(1518-1594) Venetian Mannerist painter, one of the foremost artists of the later 16th century. His work inspired the development of baroque art. Tintoretto, originally named Jacopo Robusti, was called Il Tintoretto (“the little dyer”) in allusion to his father's profession. As a young man he studied briefly with Titian, who soon discharged him from his studio; the animosity between these two great painters lasted throughout their careers. Unlike Titian, Tintoretto lived and worked exclusively in Venice. His immense output was produced entirely for the churches, confraternities, and rulers of Venice and for the Venetian state. Early Work In the first decade of his career (circa 1538-48), Tintoretto searched for a style, turning to diverse sources for inspiration. Important among these were Florentine Mannerist paintings, the work of Michelangelo, and the relief sculpture of Jacopo Sansovino; from them Tintoretto learned modes of figure drawing and composition. From the Dalmatian painter Andrea Schiavone he learned an extraordinarily broad, free, sketchy way of applying paint. These elements were combined in varying ways to striking effect in Tintoretto's paintings of the 1540s. His artistic coming of age is marked by the large St. Mark (1548, Accademia, Venice), painted for the Scuola di San Marco, in which Tintoretto's daring foreshortenings, spatial illusions, and high-keyed lighting mesh triumphantly to create an overwhelming impression of spontaneous action. Mature Style In the decades that followed, Tintoretto's style intensified without essentially changing, and the huge number of commissions he received attests to its enthusiastic reception. Even his staggering facility as a designer and executant could not cope with the work load, and he was increasingly aided by a large corps of assistants, notable among them being his daughter Marietta and his son, Domenico, whose contributions are often difficult to distinguish from his own. As a mature artist, Tintoretto tended progressively to rely on contrasts of brilliant light and cavernous dark (in which color as such became relatively insignificant), on eccentric viewpoints and extreme foreshortenings, and on flamboyantly choreographic groupings to heighten the drama of the events portrayed. His highest powers were called forth by the theme of supernatural incursion into human events—as in the three paintings of the miracles of St. Mark, painted (1562-66) for the Scuola di San Marco; the Last Supper (1594), in the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore; and many of the biblical paintings with which he adorned the ceilings and walls of the Scuola di San Rocco between 1564 and 1587. These last constitute the greatest pictorial enterprise of his career and one of the wonders of Renaissance painting. Almost equally extensive is the cycle of paintings he and his assistants executed for the Palazzo Ducale, culminating in the vast Paradise (1588-90), but here the level of inspiration is less consistent and the assistants' share larger. Influence Tintoretto's penchant for diagonal compositions plunging or zigzagging into deep space, as well as the commanding theatricality of his lighting and the overall dynamism and expansiveness of his style, was taken up by the work of such pioneers of the baroque style as the Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens and the Carracci family. His effect on Venetian painting was still greater, but less beneficial. The shorthand notations for form and light that he developed tended even in his own later work to become stereotypes; for younger artists in Venice they were empty but seemingly inescapable formulas. After Tintoretto's death on May 31, 1594, in Venice, Venetian painting precipitously declined.
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