Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/633

Rh R O B U S T I 609 to see how far he could be trained as an artist. We may suppose this to have been towards 1533, when Titian was already fifty-six years of age. Ridolfi is our authority for saying that Tintoret had only been ten days in the studio when Titian sent him home once and for all. The reason, according to the same writer, is that the great master ob- served some very spirited drawings, which he learned to be the production of Tintoret ; and it is inferred that he became at once jealous of so promising a scholar. This, however, is mere conjecture ; and perhaps it may be fairer to suppose that the drawings exhibited so much independ- ence of manner that Titian judged that young Robusti, although he might become a painter, would never be pro- perly a pupil. From this time forward the two always remained upon distant terms, Robusti being indeed a pro- fessed and ardent admirer of Titian, but never a friend, and Titian and his adherents turning the cold shoulder to Robusti. Active disparagement also was not wanting, but it passed disdainfully unnoticed by Tintoret. The latter sought for no further teaching, but studied on his own account with laborious zeal ; he lived poorly, collecting casts, bas-reliefs, &c., and practising by their aid. His noble conception of art and his high personal ambition were evidenced in the inscription which he placed over his studio, "II disegno di Michelangelo ed il colorito di Tiziano" (Michelangelo's design and Titian's colour). He studied more especially from models of Buonarroti's Dawn, Noon, Twilight, and Night, and became expert in modelling in wax and clay, a method (practised likewise by Titian) which afterwards stood him in good stead in working out the arrangement of his pictures. The models were sometimes taken from dead subjects dissected or studied in anatomy schools; some were draped, others nude, and Robusti was wont to suspend them in a wooden or cardboard box, with an aperture for a candle. Now and afterwards he very frequently worked by night as well as by day. The young painter Schiavone, four years Robusti's junior, was much in his company. Tintoret helped Schiavone gratis in wall-paintings ; and in many subsequent instances he worked also for nothing, and thus succeeded in obtaining commissions. The two earliest mural paintings of Robusti done, like others, for next to no pay are said to have been Belshazzar's Feast and a Cavalry Fight, both long since perished. Such, indeed, may be said to have been the fate of all his frescos, early or later. The first work of his which attracted some considerable notice was a portrait-group of himself and his brother the latter playing a guitar with a nocturnal effect ; this also is lost. It was followed by some historical subject, which Titian was candid enough to praise. One of Tintoret's early pictures still extant is in the church of the Carmine in Venice, the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple ; also in S. Benedetto are the Annunciation and Christ with the Woman of Samaria. For the Scuola della Trinita (the scuole or schools of Venice were more in the nature of hospitals or charitable foundations than of educational in- stitutions) he painted four subjects from Genesis. Two of these, now in the Venetian Academy, are Adam and Eve and the Death of Abel, both noble works of high mastery, which leave us in no doubt that Robusti was by this time a consummate painter, one of the few who have attained to the highest eminence by dire study of their own, un- eeconcled by any training from some senior proficient. Towards 1546 Robusti painted for the church of S. Maria dell' Orto three of his leading works the Worship of the Golden Calf, the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple, and the Last Judgment now shamefully re- painted; and he settled down in a house hard by the church. It is a Gothic edifice, looking over the lagoon of Murano to the Alps, built in the Fondamenta de' Mori, still standing, but let out cheap to artisans. In 1548 he was commissioned for four pictures in the Scuola di S. Marco the Finding of the Body of St Mark in Alexandria (now in the church of the Angeli, Murano), the Saint's Body brought to Venice, a Votary of the Saint delivered by invoking him from an Unclean Spirit (these two are in the library of the royal palace, Venice), and the highly and justly celebrated Miracle of the Slave. This last, which forms at present one of the chief glories of the Venetian Academy, represents the legend of a Christian slave or captive who was to be tortured as a punishment for some acts of devotion to the evangelist, but was saved by the miraculous intervention of the latter, who shattered the bone-breaking and blinding implements which were about to be applied. These four works were greeted with signal and general applause, including that of Titian's intimate, the too potent Pietro Aretino, with whom Tintoret, one of the few men who scorned to curry favour with him, was mostly in disrepute. It is said, however, that Tintoret at one time painted a ceiling in Pietro's house ; at another time, being invited to do his portrait, he attended, and at once proceeded to take his sitter's measure with a pistol (or else a stiletto), as a significant hint that he was not exactly the man to be trifled with. The painter having now executed the four works in the Scuola di S. Marco, his straits and obscure endurances were over. He married Faustina de' Vescovi, daughter of a Venetian nobleman. She appears to have been a careful housewife, and one who both would and could have her way with her not too tract- able husband. Faustina bore him several children, prob- ably two sons and five daughters. The next conspicuous event in the professional life of Tintoret is his enormous labour and profuse self-develop- ment on the walls and ceilings of the Scuola di S. Rocco, a building which may now almost be regarded as a shrine reared by Robusti to his own genius. The building had been begun in 1525 by the Lombardi, and was very defi- cient in light, so as to be particularly ill-suited for any great scheme of pictorial adornment. The painting of its interior was commenced in 1560. In that year five prin- cipal painters, including Tintoret and Paul Veronese, were invited to send in trial-designs for the centre-piece in the smaller hall, named Sala dell' Albergo, the subject being S. Rocco received into Heaven. Tintoret produced not a sketch but a picture, and got it inserted into its oval. The competitors remonstrated, not unnaturally ; but the artist, who knew how to play his own game, made a free gift of the picture to the saint, and, as a bye-law of the foundation prohibited the rejection of any gift, it was re- tained in situ, Tintoret furnishing gratis the other decora- tions of the same ceiling. In 1565 he resumed work at the scuola, painting the magnificent Crucifixion, for which a sum of 250 ducats was paid. In 1576 he presented gratis another centre-piece, that for the ceiling of the great hall, representing the Plague of Serpents ; and in the following year he completed this ceiling with pictures of the Paschal Feast and Moses striking the Rock, accepting whatever pittance the confraternity chose to pay. Robusti next launched out into the painting of the entire scuola and of the adjacent church of S. Rocco. He offered in November 1577 to execute the works at the rate of 100 ducats per annum, three pictures being due in each year. This proposal was accepted and was punctually fulfilled, the painter's death alone preventing the execution of some of the ceiling-subjects. The whole sum paid for the scuola throughout was 2447 ducats. Disregarding some minor performances, the scuola and church contain fifty-two memorable paintings, which may be described as vast sug- gestive sketches, with the mastery, but not the deliberate precision, of finished pictures, and adapted for being XX. 77