Venice is celebrating in great style the 500th anniversary of the birth of Tintoretto (real name Jacopo Comin; or, as he was also known, Jacopo Robusti), one of the undoubted greatest exponents of the Venetian school of art.
In the first of two major exhibitions here in the city, the Gallerie dell'Accademia presents The Young Tintoretto, placing the artist in his artistic context leading up to his first major public work, 'The Miracle of the Slave' painted for the Scuola Grande di San Marco.
From Web Gallery of Art...
Oil on canvas, 415 x 541 cm
Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice
The Miracle of St Mark Freeing the Slave
Date: 1548Oil on canvas, 415 x 541 cm
Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice
The painting is the first of a series of works, painted in 1548 for the Scuola Grande di San Marco while Marco Episcopi, his future father-in-law was Grand Guardian of the School.
The subject of the huge canvas is the miraculous appearance of St Mark to rescue one of his devotees, a servant of a knight of Provence, who had been condemned to having his legs broken and his eyes put out for worshiping the relics of the saint against his master's will.
The scenes takes place on a kind of proscenium which seems to force the action out of the painting towards the spectator who is thus involved in the amazement of the crowd standing in a semi-circle around the protagonists: the fore-shortened figure of the slave lying on the ground, the dumbfounded executioner holding aloft the broken implements of torture, the knight of Provence starting up from his seat out of the shadow into the light, while the figure of St Mark swoops down from above.
In keeping with the drama of the action is the tight construction of the
painting, the dramatic fore-shortening of the forms and sudden strong
contrast of light and shade.
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