Tintoretto: The Complete Story
Tintoretto was the Venetian painter who turned the calm Renaissance scene into a storm. Working at furious speed, he filled enormous canvases with plunging perspectives, flashes of light and figures hurtling through space. They called him Il Furioso, the furious one, for the energy of both his brush and his ambition.
Where Titian glowed and Veronese dazzled, Tintoretto dramatized. He wanted movement, depth and theater, and he got it by working faster and cheaper than anyone in Venice.
Born: Venice, around 1518
Known for: dramatic Mannerist scenes, the Scuola di San Rocco
Died: Venice, 1594
Michelangelo's drawing, Titian's color
Legend says Tintoretto pinned a motto in his studio: the drawing of Michelangelo and the color of Titian. He wanted to fuse the muscular Florentine line with the rich Venetian palette into a single overwhelming style.
He used small wax models in boxes, lit by candles, to plan his dramatic lighting and steep angles before he painted. That stagecraft gives his work its cinematic feel. See what is Mannerism.
The man who won by working fast
Tintoretto was ferociously competitive. To win the commission to decorate the Scuola di San Rocco, instead of submitting a sketch like his rivals, he secretly painted a finished canvas and installed it in place, then offered it as a gift the charity could not refuse.
He often quoted low prices and worked at speed to take work from older masters, which made him both prolific and resented.
His Sistine Chapel
Over more than two decades he covered the walls and ceilings of the Scuola di San Rocco with a vast cycle of biblical scenes, now seen as his masterpiece, sometimes called Tintoretto's Sistine Chapel.
His version of the Last Supper throws the table at a wild diagonal, fills the air with smoky angels and lights the room from a glowing lamp, a world away from Leonardo's calm symmetry.
What people ask about Tintoretto
What is Tintoretto famous for?
Huge, dramatic Mannerist paintings and the Scuola di San Rocco cycle in Venice.
Why was he called Il Furioso?
For the speed and energy of his painting.
How did he get his light effects?
He built little lit models in boxes. See the dramatic dark and light of tenebrism.
Why the storm still pulls you in
Tintoretto pushed painting toward drama, motion and deep space, pointing ahead to the Baroque. Stand in the Scuola di San Rocco and you are inside the mind of the most restless painter in Venice. See how his rich oils build that glow in what is oil painting.
His daughter Marietta, known as La Tintoretta, was a gifted painter in his workshop, but he reportedly refused to let her leave Venice for foreign courts, keeping her close until her early death.