Tintoretto, the 16th-century Italian painter whose huge masterpieces adorn many of Venice’s churches and palaces, is having his first major solo exhibition for 70 years.
The exhibition at Madrid’s El Prado museum comes after curators pledged money to help conserve many of the paintings when they returned to their damp and draughty homes in Venice.
“Damp has affected some of these paintings in the past,” said Gabriele Finaldi, the Prado’s deputy director for conservation and research. “We don’t want that to happen again.”
One church lending paintings to the show is Venice’s San Marcuola, where Tintorettos cover two walls. The Prado will help pay for the church’s upkeep.
The last major Tintoretto exhibition was at Venice’s Ca’ Pesaro gallery in 1937. Curators have built an exhibition of 65 paintings, drawings and sculptures around the Prado’s own collection.
They have also discovered documents showing that the Renaissance painter’s real name was Jacopo Comin and that he may have had 21 siblings.
The name Tintoretto means “little dyer”, reflecting his father’s job as a cloth-dyer. He was also known as Il Furioso, because of the energy he poured into his paintings.
One story told about Tintoretto is that Titian, another Venetian master, threw him out of his studio after just 10 days as an apprentice because he was too good. Tintoretto, however, considered Titian and Michaelangelo to be his greatest inspirations.
The exhibition brings together works that were split up centuries ago. Christ Washing the Disciples’ Feet, for example, can be seen alongside The Last Supper as they once hung in Venice’s Curia Patriarcale church.
Although Renaissance painters had teams of assistants who helped them, curators say they have chosen those Tintorettos which show the artists’ own brushwork at its best or where his artistic personality is most strongly reflected.
“That has meant excluding some from El Prado’s own collection, which were not of a high enough quality,” the museum says. – Guardian Unlimited Â