Jacopo Tintoretto (1518-1594)
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Paul Holberton Publishing is proud to publish the English language edition of Jacopo Tintoretto (1518-1594), the major catalogue accompanying the once in a lifetime single venue exhibition at the Museo del Prado, Madrid, which is on view to the public from 29 January to 13 May 2007.
When the noted art critic John Ruskin visited Venice he was bowled over by the works of Jacopo Tintoretto – like everyone else who has visited the Scuola Grande di San Rocco in Venice, his greatest testament. Few painters even in the modern era have painted on such a scale and with such energy.
Tintoretto, Titian and Veronese are the three leading painters of the High Renaissance in Venice, creating universally acknowledged and widely influential masterpieces. Yet even though, in the 16th century, he anticipated so much of the future direction of art, Tintoretto has been more difficult to tackle than any other supreme master of the Venetian school. One sign of this is the fact he has been the subject of only one major modern exhibition which was held in Venice in 1937. There are few books available on this artist, and even those are localised in their scope.
Tintoretto painted pictures on an enormous scale and perfected an extraordinarily efficient production system that enabled him to service virtually every Venetian church. Indeed many works that go under his name may not appear to be of good quality, and are not autograph. The fifty paintings and twenty drawings from European and American museums and institutions in this exhibition and catalogue are the result of a very careful and thorough selection enabling viewers and readers to see the painter’s development as a whole. Written by a group of comparatively young scholars, the catalogue looks at Tintoretto’s art afresh and redefines his aims and ideals directly and memorably.
Subjects covered in the essays include the nature of Tintoretto’s career, his work as a religious painter, his portraiture, the nature of his technique, his response to Michelangelo and contemporary sculpture, his use of drawings and models and miniature theatres in the planning of his paintings, and the enthusiasm for his work in Spain after his death, led by El Greco and Velázquez. El Greco regarded him as “the greatest painter in the world”.
Even by his enemies – for his art was always provocative – Tintoretto was recognised as an extraordinarily bold painter. He was certainly ready to challenge both Titian, who tried to block his career, and Michelangelo, whose Last Judgement he ‘revised’ in his 12.5 metre high painting in the church of the Madonna dell’Orto.
Though Venetian-born, unlike Titian or Veronese, Tintoretto was fascinated from youth with central Italian Mannerist art and it is partly true that he set out to combine “Titian’s colour and Michelangelo’s line”, though the saying is apocryphal. This book also explores how he developed a highly original style notable for the use of the body in movement to express emotion, how he organised his pictorial space to dramatic ends and how he manipulated the spectator’s viewpoint to maximum effect. He was formed by his training not only in oil painting but also in fresco and mosaic, and his relationship with sculptors and sculpture was highly significant. The book, which also includes a comprehensive documentation section, is a definitive study of this thrilling, if daunting, Venetian artist.
Jacopo Tintoretto (1518-1594) published by Paul Holberton Publishing, January 2007.
Price: £50.00
ISBN 1 903470 46 3, approx. 400 pages, cloth/hardback, 300 x 240 mm, 250+ colour illustrations
Authors:
Miguel Falomir is Head of the Department of French and Italian Painting at the Museo del Prado.
Linda Borean researches at the University of Udine.
Jill Dunkerton is a member of the Conservation Department, National Gallery, London.
Roberts Echols is the author of Jacopo Tintoretto and Venetian Painting 1538–1548 (1993).
Frederick Ilchmann is Assistant Curator of Paintings at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Roland Krischel is Curator at the Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne.
Exhibition: Museo del Prado, Edificio Villanueva, Madrid, 29 January to 13 May 2007
Recent Publications by Paul Holberton Publications include:
Hogarth, France & Britain Art
Transformation of Knowledge: Early Manuscripts from the Collection of Lawrence J. Schoenberg
