Jacopo Comin, called Tintoretto (“the little dyer”) after his father’s trade, was born in Venice in 1518 and spent his entire working life there, producing an enormous body of work that transformed the traditions he inherited from Titian and Michelangelo into something more urgent, theatrical, and emotionally charged. According to legend, he inscribed on his studio wall: “The drawing of Michelangelo and the colour of Titian” — a programme he pursued with furious energy and prolific output.
His breakthrough work, The Miracle of the Slave (1548), announced a new kind of painting: figures plunging from the sky in extreme foreshortening, bodies twisting in dramatic action, light exploding from unexpected sources. The monumental cycle of paintings he created for the Scuola Grande di San Rocco between 1564 and 1588 — over fifty canvases covering walls and ceilings — is one of the most ambitious decorative programmes ever undertaken by a single artist. His Crucifixion there, over twelve metres wide, orchestrates dozens of figures in a swirling composition of extraordinary dramatic power.
Tintoretto’s restless invention, his willingness to sacrifice finish for expressive force, and his radical experiments with light and perspective made him a controversial figure in his own time — critics accused him of carelessness — but his influence on Baroque painting, from Rubens to El Greco, was profound.