting from 1540. Closer to home, Tintoretto reacted
to mannerist pressures brought about by the presence in
Venice of Tuscan artists such as Jacopo Sansovino, Francesco
Salviati, Giuseppe Porta, and Giorgio Vasari and became one
of the leading proponents of a Venetian form of Mannerism.
Embracing the complex spatial settings and dynamic,
twisting poses of these mannerist artists, he further imbued
them with a mass and heightened energy lacking in the
restrained courtly elegance of central Italy.
His working method was unorthodox. A prolific draftsman,
he produced numerous individual figure studies—barely
more than observations of gesture and movement---but
rarely a compositional study and never what a central Italian
would consider a presentation or “finished” drawing. These
individual figure studies were, however, amazingly flexible
and could be adapted to fit numerous canvases by master
and students alike. Tintoretto’s compositions were often
conceived on the canvas itself with frequent changes worked
out in lead white as part of the painting process. X-rays of
our portrait and the Trintiy (cat. #) reveal numerous changes
during the creative process. He also utilized wax models set
in a stage or dangling from strings to construct compositions
of dazzling complexity and daring foreshortening as
witnessed in his first critically successful work, the St. Mark
Rescuing the Slave painted for the Scuola di San Marco in
1548 (Venice Accademia).
For Tintoretto the role of light was more than simply
illumnating the action. It is active and specific, attaching
itself to figures and objects with great intensity to heighten
the emotional impact. Loose, rapid, almost flame-like
applications of highlights, observed in the handling of the
handkerchief and sleeve in our portrait, create a vigor and
force that activate the painting. This is especially true in
Tintoretto’s religious works, where these dramatic contrasts
create an undeniable feeling of divine presence as in the St
Roche in Prison or the Baptism painted for the Scuola Grande
di San Rocco, Christ on the Sea of Galilee (National Gallery
of Art, Washington), or the grand Last Supper painted for the
Church of San Giorgio Maggiore.
The sum of these influences created in Tintoretto a highly
idiosyncratic style that was not universally embraced
among the traditionally conservative populace of Venice.
Undeterred, Tintoretto sought to assert his artistic
dominance through a business model based on high quality,
inventive design, prompt delivery, and reasonable prices.
In many cases, Tintoretto offered paintings ‘at cost’ or
slightly below in order to gain patrons and demonstrate
his talents—none more famous than the 60 paintings
created for the members of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco
resulting in one of the finest cycles in the history of Italian
Renaissance painting. Although eventually his business plan
made him the most prolific Venetian painter (but certainly
not the wealthiest) in the second half of the sixteenth
century, he struggled to earn commissions throughout his
career. Appreciated then as now for his unmatched facility
for painting and introducing a new narrative intensity to
standard Venetian subjects, he lacked the conventional
finish and traditional Venetian love of decorative details that
allowed Titian, and later Veronese, to become the painters of
choice among aristocratic patrons.
Tintoretto’s ability to fulfill his abundant commissions with
high-quality work at low prices was made possible because
of his rapid working method and employment of a large
group of talented assistants. Working beside him were three
of his eight children— Marietta (c.1554-1590), Domenico
(1560-1635), and Marco (1560/61-1637)-- continuing
a long tradition of family-run artist workshops in Venice
that includes the Bellini, Bassani, Veronese, Titian, and
the Vivarini. His daughter Ottavia was married to another
assistant, Sabastiano Casser, but only after he proved his
worth to the family business. In addition to Italian artists,
painters from North of the Alps, such as Lodewyk Toeput
and Pauwels Francke, were engaged as specialists in landscape
and still-life painting. The nature of Tintoretto’s workshop,
loosely run, producing a high volume of ‘remodellings’ of his
work, is closer to the model of Bonifacio’s studio than Titian’s
where assistants stuck closely to the master’s designs in a
tightly controlled atmosphere.
Domenico was undeniably the heir-apparent to the
Tintoretto empire and had an illustrious beginning at his
father’s side, becoming a member of the painter’s guild at the
tender age of 17. After his father died in 1594, the quality
of Domenico’s work declined (but not the demand) to
uninspired, decorative restatements of earlier work. This is
not true, however, for his portraits, which Ridolfi describes
as “so natural and lifelike they seem alive.” The attention
to surface detail and heightened naturalism in the Portrait
of a Venetian Senator, (Rochester Memorial Art Gallery)
Columbia Museum of Art
from Domenico’s maturity demonstrates his considerable
talent in replicating a likeness and marks his break from
the homogenous approach practiced by his father and the
absorption of the precepts of the Italian Baroque. While
Domenico’s ouevre has only recently been tentatively
formulated, the work of Marco, Marietta, and Sebastiano
Casser are still buried within the larger context of Tintoretto’s
production.
