Jacopo Tintoretto was, along with Titian (Venetian, 1488/1490 – 1576) and Veronese (Venetian, 1528 – 1588), one of the three giants of 16th-century Venetian painting. No one else came close to matching the sheer number of pictures he provided for Venice’s churches, confraternities, government buildings, and private palaces.
What kind of art did Tintoretto do in his later years?
In these later years, he also created portraits and received many commissions from the Venetian state. One of the most notable is a large-scale painting Paradiso (1592) for the Ducal Palace. As he neared the end of his life, Tintoretto increasingly relied on the help of his studio assistants to finish his paintings, including Paradiso.
How did Giuseppe Tintoretto get commissions?
Tintoretto often employed questionably ethical means to secure coveted commissions, at times reducing the fee for his paintings enough to undercut other artists. The most notorious example of his strategic ingenuity centered around a competition for a ceiling painting for the new meeting house of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco in 1564.
When did Tintoretto leave Venice?
Tintoretto was also admitted into the confraternity in 1565, where he would go on to hold various offices. Tintoretto was only known to have left Venice once to travel to Mantua, at the age of 62, in 1580. This was four years after the death of his rival, Titian, who had of all the Venetian painters, dominated the international stage.
How did Tintoretto change the Venetian style?
Tintoretto left an indelible mark on 16th-century Venetian painting and beyond. His unique approach to artmaking with rapid, loose brushstrokes and strong contrasts between light and dark deeply challenged the traditional style of the iconic master Titian, Paolo Veronese, and his Venetian contemporaries.
Why visit Tintoretto’s paintings for San Rocco?
Tintoretto’s paintings for San Rocco represent the greatest concentration of works by a single artist anywhere in Venice, and are the most personal and intensely felt of his works.
