Jacopo Tintoretto
Venetian, 1518-1594

Portrait of a Venetian General, 1555 ca.
Oil on canvas
22 ½ x 19 ½"

Collection of Michael Armand Hammer



Tintoretto Self-Portrait (1543-48) Philadelphia Museum of Art

RESEARCH PAPER

Our first casual observation of the Tintoretto portrait of the armored General announces that here is an important man, one to be captured and remembered for posterity. He is wearing a distinguished beard and the impressive armor of a Venetian Captain-General, also called an Admiral. The oil painting, 22 1⁄2 x 19 1⁄2 was executed by Tintoretto in the 1570’s and is similar to a painting of Captain Venier that is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
Because of this similarity, the portrait sitter is possibly Sebastiano Venier (1496-1578), who was born into an important Venetian family and commanded the Venetian fleet through important victorious battles, and eventually rose to become the Doge of the Venetian Republic. The three-quarter view of Venier’s torso and head was a popular portraiture device during this period. The sliver of blue sky and white clouds on the left of the General suggests the painting was likely cut from a larger composition.

Although portraiture was considered a minor genre, compared to history painting, it held an important status in Venice. The ruling class commissioned portraits to showcase their important lineage, and their right to hold high offices and power. The popularity and importance in Venetian society of the “official portrait” meant that many lesser officials had their portraits painted, and this was an easy way for Tintoretto to quickly popularize his work in portraiture, and demonstrated how strongly Venetians identified with these official images of themselves and their society. These portraits were then displayed in public institutions furthering the idea that the powerful city state of Venice was in good hands and also that no one family held a monopoly on power.

In 1559 Tintoretto painted a portrait of Doge Girolamo Priuli that pushed his portraiture into prominence and, for the next thirty years, he continued to produce state portraits. It is believed that he took as many portrait commissions as he could, in order to pay for the supplies he needed for the larger, more important religious commissions, which he often took at a reduced rate to ensure he was hired. In the oligarchy of Venetian politics, one did not reach high office until old age, and held offices for a short amount of time. Tintoretto’s ability to paint quickly and produce high quality portraits ensured that he had a large number of important portrait commissions.

Tintoretto painted his official portraits in a simple manner, which was a reflection back to a pre-Titian, early Venetian tradition. He was able to capture the powerful older generation as humble servants to the public. These state portraits had to communicate several things to a wide audience; in other words, the artist did not have freedom to take artistic license. While Tintoretto did adopt a warmer color palette, he stayed true to the earlier Venetian portrait traditions and had a naturalistic, humanistic style.

It is said that early portraits by Tintoretto were so like the hand of Titian that it was hard to discern who painted them. However they each approached state portraiture very differently. Whereas Titian portrays each individual with unique traits, Tintoretto saw the human elements in his sitters, and painted his generals, soldiers and Popes with their foibles and contradictions. One might observe Tintoretto’s portraits to be simpler and more universally human; he is not trying to seduce us with the sitter’s sweeping power, rank or beauty, but rather the shared humanness we can all relate to. Often these older sitters are shown with sunken eyes, wrinkled skin and other telling marks of nearing death. The naturalistic style of Tintoretto’s portraits, in their simplicity, point to their humanity.

While official portraits show the sitter in the execution of their civic duties, Tintoretto was concerned with where the portrait would hang in a succession of portraits and where each portrait would be displayed. Tintoretto might turn a head or torso in a particular direction so that there would be a harmonious flow in the rows of paintings. The general clothing colors would remain fairly static as the uniform for each office was pre-determined by previous paintings.

Tintoretto primarily focused attention on the face and hands of his sitters, as these were considered to be the most revealing features. Often a luminous head appears from a darkened background and is the central focus. The rest of the figure would only be roughly sketched and he would repeat the same composition and lighting for different sitters leading to obvious similarity between his portraits. Simplicity of form helped in the harmonious arrangements of the portraits and helped his workshops, as each painting would have to be copied several times.

The two Renaissance masters, Michelangelo and Titian were both actively painting when Tintoretto began his career in 1540. According to legend, Jacopo Robusti Comin, known to us as Tintoretto (1518-1594), had a sign in his workshop stating that he purposefully sought to combine “the form of Michelangelo and the color of Titian”. Tintoretto was heavily influenced by and apprenticed for a short time in Titian’s workshop.

While Tintoretto could paint in a variety of styles as it pleased him, his mature unusual style is thought to represent the final coda of Renaissance painting or the beginning of Mannerist or proto-Baroque style. Tintoretto is not easy to categorize as he had a certain duality of nature in regards to his painting. He could be traditionalist and remain within the confines established by his elders in the Venetian School tradition and at the same time, highly original and innovative in style, which could be unsettling to the Venetian art world.
Tintoretto was born in Venice to a humble, hardworking family. His father was a “dyer of silk cloths” or tintore and the name Tintoretto translates to “young dyer”. Tintoretto probably saw many brilliant and gaudy Venetian colors emerge from his father’s large fabric vats to be used in the elaborate dress that was popular in the wealthy city-state of Venice. However, at the height of his career Tintoretto was known for his somber colors and when asked, said that “black and white” were the most beautiful colors, “for the one gives strength to the form by modeling its shade, and the other relieves it, in light.”

While Tintoretto showed early promised, he was dismissed from Titian’s studio after only a few days, an event that haunted his career for many years and distanced him from much of the Venetian painting community that supported Titian. In a city where a young artist needed an association with a workshop and a master, the young Tintoretto struggled to work. Unlike other famous Venetian painters, Tintoretto was born in Venice, painted public buildings in Venice and was hired by his fellow Venetians, making him unique and truly a Venetian painter. In 1540, Tintoretto entered a public exhibition, where he was first noticed for his excellent representation of a night-effect (this painting is now lost).

