Venice, here's the big Tintoretto exhibition at the Doge's Palace

Scheduled at the Doge’s Palace in Venice from September 7, 2018 to January 6, 2019, is the major exhibition Tintoretto 1519 - 1594, a monographic show entirely dedicated to Jacopo Robusti known as Tintoretto (Venice, 1519 - 1594): this is the first monographic exhibition dedicated to him in the city in eighty years. The aim is to retrace the most fruitful period of his artistic career, from the mid-1540s to his last works. All of this runs concurrently with an exhibition at the Gallerie dell’Accademia, titled The Young Tintoretto, which instead examines the youthful masterpieces of his first decade of activity.

The exhibition at the Doge’s Palace is set up in the rooms of theDoge’s Apartment: this is the place that most testifies to the success and dominance Jacopo achieved on the 16th-century Venetian art scene, which also included such giants and competitors as Titian and Veronese. This is a review strongly desired by the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia and its director Gabriella Belli, promoted jointly with the National Gallery of Art in Washington, with the collaboration of the Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia, the contribution of Save Venice Inc. and the support of Louis Vuitton. Curating the exhibition at the Doge’s Palace are Robert Echols and Frederick Ilchman, U.S. scholars who have for years focused their research on defining the overall catalog of Jacopo Robusti’s work. They are joined on this occasion by a prestigious international advisory board and numerous experts on Venetian Renaissance art, who have contributed timely essays to the catalog of the two exhibitions, published by Marsilio: Stefania Mason, Roland Krischel, Susannah Rutherglen, Mattia Biffis, Peter Humfrey, Lorenzo Buonanno, Michiaki Koshikawa, Miguel Falomir, Maria Agnese Chiari Moretto and Giorgio Tagliaferro.

It is precisely the most recent studies and enlightening conservation interventions of the last two decades that have, moreover, allowed a rigorous analysis of the paintings and their chronology: among these, in particular, the interventions of Save Venice Inc. that have also allowed the scientific examination and restoration of some works of the Museo Correr and the extraordinary canvases of the Anticollegio, the Atrio Quadrato and the Sala degli Inquisitori of the Doge’s Palace, to be admired at last in their full expressive force. The review includes 50 paintings and 20 autograph drawings by Tintoretto, lent by major international museums, and the famous cycles created for the Doge’s Palace between 1564 and 1592 (visible in their original location) will also be part of the exhibition: the exhibition will therefore allow visitors to fully rediscover Jacopo Robusti’s visionary, daring and by no means conventional painting.

An extraordinary storyteller, a skillful director of painted actions, a sophisticated colorist, Tintoretto proves to be a fascinating interpreter in all the different genres he tackled during his long career, from religious to major history paintings, from portraiture to profane and mythological themes, of which the exhibition offers illuminating examples thanks to loans from important museums around the world and some prestigious private collections: from museums in London (such as the National Gallery from which The Origin of the Milky Way of 1575 also arrives, or the Royal Collection, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Courtauld Gallery), but also from Paris, Ghent, Lyon, Dresden, Otterlo, Prague, and Rotterdam. From the Prado in Madrid, five extraordinary works arrive in Venice, including Joseph and the Wife of Putiphares (c. 1555), Judith and Holofernes (1552-1555) and The Rape of Helen (1578) more than three meters long, made for the Gonzaga court, whose extreme quality is now appreciated. From the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, on the other hand, comes the celebrated Susanna and the Old Men of 1577, and, thanks to the Staatliche Museen in Berlin, we will see on view the noble gaze of the Portrait of Giovanni Mocenigo (1580), which, included in a rich gallery of portraits, reveals how Tintoretto was also a skilled interpreter of human psychology.

Emblematic and revealing are the two self-portraits with which the exhibition opens and closes, executed one at the beginning and one at the end of Jacopo’s career and loaned respectively by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Musée du Louvre. Particularly in the youthful painting executed around 1546/47, defined by the curators as the first “autonomous” self-portrait in European art, we can already grasp the strength of personality, ambition and energy of painting that would connote Tintoretto’s entire career, but also the absolute novelty of his restless and sometimes mysterious art, with lashing brushstrokes broken by textural highlights and with that sought-after sense of the unfinished. Among the masterpieces with a sacred subject, the quality, revealed by recent restorations, of the altarpieces of San Marziale and the Ateneo Veneto stands out, which today appear to be among the Maestro’s most interesting works; as do the large canvases of his last years, in which the hand of his son Domenico or his workshop is apparent, but which preserve intact, in their compositional conception, all the visionary nature of the great Tintoretto.

Exhibition hours: until October 31, 2018, 8:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. and 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. From November 1 to January 6, 2019, from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Tickets: full 13 euros, reduced 11 euros (children from 6 to 14 years old, students from 15 to 25 years old, citizens over 65, staff of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism Rolling Venice Card Holders, Youth Card Holders, Icom Members Trenitalia Clients -Frecciargento and Frecciabianca travelers with destination Venice, travelers holding international tickets with destination Italy, FS Group employees and Freccia Card Holders-, Touring Club Italia Members, ISIC Holders - International Student Identity Card, Cinema Più Service Card holders, Edenredart ticket holders, Tintoretto exhibition ticket holders Accademia Gallery, groups of at least 10 people), special reduced MUVE Friend Card holders, reduced schools 5 euro, free for children from 0 to 5 years old, handicapped persons with accompanying person, authorized guides Tourist Interpreters accompanying groups, teachers accompanying school groups, up to a maximum of 2 per group, Accompanying persons (max. 1) of adult groups, ordinary MUVE partners. Info on the Venice City Museums website.

Image: Tintoretto, Susanna and the Old Men (1555-1556; oil on canvas; 146 x 193.6 cm; Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Gemäldegalerie)

Venice, here's the big Tintoretto exhibition at the Doge's Palace

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.