Ventura García Calderón

 

(Paris, 1886 - 1959) Peruvian essayist, short story writer and poet, one of the most relevant figures of modern Peruvian literature. Together with José de la Riva Agüero, José Gálvez Barrenechea and Víctor Andrés Belaúnde, he was part of the "generation of 900", also called the "Arielista generation". Son of the politician Francisco García Calderón (1834-1905) and brother of the writer and diplomat Francisco, he studied at the University of San Marcos and spent, like him, a good part of his life in Paris; He represented his country in the League of Nations (1932), in Belgium (1935) and in Switzerland (1940).

He wrote some works in the French language, although not with as much insistence as his brother Francisco de Jesús. Ventura García Calderón first worked as a chronicler and it didn't take long for him to dare to do the essay; Incidentally, he cultivated poetry, and, above all, he wrote stories with a masterful hand. Modernist, refined spirit, in love with everything French, García Calderón was like his brother, a Europeanizing Peruvian, although his literary work is more transcendent.

The best collection of his stories is titled The Condor's Revenge, but those in the book Color of Blood, with a prologue by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, are not far behind; some others are grouped with the titles Painful and naked reality (1914) and Danger of death. The poems of Cantilenas and Semblanzas de América (1920), nor the chronicles of Frívolamente (1907), En la verbena de Madrid and Bajo el clamor de las sirens do not add much to the literary value of the storyteller; But essays such as From romanticism to modernism (1910) and his studies on Peruvian and Uruguayan literature are of particular interest.

Other titles of his works are Parnaso Peruano (1915), Une enquête: Don Quichotte à Paris et dans les tranchées (1916), The first verses of Rubén Darío (1917), The best American stories (1919), Needle of marking and The new Spanish language (1923). Like writers like Enrique Gómez Carrillo, Rufino Blanco Fombona and many others, García Calderón is the refined and cultured American who sows throughout Europe the fertile seed of Latin America and brings to the new continent the fertile warmth of the cultural values of Western Europe.

With affection,

Ruben

 

Claude Debussy

 

Claude Debussy

French composer

Source: Britannica

Claude Debussy (born August 22, 1862, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France—died March 25, 1918, Paris) French composer whose works were a seminal force in the music of the 20th century. He developed a highly original system of harmony and musical structure that expressed in many respects the ideals to which the Impressionist and Symbolist painters and writers of his time aspired. His major works include Clair de lune (“Moonlight,” in Suite bergamasque, 1890–1905), Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (1894; Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun), the opera Pelléas et Mélisande (1902), and La Mer (1905; “The Sea”).

 

Early period

1884

Debussy showed a gift as a pianist by the age of nine. He was encouraged by Madame Mauté de Fleurville, who was associated with the Polish composer Frédéric Chopin, and in 1873 he entered the Paris Conservatory, where he studied the piano and composition, eventually winning in 1884 the Grand Prix de Rome with his cantata L’Enfant prodigue (The Prodigal Child).

 

Debussy’s youth was spent in circumstances of great turbulence. He was almost overwhelmed by situations of great extremes, both material and emotional. While living with his parents in a poverty-stricken suburb of Paris, he unexpectedly came under the patronage of a Russian millionairess, Nadezhda Filaretovna von Meck, who engaged him to play duets with her and her children. He traveled with her to her palatial residences throughout Europe during the long summer vacations at the Conservatory. In Paris during this time he fell in love with a singer, Blanche Vasnier, the beautiful young wife of an architect; she inspired many of his early works. It is clear that he was torn by influences from many directions; these stormy years, however, contributed to the sensitivity of his early style.

 

Claude Debussy, 1909.

This early style is well illustrated in one of Debussy’s best-known compositions, Clair de lune. The title refers to a folk song that was the conventional accompaniment of scenes of the lovesick Pierrot in the French pantomime, and indeed the many Pierrot-like associations in Debussy’s later music, notably in the orchestral work Images (1912) and the Sonata for Cello and Piano (1915; originally titled Pierrot fâché avec la lune [“Pierrot Vexed by the Moon”]), show his connections with the circus spirit that also appeared in works by other composers, notably the ballet Petrushka (1911) by Igor Stravinsky and Pierrot Lunaire by Arnold Schoenberg.