Lacking a workshop in which to properly train, Tintoretto developed his own devices, and worked from small models he made out of wax and clay. Then these forms would be carefully arranged, helping him determine the proper light and shade. Later he wanted his forms to be more realistic, so he attended the anatomy schools, ensuring that his models were extremely detailed and lifelike. These modeled figures were draped with fabrics and suspended in a box with a candle added as a light source. You can see the effects of this training in his early tableaus as he created dramatic light effects and new use of space.

The Venetian style of painting is characterized by deep, rich colors, an emphasis on patterns and surfaces, and a strong interest in the effects of light. Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese together created a body of work that defined a "Venetian style" through loose brushwork, rich coloring, and often pastoral or sensual subject matter. It was said that there was something about the light in Venice, which produced painters that were strongly interested in capturing the relationship between light and color, centuries before the Impressionists. The Venetian school developed new brushwork that was smooth and made a creamy, almost velvety, surface texture. Additionally, Venice artists popularized the use of oil paint, primarily because they were living in a damp, watery city and needed something that would last.

In the sixteenth century, Venice was one of the largest (over 200,000 inhabitants) and richest cities in Europe, and there was a strong demand for paintings from both local and international clients. This climate created competition and innovation in a community that was a cross-road of multicultural ideas and an intellectual, independent city state. Venice had a close association with Byzantine art, famous for its glittering mosaics and gold icons. The Venetian painters had easy access to colored pigments and supplies. In a city where you needed two formal entrances, one from the road and one from the water, rich merchants were outdoing each other by building and furnishing their palaces with the finest decorative arts. In this competitive environment, Tintoretto learned to secure commissions by working gratis or by pricing his work under market rates.

Tintoretto is better known today for his sweeping religious subjects painted for private schools (confraternities), buildings, and churches, rather than his portraiture. He had a phenomenal energy in his painting, and the term “Il Furioso” was used to describe his furious output and energy directed toward his craft. From the beginning he had an open and free manner, as he drew with oil paint. As his style matured, he broke with Renaissance traditions of symmetry and frontal views and painted unexpected viewpoints and diagonal perspectives. He built up masses of tone and color, and he utilized light colored gesso grounds (calcium sulfate derived from gypsum) to reflect light and create an emotionally charged experience for the viewer. (Later in his career he switched to tonal grounds and underpaintings of different colors.) His use of dramatic perspective and lighting effects make him an artist that pushed the boundaries of Renaissance art and made him a precursor of the next style, Baroque.

The essence of Tintoretto is said to be found at the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, which contains many of his great masterworks. The competition for the commission of the ceiling decoration of the Scoula Grande di San Rocca called for a sketch design, however Tintoretto submitted an entirely finished painting, “The Miracle of St. Mark” stating that that was “the nature of his work”. We see much of what makes Tintoretto the artist he was in this statement; his work is spontaneous and alive, filled with raw emotion and powerful story telling. One wonders, excited to capture the commission in 1548, could he have stopped himself with just a sketch?

In addition to his breathtaking Venetian altarpieces, and a range of public portraits, the artist, assisted by his workshop, produced portraits of magistrates, senators, and sea captains for their private residences. Today, there are some 150 of these portraits said to be in existence.

Looking back through history, Tintoretto looms large as he left a trail for many artists to follow. We know that he strongly influenced El Greco, worked in a freely-handled style that affected Rubens, and that Velázquez was fascinated with him and acquired his paintings for King Philip IV of Spain. This is a wonderful legacy for a Venetian artist who never left the city limits, and became one of the great masters.

Prepared for the Santa Barbara Museum of Art Docent Council by Wendi Hunter, 2015.

Bibliography

Habert, Jean and Delleuvin. Vincent, “Titian, Tintoretto Veronese…”, Musee du Louvre web, 19 Sept 2009. http://mini-site.louvre.fr/venise/en/exhibition/prologue.html

Nichols, Tom .“Tintoretto Tradition and Identity”.London: Reaktion Books, 1999

Osler, W. Roscoe. “Tintoretto”. Bridgman Publishers, New York. 1923

Encyclopedia of Art History, “Venetian Painting”, web http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/history-of-art/venetian-painting.htm

Schjeldahl, Peter, “Venetian Brass” The New Yorker web, http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/02/12/venetian-brass, 12 Feb 2007

Tietze, Hans. “Tintoretto The Paintings and Drawings”. Phaidon Publishers , New York, 1948

SBMA CURATORIAL LABELS

Based on its resemblance to a 1571-72 portrait of Sebastiano Venier by Tintoretto in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, it is very possible that this is also a portrait of Venier. The sliver of blue sky and white clouds on the left suggests the painting was likely cut from a larger composition.

Sebastiano Venier (1496-1578) was one of the most revered figures in Venetian history. He came from a distinguished Venetian family but earned his place in history first as the Captain-General (i.e. Admiral) of the Venetian fleet that vanquished the Turks in the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, then as Doge of the Venetian Republic. He was elected Doge, i.e. leader, of the Venetian Republic in 1577 but served as Doge for only nine months, as he died in 1578.

Tintoretto is famous primarily for his religious paintings, but he was also an accomplished portraitist. Venier wears the armor of a Captain-General, but we do not need his costume to tell us that this is a man to be reckoned with. The feathery brushwork that describes every whisker and every wrinkle convinces us that this is a faithful likeness. But it is the way he looks directly at us with an expression that exudes intelligence, canniness and the hint of a smile that makes him enduringly alive.

- Botticelli, Titian and Beyond, 2015