DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.68745#0244
TINTORETTO
at the Accademia shows the figure of a man seated below. His
pencil line is generally rather short and sketchy, though full of
feeling ; it is when he draws with his brush that we find to what
a magnificent sweep and precise modelling he can attain.
His immediate pupils are neither many nor famous, but he is
followed by a host of imitators. It is not surprising that his
fame is so often smirched by the attribution of poor and weak
work, when we' realize what a status the
very inferior Domenico
attained to as a portrait-painter. Even in his father’s lifetime
he painted a great number of persons, and he survived him for
forty years. Among Domenico’s sitters were many of the Doges,
Carlo Ridolfi himself as a young man, bishops, cardinals, and
ambassadors, Dudley Carleton, the English diplomatist, the Earl
of Arundel, his Countess and their children, and many English
lords and ladies. Marietta’s fame too, as a portrait-painter, was so
well established, that she received invitations to their Courts from
the Kings of France and Spain. The Bridgewater Gallery has an
excellent portrait by her of a senator in a ruff, finely and solidly
painted, but wanting the glow of her father’s work. Martin de
Vos and Paolo Franceschi were among his pupils, and Agostino
Carracci was one of the many who engraved his paintings.
Tintoretto is said to have received his engraving of the ‘ Cruci-
fixion ’ with the liveliest pleasure. Upon the school of the tenebrosi
he undoubtedly re-acted with injurious effect. Its members
exaggerated his action, and copied his strong effects of black and
white, with disastrous consequences. Bad imitations in his style
are common, and some of them, like the ‘Andromeda’ at St. Peters-
burg, and the abominably-drawn ‘Nine Muses’ at Vienna, still
masquerade under his name. By Ridolfi’s time, everything in
the style of Tintoretto was attributed to him, and Ridolfi himself
shows little discrimination between real and spurious works.
Numbers of mediocre and even bad paintings were labelled
with the famous painter’s name, and were bought by succeeding
generations of English travellers and respectably established by
uncritical owners in English galleries, where only in recent years
has the operation of winnowing the good grain from the chaff
been begun.
It remained for bigger men to catch the torch as it fell from
140
at the Accademia shows the figure of a man seated below. His
pencil line is generally rather short and sketchy, though full of
feeling ; it is when he draws with his brush that we find to what
a magnificent sweep and precise modelling he can attain.
His immediate pupils are neither many nor famous, but he is
followed by a host of imitators. It is not surprising that his
fame is so often smirched by the attribution of poor and weak
work, when we' realize what a status the
very inferior Domenico
attained to as a portrait-painter. Even in his father’s lifetime
he painted a great number of persons, and he survived him for
forty years. Among Domenico’s sitters were many of the Doges,
Carlo Ridolfi himself as a young man, bishops, cardinals, and
ambassadors, Dudley Carleton, the English diplomatist, the Earl
of Arundel, his Countess and their children, and many English
lords and ladies. Marietta’s fame too, as a portrait-painter, was so
well established, that she received invitations to their Courts from
the Kings of France and Spain. The Bridgewater Gallery has an
excellent portrait by her of a senator in a ruff, finely and solidly
painted, but wanting the glow of her father’s work. Martin de
Vos and Paolo Franceschi were among his pupils, and Agostino
Carracci was one of the many who engraved his paintings.
Tintoretto is said to have received his engraving of the ‘ Cruci-
fixion ’ with the liveliest pleasure. Upon the school of the tenebrosi
he undoubtedly re-acted with injurious effect. Its members
exaggerated his action, and copied his strong effects of black and
white, with disastrous consequences. Bad imitations in his style
are common, and some of them, like the ‘Andromeda’ at St. Peters-
burg, and the abominably-drawn ‘Nine Muses’ at Vienna, still
masquerade under his name. By Ridolfi’s time, everything in
the style of Tintoretto was attributed to him, and Ridolfi himself
shows little discrimination between real and spurious works.
Numbers of mediocre and even bad paintings were labelled
with the famous painter’s name, and were bought by succeeding
generations of English travellers and respectably established by
uncritical owners in English galleries, where only in recent years
has the operation of winnowing the good grain from the chaff
been begun.
It remained for bigger men to catch the torch as it fell from
140