 

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Mozart rehearsing his 12th Mass with singer and musician. (Austrian composer. (Johann Chrysostom Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart)

 

Middle period

As a holder of the Grand Prix de Rome, Debussy was given a three-year stay at the Villa Medici in Rome, where, under what were supposed to be ideal conditions, he was to pursue his creative work. Most composers who were granted this state scholarship, however, found life in this magnificent Renaissance palace irksome and longed to return to simpler and more familiar surroundings. Debussy himself eventually fled from the Villa Medici after two years and returned to Blanche Vasnier in Paris. Several other women, some of doubtful reputation, were also associated with him in his early years. At this time Debussy lived a life of extreme indulgence. Once one of his mistresses, Gabrielle (“Gaby”) Dupont, threatened suicide. His first wife, Rosalie (“Lily”) Texier, a dressmaker, whom he married in 1899, did in fact shoot herself, though not fatally, and, as is sometimes the case with artists of passionate intensity, Debussy himself was haunted by thoughts of suicide.

 

The main musical influence in Debussy’s work was the work of Richard Wagner and the Russian composers Aleksandr Borodin and Modest Mussorgsky. Wagner fulfilled the sensuous ambitions not only of composers but also of the Symbolist poets and the Impressionist painters. Wagner’s conception of Gesamtkunstwerk (“total art work”) encouraged artists to refine upon their emotional responses and to exteriorize their hidden dream states, often in a shadowy, incomplete form; hence the more tenuous nature of the work of Wagner’s French disciples. It was in this spirit that Debussy wrote the symphonic poem Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (1894). Other early works by Debussy show his affinity with the English Pre-Raphaelite painters; the most notable of these works is La Damoiselle élue (1888), based on “The Blessed Damozel” (1850), a poem by the English poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti. In the course of his career, however, which covered only 25 years, Debussy was constantly breaking new ground. Explorations, he maintained, were the essence of music; they were his musical bread and wine. His single completed opera, Pelléas et Mélisande (first performed in 1902), demonstrates how the Wagnerian technique could be adapted to portray subjects like the dreamy nightmarish figures of this opera who were doomed to self-destruction. Debussy and his librettist, Maurice Maeterlinck, declared that they were haunted in this work by the terrifying nightmare tale of Edgar Allan Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher. The style of Pelléas was to be replaced by a bolder, more highly coloured manner. In his seascape La Mer (1905) he was inspired by the ideas of the English painter J.M.W. Turner and the French painter Claude Monet. In his work, as in his personal life, he was anxious to gather experience from every region that the imaginative mind could explore.

 

Late period

In 1905 Debussy’s illegitimate daughter, Claude-Emma, was born. He had divorced Lily Texier in 1904 and subsequently married his daughter’s mother, Emma Bardac. Repelled by the gossip and scandal arising from this situation, he sought refuge for a time at Eastbourne, on the south coast of England. For his daughter, nicknamed Chouchou, he wrote the piano suite Children’s Corner (1908). Debussy’s spontaneity and the sensitive nature of his perception facilitated his acute insight into the child mind, an insight noticeable particularly in Children’s Corner, a French counterpart to Mussorgsky’s song cycle The Nursery; in the Douze Préludes, 2 books (1910, 1913; “Twelve Preludes”), for piano; and in the ballet La Boîte à joujoux (first performed in 1919; The Box of Toys).

 

In his later years, it is the pursuit of illusion that marks Debussy’s instrumental writing, especially the strange, other-worldly Cello Sonata. This noble bass instrument takes on, in chameleon fashion, the character of a violin, a flute, and even a mandolin. Debussy was developing in this work ideas of an earlier period, those expressed in a youthful play he had written, Frères en art (Brothers in Art), where his challenging, indeed anarchical, ideas are discussed among musicians, painters, and poets. (He had in fact published in one of the anarchist journals poems that he had written and that he later set to music in the song cycle Proses lyriques [1893].)

