Tintoretto's original name was Jacopo Robusti, but he came
to be known as Il Tintoretto, meaning "little dyer" after his father's profession. In a city as small as Venice, all artists knew one another,and it is no surprise to learn that Tintoretto,
about 30 years Titian's junior, declared his ambition was to
combine Titian's colourn with Michelangelo's drawing. "Drawing", as Michelangelo would haughtily agree, is hardly the
word to use for Venetian chromatic unities: form coalesces out of light, very softly. Tintoretto, though, was an almost "hard" Venetian, in that he painted in a fury of inspiration, dashing down his first ideas and scumbling them into a whole.
|
