Jacopo Tintoretto (1518-1594) was among the most distinctive artists of the Italian Renaissance. Yet, although his bold paintings are immediately recognizable, his drawings remain unfamiliar even to many scholars. Drawing in Tintoretto's Venice offers a complete overview of Tintoretto as a draftsman. It begins with a look at drawings by Tintoretto's precedents and contemporaries, a discussion intended to illuminate Tintoretto's sources as well as his originality, and also to explore the historiographical and critical questions that have framed all previous discussion of Tintoretto's graphic work. Subsequent chapters explore Tintoretto's evolution as a draftsman and the role that drawings played in his artistic practice--both preparatory drawings for his paintings and the many studies after sculptures by Michelangelo and others--thus examining the use of drawings within the studio as well as teaching practices in the workshop. Later chapters focus on the changes to Tintoretto's style as he undertook ever larger commissions and accordingly began to manage a growing number of assistants, with special attention paid to Domenico Tintoretto, Palma Giovane, and other artists whose drawing style was influenced by their time working with the master. The book is published in conjunction with the exhibition Drawing in Tintoretto's Venice, opening at the Morgan Library & Museum, New York, in 2018 and travelling to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, in early 2019. All of the drawings in the exhibition are discussed and illustrated, and a checklist of the exhibition is also included in the volume, but the book is a far more widely ranging account of Tintoretto's drawings and a comprehensive account of his work as a draftsman.

Five hundred years after his birth, Venice celebrates the artistic achievements and era of Jacopo Tintoretto. The success of Jacopo and his son Domenico is inextricably linked to the Scuola Grande di San Marco. Indeed, Jacopo created some of the most famous paintings in 16th-century Venetian art for the Scuola's chapter hall. Thanks to Domenico's contribution, the ensemble commenced by his father was the most gradiose cycle devoted to the patron saint of Venice since the decoration of Saint Mark's Basilica. Founded in 1260-21 as a flagellant congregation, the Scuola became a charitable institution that, among other aims, provided medical care for the poorest of its members. After its suppression in 1806, the Scuola house the Venice City Hospital until the mid-20th century, when it was turned into a library with 18,000 medical and scientific volumes. This book offers the reader an unprecendented and fascinating glimpse of life in Tintoretto's Venice. Analyzing the themes of the exhibition in depth, the catalogue explores the relation between devotional activities, medical practices, anatomical studies and images of the human body by examining a wide range of period sources, including paintings, drawings, illuminated manuscripts, musical scores, illustrated books, engravings, printing plates and surgical instruments.

Considered one of the three greatest painters of sixteenth-century Venice, along with Titian and Veronese, Tintoretto was a bold innovator. His free, expressive brushwork made his work look unfinished to contemporaries but is now recognized as a key step in the development of oil-on-canvas painting. Even today's audiences are astonished by the superhuman scale, painterly dynamism, and visionary qualities of his work. On the 500th anniversary of Tintoretto's birth, this volume provides a comprehensive overview of his career and achievement, with fifteen essays and reproductions of more than 140 paintings--many newly conserved--as well as a selection of his finest drawings. One special contribution is a focus on the artist's portraiture.--Provided by publisher.

Tintoretto (real name Jacopo Comin) was an Italian painter and a notable exponent of the Renaissance school. For his phenomenal energy in painting he was termed Il Furioso. His work is characterized by its muscular figures, dramatic gestures, and bold use of perspective in the Mannerist style, while maintaining color and light typical of the Venetian School. He is said to have trained very briefly with Titian, but the style of his immature works suggests that he may also have studied with Bonifacio Veronese, Paris Bordone, or Schiavone. Almost all of his life was spent in Venice and most of his work is still in the churches or other buildings for which it was painted. He appears to have been unpopular because he was unscrupulous in procuring commissions and ready to undercut his competitors. Tintoretto used to make small wax models which he arranged on a stage and experimented on with spotlights for effects of light and shade and composition. He was a formidable draughtsman and, according to Ridolfi, he had inscribed on his studio wall the motto 'The drawing of Michelangelo and the color of Titian'. However, he was very different in spirit from either of his avowed models, more emotive, using vivid exaggerations of light and movement. His drawings are brilliant, rapid notations, bristling with energy, and his color is more somber and mystical than Titian's.

An impressive overview of drawing in Venice, from the time of Titian and Tintoretto to that of Canaletto and Tiepolo From the time of Titian and Tintoretto to that of Canaletto and Tiepolo, drawing was an important part of artistic practice and was highly valued in Venice. This exciting new study overturns traditional views on the significance of drawing in Venice, as an art and an act, from the Renaissance to the age of the Grand Tour. Gathering together the separate strands of theory, artistic practice, and collecting, Catherine Whistler highlights the interactions and tensions between a developing literary discourse and the practices of making and collecting graphic art. Her analysis challenges the conventional definition of Venetian art purely in terms of color, demonstrating that 16th-century Venetian artists and writers had a highly developed sense of the role and importance of disegno and drawing in art. The book's generous illustrations support these striking arguments, as well as conveying the great variety, interest, and beauty of the drawings themselves.

The Renaissance was a golden age in the long history of Venetian painting, and the art that came from Venice during that era includes some of the most visually exciting works in the whole of western art. This attractive book - a comprehensive account of painting in Venice from Bellini to Titian to Tintoretto - is an accessible introduction to the paintings of this period. Peter Humfrey surveys the development of a distinctly Venetian artistic tradition from the middle years of the fifteenth century to the end of the sixteenth century. He discusses the work of Jacopo and Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, Veronese and Tintoretto as well as the paintings of those less well known - such as the three Vivarini, Cima, Carpaccio, Palma Vecchio, Lorenzo Lotto and Jacopo Bassano. Humfrey analyses these painters' works in terms of their pictorial style, technique, subject matter, patronage and function. He also sets the art against the background of the political, social and religious conditions of Renaissance Venice, as outlined in his Introduction. The book includes an appendix that provides brief biographies of thirty-six of the most important painters active in Renaissance Venice.