 

Evolution of his work

Debussy’s music marks the first of a series of attacks on the traditional language of the 19th century. He did not believe in the stereotyped harmonic procedures of the 19th century, and indeed it becomes clear from a study of mid-20th-century music that the earlier harmonic methods were being followed in an arbitrary, academic manner. Hence his formulation of the “21-note scale” designed to “drown” the sense of tonality, though this system was never adhered to in the inflexible manner of the 12-note system of Schoenberg. Debussy’s inquiring mind similarly challenged the traditional orchestral usage of instruments. He rejected the traditional dictum that string instruments should be predominantly lyrical. The pizzicato scherzo from his String Quartet (1893) and the symbolic writing for the violins in La Mer, conveying the rising storm waves, show a new conception of string colour. Similarly, he saw that woodwinds need not be employed for fireworks displays; they provide, like the human voice, wide varieties of colour. Debussy also used the brass in original colour transformations. In fact, in his music, the conventional orchestral construction, with its rigid woodwind, brass, and string departments, finds itself undermined or split up in the manner of the Impressionist painters. Ultimately, each instrument becomes almost a soloist, as in a vast chamber-music ensemble. Finally, Debussy applied an exploratory approach to the piano, the evocative instrument par excellence since notes struck at the keyboard are, by the nature of the piano mechanism, neither eighth notes, quarter notes, nor half notes, but merely illusions of these notes.

 

During the latter part of his life Debussy created an alter ego, “Monsieur Croche,” with whom he carried on imaginary conversations on the nature of art and music. “What is the use of your almost incomprehensible art?” Monsieur Croche asks. “Is it not more profitable to see the sun rise than to listen to the Pastoral Symphony of Beethoven?” Elsewhere Monsieur Croche supports the cause of the musical explorer: “I am less interested in what I possess than in what I shall need tomorrow.”

 

In his last works, the piano pieces En blanc et noir, (1915; In Black and White) and in the Douze Études (1915; “Twelve Études”), Debussy had branched out into modes of composition later to be developed in the styles of Stravinsky and the Hungarian composer Béla Bartók. It is certain that he would have taken part in the leading movements in composition of the years following World War I had his life not been so tragically cut short by cancer.

 

Wagner, said Debussy, was a wonderful sunset that had been mistaken for a dawn. As one looks back on the music of the last century this seems a remarkably shrewd observation. It was true of Wagner, of course, but it is now seen to be more true of Debussy himself. The fact is that there comes a time when the peak, the zenith of a civilization is reached. Critics have frequently noted this evolutionary stage in the music of Wagner, Debussy, or in one of their followers. A quintessential spirit is presented by these composers; and it seemed at the time that they could never be surpassed. But of course it is at this very stage that a decline in musical values sets in. Hence the paradoxical element in Debussy’s stature. Undoubtedly, he was aware of this duality in his achievement, as may be gathered from his searching, hesitant letters. Sensitive to sham in every sphere and also a child of his environment, he not only perceived this dual aspect of his work but also realized the extent to which he himself was caught up in this vast evolutionary transformation.

 

Debussy’s work cannot be judged on the musical level alone. “One must seek the poetry in his work,” said his friend the French composer Paul Dukas. There is not only poetry in his music; there is often an inspiration from painting. “I love painting [les images, a generic term that might apply to the whole of Debussy’s work] almost as much as music itself,” he told the Franco-American composer Edgard Varèse. This association of the arts is a theme that runs through the whole of the 19th century—it originated with the theories of the German short-story writer E.T.A. Hoffmann—but for Debussy it was a theory more sensitively expressed in the tales of Edgar Allan Poe. Throughout his life Debussy planned to set The Fall of the House of Usher in the form of an opera—the shadow of the tale never having been realized in Pelléas et Mélisande—and actually signed a contract for the production of this work at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, but it was never completed. The fact is that the hero of the tale, Roderick Usher, was a hypersensitive being like Debussy himself—a poet, a painter, and a musician. Moreover, the reputation of Poe was, during Debussy’s life and after, almost entirely a French reputation. The French poets translated his works, and the French painters appreciated his genius; and it was therefore only natural that a French musician should similarly have reflected the nature of his appeal.

