Jacopo Robusti (1518 - 1594), known as Tintoretto , Italian painter of the Rebirth, which one associates with the current mannerist of the Venetian school.

Biography

It was born in 1518 with Venice and owes its nickname (the small dyer ) with his father, Battista Robusti, which worked in a dyeing ( tintorìa in Italian). Raise Titien, it is famous to have exceeded its professor in the control of the colors and the shades, of returned matter, being thus registered among large Venetian style. Before being allowed to take part in a new work, any pupil learns the trade by copying work from the Master. Is the boy too impatient to affirm his personality? Or does the owner have surprised some drawings of him and it returned it for fear similar beginnings do not reveal a potential competitor? Always it is that Jacopo remains only a few months at Titien. It is interested in the currents Tuscan mannerists , Roman and émilien, diffused in Venice by artists like Sansovino, Salviati and Schiavone. It had a great admiration for Michel-Angel which influenced it in its technique of the drawing. Tintoret had a passion for the light effects: it carried out wax statues of its models and tried out the orientation of the sources of light before painting them. Consequently, certain faces reappear in various work, under various angles and a different lighting.

The most known works of Tintoretto are a series of paintings of scenes of the life of Jesus and Virgin Mary in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco , of which it is named official decorator in 1564. In these works of impressive size, Tintoret carries out compositions with “vertiginous and dynamic spaces” and with “exacerbated torsions” where “clearly-obscure ghostly and dramatic dominates”.

A comparison of the work of Tintoretto the last meal ( Ultima cena ) with the work of Léonard de Vinci which bears the same name makes it possible to visualize the evolution of the artistic styles to the rebirth. The treatment by Leonard is very traditional. The disciples are laid out around Christ in an almost mathematical symmetry. Between the hands of Tintoretto, the same event becomes dramatically tortured. The human silhouettes are crushed by the appearance of ghostly beings. The scene occurs in a dark popular tavern, where the aureoles of the saints bring a strange light which underlines incongruous details. The tone is resolutely Baroque.

Between 1578 and 1580 it goes to Mantoue to work with the service of the duke Guillaume Gonzague. Because of its immense popularity, Tintoretto often had to resort to the assistance of his/her children, Domenico and Marietta Robusti, who were both of the experienced artists, very influenced by the style of their father. In its workshop also worked Paolo Fiammingo, Ludovic Toeput, Martin of Your and the Aliense