DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.68745#0037
THE MAN AND HIS LIFE
seen in all his works and in the fantastic compositions which he
puts together in his own way, different from the use and custom
of other painters, surpassing extravagance with new and capricious
inventions and strange whims of intellect, working on the spur of
the moment and without design, as if art were a mere pleasantry.
He has worked in almost every style, in fresco, in oil, portraits
from nature and at every price: in such a way that, according to
their different modes, he has painted and still paints the greater
number of pictures that are executed in Venice.
‘ And as in his youth he observed much understanding in many
fine works, if he had known the great principle which there is in
nature and aided it with study and cool judgment, as those have
done who have fol]owed the fine methods of their predecessors,
and had not, as he has done, abandoned this practice, he would
have been one of the best painters who have been known in
Venice—not that it should be understood by this that he is not
actually a fine and good painter, of a vivid, fanciful and gracious
spirit.’
There is little mystery about the facts of Tintoretto’s life, and
though we should like to have known more, it is doubtful whether
there would have been anything more of importance to tell. It
was a remarkably uneventful life, with none of the wanderings and
vicissitudes that make such biographies as those of Michelangelo
or Leonardo so picturesque. He left no sonnets or writings and
scarcely a letter, he was personally no great figure of his time, and
the contemporary allusions even to his work are scanty in the
extreme. Yet there is no time of his life when we are not
perfectly able to follow him, and the scraps of knowledge that
have come down to us are such that it is quite possible to
construct a personality to the reality of which we can subscribe
without straining our belief. In an analysis of this kind
we must be on our guard against turning possibilities into
probabilities and probabilities into assumptions, but, over and
above the facts and anecdotes of Vasari and Ridolfi, we possess a
mass of evidence of a very personal and intimate character in his
work, and it is as we get a grasp of this, that the whole human
being is more adequately reconstructed for us, and that we can
say with Alfred de Musset that 4 what we call Art is indeed Man’
11
seen in all his works and in the fantastic compositions which he
puts together in his own way, different from the use and custom
of other painters, surpassing extravagance with new and capricious
inventions and strange whims of intellect, working on the spur of
the moment and without design, as if art were a mere pleasantry.
He has worked in almost every style, in fresco, in oil, portraits
from nature and at every price: in such a way that, according to
their different modes, he has painted and still paints the greater
number of pictures that are executed in Venice.
‘ And as in his youth he observed much understanding in many
fine works, if he had known the great principle which there is in
nature and aided it with study and cool judgment, as those have
done who have fol]owed the fine methods of their predecessors,
and had not, as he has done, abandoned this practice, he would
have been one of the best painters who have been known in
Venice—not that it should be understood by this that he is not
actually a fine and good painter, of a vivid, fanciful and gracious
spirit.’
There is little mystery about the facts of Tintoretto’s life, and
though we should like to have known more, it is doubtful whether
there would have been anything more of importance to tell. It
was a remarkably uneventful life, with none of the wanderings and
vicissitudes that make such biographies as those of Michelangelo
or Leonardo so picturesque. He left no sonnets or writings and
scarcely a letter, he was personally no great figure of his time, and
the contemporary allusions even to his work are scanty in the
extreme. Yet there is no time of his life when we are not
perfectly able to follow him, and the scraps of knowledge that
have come down to us are such that it is quite possible to
construct a personality to the reality of which we can subscribe
without straining our belief. In an analysis of this kind
we must be on our guard against turning possibilities into
probabilities and probabilities into assumptions, but, over and
above the facts and anecdotes of Vasari and Ridolfi, we possess a
mass of evidence of a very personal and intimate character in his
work, and it is as we get a grasp of this, that the whole human
being is more adequately reconstructed for us, and that we can
say with Alfred de Musset that 4 what we call Art is indeed Man’
11