 

Edward Lockspeiser

Clair the lune

With affection,

Ruben

 

Quotes by Alejo Carpentier

 

Quotes by Alejo Carpentier

 

 

"Journalism is a wonderful school of life."

"The printed word embalms the truth for posterity."

"New worlds must be lived before they are explained."

"There are two mechanisms that move the world: sex and surplus value."

"Silence is a word in my vocabulary."

«The greatest work proposed to the human being is to forge a destiny»

"I believe that the writer should start writing when, firstly, he has something to say and, secondly, when he knows how to say it."

"Art, literature, cannot be pigeonholed."

"We must look for the beginning of everything."

«Man does not know for whom he suffers and for whom he hopes»

In the Kingdom of Heaven, there is no grandeur to be won, inasmuch as there all is an established hierarchy, the unknown is revealed, existence is infinite, there is no possibility of sacrifice, and all is rest and joy. For this reason, bowed down by suffering and duties, beautiful in the midst of his misery, capable of loving in the face of afflictions and trials, man finds his greatness, his fullest measure, only in The Kingdom of This World.

The truth was much more beautiful.

With affection,

Ruben

​

Alejo Carpentier

 

Alejo Carpentier

Cuban author

Source Biographies and Lives

 

(Lausanne, Switzerland, 1904 - Paris, 1980) Cuban novelist, narrator and essayist with whom the maturity of the island narrative of the 20th century culminates, in addition to being one of the most prominent figures of Latin American literature for his baroque works such as El Century of the lights.

practitioners of the style known as “magic realism,” he exerted a decisive influence on the works of younger Latin American writers such as Gabriel García a leading Latin American literary figure, considered one of the best novelists of the 20th Márquez.

 

 

His definitive consecration as a writer came, however, with The Lost Steps (1953), a novel in which an Antillean musicologist residing in New York, married to an actress, is sent to a South American country with the task of rescuing and finding rare instruments. On the trip he is accompanied by a French lover, who seems to represent European decadence and whom the musicologist abandons for a native woman through whom he comes into contact with the life of an indigenous community, from where he is rescued and taken back to a civilized city to which he never adapts, until he returns to the jungle. An abstract and unreal story where the author's knowledge and intelligence merge with the deepest images of his literary expression.

Later came El Harassment (1956), after his experience in Venezuela, a short novel with political and psychological themes, which faithfully reflects the circle of repression and violence in Cuba before the Revolution, in the 1950s, although It was not a documentary novel: in this work the episodes occur coinciding with the forty-six minutes that the performance of Beethoven's Eroica Symphony lasts.

With Fidel Castro

 

 

 

It was followed by the volume Guerra del tiempo (1958), where the author brought together three stories that represented as many variations on time in a past setting: Camino de Santiago, a reissue of Viaje a la seed and Semejante a la noche. There were three brief forays by Carpentier into the world of fantasy and fiction, starring the irreversibility of what happened. Later he returned to the historical novel with The Age of Enlightenment (1962), set in France and the Antilles in the period of the French Revolution. In this work he narrated the adventures of a character named Victor Hugues who brought to the island of Guadeloupe the ideology of the French revolutionaries and also the guillotine. A captivating novel that confirmed the visual convocation power of its author, in which he presents distant characters and environments in the story and brings them closer to the reader, trapping him in an amazing verbal fabric.

 

 

 

This famous novel was followed by Baroque Concert (1974), a short work in which he reconstructed, with meticulous detail and strict historical and musicological rigor, the journey of a Creole through eighteenth-century Europe, accentuating the functionality of music in his narrative, since the Book is organized and structured on musical foundations. The same year he published The Resource of the Method, in which he recreates the image of the illustrated tyrant, in a Latin American version.