The Painting
The Trinity, the doctrine that God is one entity yet exists
as three persons; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is not
specifically so-named in scripture but is derived from New
Testament passages in Matthew (28:19) and 2 Corinthians
(13:14). Early depictions of this theme show God the Father
symbolically (since being unseen, He is unknowable) as an
eye or, more commonly in early Christian art, as the handof-God emerging from Heaven. In our painting, God the
Father has taken bodily form as the ‘Ancient of Days’ with
long white hair and beard, the form adopted during the
Renaissance as a means to visually reference the eternity of
God as related in the Book of Daniel. The dove of the Holy
Spirit recalls the words of John the Baptist, “I saw the spirit
coming down from Heaven like a dove and resting upon
him” (Matthew 3:16 and John 1:32).
Typically, the Trinity is shown with God the Father above the
crucified Christ, holding each end of the crosspiece, with the
dove in radiance positioned between them thus mimicking
the hierarchy found in images of the Baptism of Christ
and the Annunciation. In our painting, the arrangement
has been changed so that the dove is now positioned below
Christ’s feet. This supports the suggestion that our painting
was originally placed over an altar. In this location, the
dove would be directly over the ciborium which housed
the consecrated Eucharist. During the medieval period the
consecrated Eucharist was stored in the Eucharistic dove, a
gilded and ornamented brass or copper vessel suspended over
the altar, emphasizing that it was through the visitation of
the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, that the Apostles were given the
power to consecrate the Eucharist (Acts 2:1-4).
This painting has long been compared to the fragmentary
Trinity by Jacopo Tintoretto currently in the Galleria
Sabauda, Turin. With the exception of the subject, our
painting shares nothing of the highly dramatic, foreshortened
composition of the Turin painting. A comparison of the
two pictures is also revealing with regard to authorship. The
Turin Trinity beautifully demonstrates Tintoretto’s capacity
to construct firm, muscular bodies that glide powerfully
through the spatial planes of the painting. The theatrical
lighting and dramatic viewpoint, devised with suspended wax
models and candles, create an image of divine, infinite space
populated with commanding figures that was unequalled by
his workshop assistants. The Columbia painting does contain
passages of striking beauty, such as the body of Christ set
against the fluttering crimson drapery with its flashing white
and pink highlights, however the painting is overall more
conservative in composition and the figures are less vigorous
and imposing.
Because Tintoretto employed such a large and capable
workshop, questions of attribution continue to plague
Tintoretto scholarship. When it appeared in the literature
in the first decade of the 20th century, the Columbia
painting was considered an early autograph work by Jacopo
Tintoretto. This was the opinion of William Suida, F.F.
Mason Perkins, Adolfo Venturi, Raimond van Marle, and
Roberto Longhi who dated the painting to c. 1550, while
Giuseppe Fiocco dated it to around 1575 and identified
the angel at the lower left engaging the viewer as a portrait
of Jacopo’s daughter, Marietta at the age of 15.1 Only
Bernard Berenson thought the painting to be only partly
autograph.2 This was followed by William Suida, who,
in his 1954 catalogue, amended his earlier opinion to a
collaboration between Jacopo and ‘an able assistant’ with the
aforementioned portrait in the lower left being ‘definitely’ a
later addition by Domenico. Contini-Bonacossi agreed with
Suida’s opinion in his 1962 catalogue of the collection noting
that the ‘well-balanced composition’ and ‘solidly drawn figure
of Christ’ clearly indicated the presence of the master.3
Later writers continued to see workshop participation to
varying degrees, with Pierluigi De Vecchi, Fern Rusk Shapely,
and Pallucchini and Rossi determining the work to be solely
a workshop product. Mario Modestini, the distinguished
Kress conservator who restored the painting in 1952/53,
believed that two distinct hands were clearly discernable
and proposed that one of these artists was Jacopo’s beloved
daughter Marietta.4 Though much praised in her day,
particularly for her talents in portraiture, Marietta’s oeuvre
has not been clarified and many of her works have inevitably
been lost within the larger personalities of her father and
brother.
X-rays of the Columbia painting appear to support the
visual evidence of a difference in approach between the
figures of Christ and God the Father, and those of the angels
in the lower portion of the canvas and those surrounding
Christ in the heavenly glory. Only the figures of Christ and
God the Father were initially laid in with broad strokes of
Columbia Museum of Art
lead white in rough, interlocking circles and ovals defining
the musculature of the body.5 This is the typical method used
by Tintoretto to ‘rough in’ figures on the canvas—a practice
continued by his son Domenico. No such preliminary design
is evident for the two angels in the lower part of the painting.
