Tintoretto: Tradition and Identity

Abstract

Jacopo Tintoretto (1518-1594) is an ambiguous figure in the history of art. His unorthodox paintings are not readily classifiable, and although Venetian by birth, his claim to be truly of the Venetian School has long been in doubt. As a youth, he was quickly ejected from the workshop of the great Titian, accepted then, as now, as the apogee of Venetian painting. In the long career which nonetheless followed, Tintoretto increasingly abandoned the humanist narrative and sensual colour values which typified the work of Titian and the venerable Venetian Renaissance tradition. Critics and writers such as Vasari, Boschini, Ruskin and Sartre all placed Tintoretto in total opposition to the established artistic practice of his time, but this view offers an over-simplified and historically inaccurate answer to the question of Tintoretto's relation to tradition. This text offers an important re-assessment of Tintoretto's place in art history by showing that the artist, far from rejecting existing artistic practice, sought to create a modern technique and an aesthetic which, for all its originality and sophistication, made its first appeal to the shared emotions of the widest possible viewing audience.