 

 

 

Chronologically, The Rite of Spring (1978) is placed next, a novel in which he recreated a story set in times of the Cuban Revolution and which he had anticipated in the form of a short story in The Silver Guests (1973). The Rite of Spring shows his self-reflective process about revolutions, throughout a period that ranges from the Soviet to the Castro, including the events of Playa Girón, and where the Spanish Civil War and the echoes of the Second World War also appear. World War. Finally, The Harp and the Shadow (1979), was a demystifying vision of Christopher Columbus and the discovery of America through the story of an intimate confession in which the Admiral, at death's door, decides to make a kind of inventory. of his exploits and weaknesses.

cradled within a set that, although simple, is much vaster and deeper.

 

 

 

It is also worth remembering its theoretical titles, such as Tientos y differences (1964), Literature and political consciousness in Latin America (1969) and Razón de ser (1976), essays collected in a volume published posthumously in Havana, precisely under the generic title of Essays (1984). In 1977 he was awarded the Cervantes Prize.

 

 

 

How to cite this article:

 

Fernández, Tomás and Tamaro, Elena. «Biography of Alejo Carpentier». In Biographies and Lives. The online biographical encyclopedia [Internet]. Barcelona, Spain, 2004. Available at https://www.biografiasyvidas.com/biogr

With affection,

Ruben

 

 

 

 

Tintoretto

 

Tintoretto

Tintoretto

Self-Portrait

Source: World History Encyclopaedia

Tintoretto (c. 1518-1594 CE), real name Jacopo Robusti, was an Italian Renaissance artist who specialised in religious, mythological, and portrait paintings. A prolific artist over a long career, the Venetian's masterpieces are famous for their light, vibrant colouring, and dramatic composition. Major works include St. George and the Dragon, now in the National Gallery in London, and his cycle of paintings for the Scuola di San Rocco in Venice. Tintoretto's originality, energetic figures, and technique of using quick sketches in chalk and paint would be hugely influential on 17th-century CE artists.

 

Early Life & Style

Tintoretto was born in Venice c. 1518 CE, his given name being Jacopo Robusti. He acquired his more famous nickname because his father was a dyer (tintore), and Tintoretto means 'little dyer'. Appropriately enough, the artist would become famous for the vibrant colouring in his work. Indeed, a motto commonly attributed to him is "Michelangelo's drawing, and Titian's colour" (Hale, 315), showing two of the biggest artistic influences on his work. The artist began with modest works like decorated furniture and frescoes for exterior walls, but it would be paintings, often very large canvases, that became his forte.

 

 

According to Carlo Ridolfi, who wrote his biography of Tintoretto in 1648 CE (Le maraviglie dell'arte), the young artist studied under his fellow-Venetian Titian (c. 1487-1576 CE), and it is true that his paintings do combine the dramatic postures and composition seen in the work of Michelangelo (1475-1564 CE) and the rich colours used by Titian. Tintoretto, though, was a superb draughtsman, and here he differed from his one-time master, who preferred the technique of colore (or colorito), that is using the juxtaposition of colours to define a composition, to that of disegno, the technique which emphasised the importance of defining form using lines. Ridolfi mentions that Titian and Tintoretto's relationship was a stormy one, and perhaps this divergence of technique, colour versus line drawing, was the source of much dispute.

 

The Last Supper by Tintoretto

Web Gallery of Art (Public Domain)

 

Another feature of Tintoretto's artistic style is the light source, which often creates unusual and dramatic areas of colour and shadow in the scene. The effect was achieved by the artist first creating a miniature wax model of the human figure he wanted to paint and assembling a number of these models inside a box. The models could then be moved around and an artificial light source arranged in different positions to create different and unusual effects of light and shadow. The energy that Tintoretto then instilled in his muscular figures with their unusual poses - what would become known as the Mannerist style or Mannerism - and the rapidity with which he sketched using chalk or paint in order to capture the fluidity of movement of the human body, all acted as a major influence on artists who followed in the 17th century CE. During his own career, however, the speed at which Tintoretto painted and the sometimes lack of finish in his work was a frequent source of criticism.