Other works by Tintoretto and his studio exhibit a similar
practice of ‘sketching’ in lead white paint only the main
figures of the composition. X-rays of the Baptism of Christ
in the Cleveland Museum of Art dated to c.1585 show, in
addition to vestiges of completely different subjects, the
figures of Christ and John the Baptist drawn in with a brush
and lead white as nude figures made up of interconnected
ovals which mimics Tintoretto’s unique drawing style. In
both paintings, the final forms are more firmly drawn,
powerful, and dramatic than the surrounding angels and
background elements which are most likely by studio
assistants and appear more decorative, less substantial, and
stiff by comparison.
Whether or not the main figures in our painting are by the
hand of Jacopo or Domenico is open to further research and
scholarship. In favor of the latter are Rodolfo Palluchini and
Paola Rossi who attributed the Columbia picture exclusively
to Domenico Tintoretto and the painting does compare
favorably to Domenico’s Baptism of Christ painted c.1595 for
the main altar of San Giovanni dei Battuti on the island of
Murano.6 Typical of Domenico’s work are the clearly defined
planes of space with figures forced to the foreground, and
the ornamental nature of the angels, with slender bodies and
tightly curled, glistening blond hair. In particular, the figure
of God the Father, with his sharp, delicate, almost feminine
features, is strikingly similar in both the CMA and Murano
paintings and was certainly born from the hand and mind
of the same artist. If Domenico is the artist of our painting,
his use of intense light emanating mysteriously from the
background and creating dark and strongly contrasting
shadows on the figures, would point to a date prior to the
death of his father in 1594 while he was still under the
influence of his father’s highly dramatic and theatrical style—
and before he adopted the more uniform lighting of the
Baroque.
The young angel looking out at the viewer is an obvious
portrait, but her identity has caused some confusion. She
has tentatively been identified as a deceased child of the
donor, the donor herself, a member of Tintoretto’s studio,
or more specifically, as a portrait of the painter’s daughter,
Marietta.7 X-rays show that the angel is painted over existing
angels’ heads and clouds. This, and the obvious imbalance
the figure’s inclusion creates in the composition, indicates
that this portrait is a later addition. An argument can be
made that this figure is indeed that of Marietta Tintoretto. A
self-portrait of Marietta today in the L’accademia Tadini in
Lovere is inscribed Marietta Tintoretto/Pittrice/morta anno/30
and appears to be the model for the engraved image of
Marietta that graced the opening page of Carlo Ridolfi’s The
Life of Marietta Tintoretto, Painter, the Daughter of Jacopo.8
This self-portrait bares a striking resemblance to the girl in
our painting, complete with pearl necklace, arched brows,
and round face.
What we know of Marietta comes mostly from Carlo Ridolfi
writing in 1642. According to Ridolfi, Jacopo was devoted
to his daughter. He had her dress like a boy and follow
him everywhere. He trained her as a painter and hired a
well-known Neapolitan musician to teach her singing and
apparently also to play the clavichord, harpsichord, and
other instruments. As was appropriate for women artists at
the time, Marietta specialized in portraiture and was invited
to the courts of Maximilian of Germany, Philip II of Spain,
and the Archduke Ferdinand. Jacopo, who himself did not
travel unless absolutely necessary, declined on her behalf. She
married a local jeweler, Mario Augusta, and is known to have
painted portraits of other jewelers who were friends of her
husband. Ridolfi states that Marietta died in 1590 at the age
of 30 and that her father ‘mourned her with unceasing tears
for a long time.’
If this is a portrait of Marietta, two interesting possibilities
are presented. The act of placing an image of oneself in a
painting, looking out at the viewer has a long tradition in
Renaissance art as a surrogate signature and her inclusion
here could denote her role as one of the collaborators. The
fact that she clearly has wings, and that according to Suida,
“shows definitely the personal style of Domenico Tintoretto,”
would suggest that Domenico likely added her portrait,
after her death, to an appropriate work on which she was
the assistant as a permanent testimony to the memory of his
artist-sister. It is also possible that, at the time of her death,
Domenico merely added Marietta to the heavenly choir
of a painting he was currently working on or had recently
completed. In either case, a date of c. 1590 is suitable.
Columbia Museum of Art
Exhibitions: Mostra d’Arte, Scuola de San Giovanni
Evangelista, Venice, 1909; Exhibition of Italian Paintings—
Lent by Mr. Samuel H. Kress of New York, Seattle 1933
– Charlotte 1935 (cat. page 49); National Gallery of Art,
Washington, DC., from 1941 – 1952.
Kress Foundation File Opinions: G. Fiocco, R. Longhi,
R. van Marle, W. Suida, F.F.M. Perkins, A. Venturi (as by
Jacopo); B. Berenson (as “probably” Jacopo).
