The New Criterion

Last month I asked the question "is Tintoretto the greatest"?

Over the weekend, in the Wall Street Journal, I made the case for Tintoretto’s religious paintings in the Scuola di San Rocco in Venice.

The Venetian painter Tintoretto (c. 1518-1594) never commanded the sculptural vocabulary of Leonardo or Michelangelo. He did not luxuriate in the warmth of Giorgione or Titian. He displayed neither the draftsmanship (disegno) of Florentine art nor the affection for coloring (colorito) that was the legacy of his native city.

But through a synthesis of each tradition, "il disegno di Michelangelo e il colorito di Tiziano," as one Venetian writer identified it, Tintoretto may just have painted the single best work of religious art in the Italian Renaissance. His "Crucifixion" of 1565 comes as both a concluding statement to the art of the high Renaissance and also something wildly new.

And if you haven’t seen Tintoretto’s paintings (most people who visit Venice don’t even know about it), the Scuola confraternity maintains a website--www.scuolagrandesanrocco.it--with a 360 ’virtual view’ of his work (the "Crucifixion" is located in the Albergo, or boardroom of the confraternity).