 

TINTORETTO'S PAINTINGS OFTEN SHOW QUICK BRUSHSTROKES, AT LEAST IN THE FINAL LAYERS OF THE WORK.

Tintoretto first gained notice after painting a large series of octagonal ceiling panels with mythological scenes in a private Venetian palace. This was followed up with a series of frescoes for Palazzo Zen in the same city, this time in collaboration with Andrea Meldolla (aka Schiavone). Unfortunately, only fragments of these frescoes survive but the technique, a fast one made necessary by the rapidity of the paint drying, must have interested Tintoretto as his later paintings often show the same quick brushstrokes, at least in the final layers of the work.

 

 

The Tintoretto Workshop

In 1555 CE Tintoretto married Faustina Episcopi, with whom he had eight children. For the next decade the artist was occupied with paintings with a biblical theme for Venice's Madonna dell'Orto church. Tintoretto remained in Venice for most of his career where he won commissions from various civic authorities, charitable institutions, and the Doge (ruler) of the city. The Venetian painter ran a large workshop to cope with the demand, overseeing the production of paintings on all manner of religious subjects, although allegorical pieces seemed to be his favourite. The artist's fame ensured that his workshop was visited by artists from far and wide, including from the Netherlands and Germany. It was also at this workshop that Tintoretto trained his son, Domenico Tintoretto (c. 1560-1635 CE) who later became a famous painter in his own right, particularly of portraits. Two more of Tintoretto's children were apprentices, his son Marco (1561-1637 CE) and daughter Marietta (c. 1556-1590 CE). Domenico certainly worked on a number of pieces with his father, and it was he who carried on running the workshop when his father died in Venice in 1594 CE. Tintoretto was buried in the church of Madonna dell'Orto.

 

Miracle of St. Mark by Tintoretto

Didier Descouens (CC BY-SA)

Major Works

The Miracle of St. Mark

 

Tintoretto's paintings can be broadly divided into three main areas: religious subjects, mythological allegories, and portraits. In 1548 CE Tintoretto produced his celebrated Miracle of Saint Mark Rescuing a Slave, now in the Academia of Venice. Commissioned by the Confraternity of San Marco, it is a triumph of light and darkness and surprised its audience with its energy and drama. The falling, twisting depiction of Venice's patron saint in the centre of the picture is highly unusual for a painting and seems more fitting for a ceiling fresco. It is a clear influence from Michelangelo's work. The writhing crowd provides another source of hectic movement, the figures arranged, as so often in Renaissance art, into an approximate triangle. The naked martyr in the foreground is foreshortened and leads the viewer's eye irresistibly into the crowd. In a typical example of Renaissance artistic deference to patrons, the chief officer of the confraternity, one Tomasso Rangone, appears in the bottom left corner of the painting. However, the fact that the confraternity did not take possession of the painting until 14 years after its completion suggests the work was rather too radical for immediate acceptance.

 

Around 1555 CE Tintoretto produced another masterpiece, Susanna at her Bath, which shows the story of the biblical figure who bathes while being spied upon by two old men. The naked figure of Susanna and the silver-coloured elements of the composition are strikingly bright compared to the gloomy elements of the background.

 

 

Saint George & the Dragon by Tintoretto

Google Cultural Institute (Public Domain)

 

The Saint George and the Dragon painting, produced around 1570 CE, is another of the great masterpieces. The scene displays typical features of Tintoretto's style. Firstly, the background landscape seems to drift off into infinity, stretching the scene out and bringing the human figures closer to the viewer. The white-walled city at the very back of the painting is painted in such a vague way that it seems unreal. Then, the two figures in the painting are simply bursting with energy. Further, both figures seem to be off-balance. Saint George is falling to the left and slightly away from the viewer while the female figure in the foreground seems to be falling forward towards the viewer as she flees the dragon. The tension caused by this polar movement is something that can be seen in many of the artist's paintings. Finally, the light shining from the angelic figure in the sky above is so arranged as to resemble a stage spotlight, reminding of the artist's technique of using miniature wax models. A near-contemporary painting of the Saint George is The Origin of the Milky Way, now in the National Gallery in London.

