Jacob Tintoretto

One of the greatest Renaissance artists ever was Jacopo Tintoretto, whose real name was discovered, as late as 2007, to be Jacopo Comin. He developed his own style that used the Mannerist techniques of dramatic postures and perspectives, and his work typically featured muscular figures. Having been influenced by the artists of his region, Tintoretto kept the colors and use of light in his productions in line with the style of the Venetian School of painting.

He was born in Venice on September 29, 1518, the eldest child of Giovanni Comin and his wife; he had 20 younger siblings. He was nicknamed Jacopo Robusti at one point, in recognition of his father’s heroism in defending Padua during a war, and he earned his own nickname Il Furioso due to the unlimited energy he exerted on his paintings. His is best known by the name Tintoretto though, which was given to him because his father was a dyer, or in Italian, a tintore. As a dyer’s little boy, he was called Tintoretto, and it stuck.

As a child Tintoretto showed talent as a painter, and his proud father took him to workshop of the famous Titian to get his opinion of Tintoretto’s abilities. It’s said that Titian sent Tintoretto home after only a little more than a week of training. The reasons supposed suggest that Tintoretto was either too stubborn in his own artistic style to become a maleable pupil, or that he showed such great promise, making the older Titian too jealous to keep him around. Although Tintoretto never showed any ill-feelings towards Titian after they went their separate ways, and he always respected Titian's work greatly, it’s said that Titian never liked Tintoretto and he made that fact known to all.

It seems hard to believe that Tintoretto could not have found a willing teacher elsewhere in Venice, but apparently he had to teach himself all that he knew. He made his own clay and wax casts, and studied lighting effects with candlelight, as well as the works of Michelangelo. His energy and perseverance kept him strong in his desire to become a great artist. Tintoretto lived poorly, and gave his art services away for free or nearly free, in order to have his work simply on display. He knew that in time he would be recognized and earn commissions from eager patrons. Tintoretto was not a greedy person, and rather he was always charitable by nature, and when it came to his artwork he was more eager to work than to take payment for it.

By 1550 Tintoretto gained a solid reputation for his murals and large paintings of historical and religious subjects; his portrait work was also well sought after. The turning point in his career had come with the four paintings he had made of St Mark in the Scuola di San Marco in 1548; even Titian had shown his open approval of the paintings. Tintoretto had bought his house nearby to the Scuola di San Marco and with his workshop doing well, he was ready for marriage to Faustina de Vescovi, who was a nobleman’s daughter. Her father was actually the “grand guardian” of the Scuola, and that’s how the couple may have met and the marriage may have come about.

They had several children together, as many as two sons and five daughters. Tintoretto already had a daughter named Marietta Robusti, from a previous non-marital relationship with a German woman. She grew up to be a talented artist and musician, having trained with her father in her youth, but her own artistic works have not surfaced since her death in 1590. Tintoretto survived his daughter Marietta by four years and was buried next to her, in 1594, in the Church of Madonna dell’Orto. Tintoretto’s son, Domenico, followed in his father’s footsteps and became a painter of grand murals and canvases, but he was never capable of the kind of work that his father produced.

Tintoretto’s career spanned almost 60 years. He painted a multitude of mostly religious paintings, portraits of noblemen and some Greek mythology characters. His greatest and largest masterpiece (one of the largest traditionally painted canvases in the world) is a painting titled Paradise. It was commissioned by the Venetian senators as a work to be hung in the Doge’s Palace, and the completed painting measured 22.6 x 9.1 metres (74 ft. by 30 ft). He worked on it for almost three years, starting it in 1588 and finishing it in 1590. It remains there today, 400 years later, with only some minor damage due to the passage of time.