Specific Literature: Carlo Malagola, “La Mostra d’Arte Sacra
nella Scuola di San Giovanni Evangelista in Venezia” in
Rassegna d’Arte, Anno IX (1909), p.11, no.1, reproduced
figure 7 (as Tintoretto); Preliminary Catalogue, p. 196, no.
243 (as Tintoretto); Book of Illustrations, p.238 no. 243,
repr. p. 191 (as Tintoretto); Catalogue 1954, p.43, no. 17 (as
Tintoretto and assistant); Berenson 1957, I, p.171 (as partly
autograph); Catalogue 1962, p.57-58, no. 19 (as Tintoretto
and assistant); Shapely 1968, p. 58-59, fig. 111 (as workshop
of Tintoretto); Pierluigi De Vecchi, L’Opera completa del
Tintoretto (Milan, 1970) p.138, G14 (as workshop of
Tintoretto); Rodolfo Pallucchini and Paola Rossi, Tintoretto:
Le opere sacre e profane vol. 1, (Milan 1982, reprint 1990) p.
242, no. A25, repr. vol. 2, p. 637 no. 652 (as by Domenico
Tintoretto)
Additional Bibliography: See Cat. 17. Also E. Tietze-Conrat,
“Marietta, fille du Tintoretto”, Gazette des Beaux Arts
(1934), pp. 258-62; Hans Tietze, Tintoretto: The Paintings
and Drawings, London, 1948; Paola Rossi, “Per la grafica di
Domenico Tintoretto”, Arte Veneta XXIX (1975), pp. 20511; Paola Rossi, “Per la grafica di Domenico Tintoretto, II”,
Arte Veneta XXXVIII (1984), pp.57-71; Liana De Girolami
Cheney, Alicia Craig Faxon, and Kathleen Lucey Russo, SelfPortraits by Women Painters (Toronto 2000)
Condition: The painting is in very good verall condition
with the exception of considerable restoration in the
orange-red dresses of the angels in the lower left and right.
Minor, scatered retouches are found throughout with a
concentration of losses around the frame edge. The impasto
has been slightly flattened due to the heat and pressure of a
relining in 1934.
Frame: The frame appears to have been made for the painting
in the early 20th century, and is in two parts. It is a very fine
a suitable reproduction of a Florentine style with the outer
frame elaborately carved and gilt and the inner frame carved,
gilt and formed to fit the rounded top of the painting. It is
water gilt with 23k gold leaf on red bole.
Notes
1. Written correspondence in museum files (February 25,
1932). Carlo Ridolfi places Marietta’s birth in the year
1560, however more recent scholarship shows a date of
around 1554 to be more likely thus making Marietta
roughly 20 years old in 1575.
2. Based on a photograph from 1933, Berenson (1957, I,
p.171) initially thought the painting to be ‘probably’ by
Tintoretto. Opinions kept in the files of the Columbia
Museum of Art.
3. Catalogue 1962, p. 58. Contini-Bonacossi eroneously
states that Suida thought the collaborator to be Domenico
Tintoretto who was not born until 1560, ten years after
Suida’s date for the painting.
4. Correspondence in museum files. Later confirmed by
Diane Dwyer Modestini during conservation examination
of Kress paintings April 8, 1994.
5. The X-rays also reveal that the composition was only
slightly altered from conception to finished painting.
Most notably, the position of the heads of God the Father
and Christ were reversed—God the Father originally
looked to His left while Christ’s head fell in front of His
right shoulder. The relatively few changes made during
execution and the statically balanced composition, are
less consistant with Jacopo’s working method, and point
toward an assistant working from a pre-existing design.
6. The painting is now in the church of San Pietro Martire
also on Murano. See Palluchini and Rossi, Tintoretto:Le
opere sacre e profane, vol. 1, 1982, p.248.
7. Shapely felt that the portrait-like nature of this figure was
due to later retouches. Upon close examination of the
paint surface and x-rays, I can find no indication of later
retouches or alteration to the direction of the glance.
8. Ridolfi wrote the Lives of Jacopo, Domenico, and
Marietta in 1642, seven years after Domenico’s death.
He interviewed members of Domenico’s studio about the
three artists and presumably located an accurate portrait
of Marietta to use in his publication. See Luciano Gallina,
L’Accademia Tadini in Lovere (Bergamo, 1957), p.22 no.
16) and Carlo Ridolfi, The Life of Tintoretto and of his
children Domenico and Marietta (1642) trans. Catherine
Enggass and Robert Enggass, (Penn State University Press,
1984)
9. Suida, believeing the painting to date from c.1550,
further proposed that Domenico added the figure to the
painting long after it had been completed. Since Marietta
died in 1590, it seems unlikey that Domenico would have
still had access to the painting some 40 years later to add a
portrait of his recently deceased sister.
Columbia Museum of Art