Jacopo Tintoretto

The most productive major painter of the Venetian 16th century and the one whose speed and physical energy most completely transformed the look of large-scale religious painting in the generation after Titian. Born Jacopo Robusti in Venice, the son of a dyer (tintore — hence the nickname Tintoretto, 'little dyer'), he reportedly studied briefly with Titian before being dismissed, and set himself the famous studio motto: 'Michelangelo's drawing, Titian's colour.' Whether or not the story is true, it accurately describes his ambition: to combine the monumental figural power of the Roman-Florentine tradition with the sensuous color of Venice. His practice was as unconventional as his ambition. He built small wax figures of his subjects and suspended them in model stages lit from various angles, studying the dramatic possibilities of light on three-dimensional form before committing to canvas. His compositions are characteristically destabilizing: the viewpoint tilted, the figures caught in violent motion or extreme foreshortening, the space compressed or precipitously deep in ways that carry a physical charge. The Scuola Grande di San Rocco, a confraternity in Venice that he won through competitive bidding in 1564, contains sixty paintings — ceiling ovals, wall panels, an entire allegorical program — that constitute the largest single decorative commission of the Italian Renaissance, completed over more than twenty years. He also produced the Last Supper (1592–94) for San Giorgio Maggiore, which set the meal in a diagonal tavern scene with servants, cats, and luminous figures that is one of the most radical religious compositions of the century. He died in Venice in 1594, leaving a workshop and a legacy that directly influenced Rubens, El Greco and, through both of them, the entire Baroque tradition.