 

Moses Drawing Water from the Rock by Tintoretto

Web Gallery of Art (Public Domain)

The Scuola di San Rocco

 

While still producing such paintings mentioned already, Tintoretto's major commission, perhaps his greatest life's work, was the series of oil on canvas paintings in the Salla dell'Albergo and lower hall of Venice's Scuola Grande di San Rocco. Scuole were charitable organizations, and the San Rocco one was able to afford such lavish decorations because it was doing rather well from public contributions. This was because Saint Rocco was considered a great protector against the Black Death, then ravaging Europe for the umpteenth time. Tintoretto had won the competition to see which artist would decorate the scuola by secretly going into one of its rooms and hanging up one of his paintings. The artist was also a member of the confraternity, and this, along with a promise to give some paintings for free, must have helped his bid for the contract. A special three-man committee was, nevertheless, set up by the scuola, in order to examine and judge if each painting was worthy of inclusion.

 

TINTORETTO'S PAINTINGS ARE CELEBRATED FOR THE LIGHTING, DISTORTED PERSPECTIVES & RELENTLESS ACTION WITHIN THE SCENES.

Begun in 1564 CE, Tintoretto continued to work on the room for the next 17 years. The finished works were hung on the walls and from the ceiling, and they show scenes from the Old Testament, the life of Jesus Christ, and episodes involving the Virgin Mary. The works include the massive 12.2 metres (40 ft) wide canvas the Crucifixion, the Christ before Pilate, and Moses Drawing Water from the Rock. The figures in these works are remarkable for the lighting, distorted perspectives, and relentless action within the scenes.

 

 

The original ideas Tintoretto produced for the scuola led the famed art historian Giorgio Vasari to comment in the 1568 CE update of his The Lives of the Most Excellent Italian Architects, Painters, and Sculptors, that Tintoretto was "the most extraordinary brain that the art of painting has produced." (Pallucchini). And this was when Vasari had still not seen the completed works. When finally finished in 1581 CE, Tintoretto had given the Scuola 18 painted ceiling panels and 10 large paintings which functioned admirably as a pictorial narrative of the most important episodes of the Bible.

 

Paradise by Tintoretto

Web Gallery of Art (Public Domain)

Doge's Palace & Portraits

 

In 1588 CE the Italian painter completed one of many commissions for the Doge of Venice, the Paradise painting. This was the largest canvas he ever produced and was hung across one entire wall of the Great Council Hall. However, now over 70 years of age, it is very likely many of the works for the palace were executed or completed by suitably qualified members of Tintoretto's workshop. One of the final masterpieces was the celebrated Last Supper painting for the church of S. Giorgio Maggiore. Worked on between 1592 and 1594 CE, the Last Supper is recognised as a tour de force of Mannerism.

 

Like many successful Renaissance artists, Tintoretto was frequently called upon to produce portraits of the rich and powerful. Two examples are his representation of Doge Alvise Mocenigo, r. 1470-77 CE (Academia, Venice), and the nobleman Vincenzo Morosini (National Gallery, London). He even found time for a self-portrait or two, one of which is now in the Louvre, Paris.

 

 

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EDITORIAL REVIEW

This article has been reviewed by our editorial team before publication to ensure accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards in accordance with our editorial policy.

Bibliography

Hale, J.R. (ed). The Thames & Hudson Dictionary of the Italian Renaissance. Thames & Hudson, 2020.

Pallucchini, Rudolfo. "Tintoretto." Encyclopedia Britannica, 2020.

Paoletti, John T. & Radke, Gary M. Art in Renaissance Italy. Pearson, 2011.

Rundle, David. The Hutchinson Encyclopedia of the Renaissance. Hodder Arnold, 2000.

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About the Author

Mark Cartwright

Mark Cartwright

Mark is a full-time author, researcher, historian, and editor. Special interests include art, architecture, and discovering the ideas that all civilizations share. He holds an MA in Political Philosophy and is the WHE Publishing Director.

 

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With affection,

Ruben