Domenico Robusti, called Domenico Tintoretto Venice 1560-1635

Colonel Hugh D. Baillie, London;
His sale, London, Christie's, May 15, 1858, lot 27 (as 'Tintoretto' and described as 'A superb gallery picture');
A. Jones, London, 1858;
Private collection, Scotland;
With Wildenstein & Co., by 1966;
From whom purchased as by Jacopo Tintoretto by the Toledo Museum of Art in 1967 (Acc. no. 67.144, purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment).

London, British Institution, Exhibition of Pictures of Italian, Spanish, Flemish, Dutch, French and English Masters, 1856, no. 119;
Toledo, Toledo Museum of Art, The Unseen Art of TMA: What's in the Vaults and Why?, September 1, 2004 - January 2, 2005 (no catalogue or checklist).

"Treasures for Toledo," in Museum News, The Toledo Museum of Art, Winter, 1969, p. 99;
S. Béguin and P. de Vecchi, Tout l'œuvre peint de Tintoret, Paris 1971, no. A36 (as attributed to Tintoretto);
The Toledo Museum of Art, European Paintings, Toledo 1976, pp. 158-9, reproduced Plate 16 (as Jacopo Tintoretto);
E. Young, "European Paintings, The Toledo Museum of Art," in Connoisseur, vol. 196, no. 787, September 1977, p. 68;
J.D. Morse, Old Master Paintings in North America, New York 1979, p. 262.
R. Pallucchini and P. Rossi, Tintoretto: Le opere sacre e profane, Milan 1982, vol. I, under Opere di Incerta o Erronea Attribuzione, p. 252, cat. no. A97, reproduced vol. II, fig. 720 (as Domenico Tintoretto).

From at least the nineteenth century, this painting had been considered a work by Jacopo Tintoretto.  In the twentieth century, this attribution was confirmed by Frederico Zeri, who, in a written communication of 1966, emphatically declared the picture as autograph and drew similarities between it and the cycle of the upper hall of the Scuola di san Rocco, Venice, of 1575 - 1581.  In 1967 and again in 1969, Antonio Morassi confirmed the Jacopo attribution and suggested a date of the 1570s.  It was not until Pallucchini and Rossi’s 1982 monograph on the artist that the picture was recognised as being by his son Domenico.¹ That the two artists' styles were confused is not surprising, for in his youthful years Domenico assimilated his father’s style.  Many of the pictures that came out of Jacopo’s studio during the 1580s and ’90s were almost certainly the product of collaboration between father and son.

Domenico was taught by Jacopo and he assisted his father in the workshop, together with his sister Marietta (d.1590) and younger brother Marco (neither of whom ever achieved Domenico’s fame as artists in their own right). Domenico was admitted to the Accademia di San Luca when he was seventeen and in 1594 he is recorded in the confraternity of painters, thus indicating that by that date he was an artist whose talent was recognised independently from that of his father. Domenico’s religious paintings are somewhat paler imitations of his father’s but they are also conceptually different: he places a greater emphasis on the landscape settings of his scenes, thus diluting the drama of the figures he portrays. From the late 1580s Domenico was greatly sought after as a portraitist and it is in this capacity that he is generally remembered today.

A drawing in the Uffizi by Jacopo Tintoretto which has been linked to the figure of Christ in this Noli me Tangere is more likely related to the figure of Saint John the Baptist in Jacopo’s painting of The Baptism of Christ in the church of San Silvestro, Venice, for which other drawings in a similar style also survive.² The Baptism is datable to circa 1580, a time during which Domenico would have already been active in his father’s studio, and it is therefore characteristic of the type of painting Domenico would have been looking at for inspiration.³ As Pallucchini and Rossi observed, the painting technique in the Noli me Tangere is characteristic of Domenico. It is not dissimilar to Domenico’s Christ and the Woman of Samaria where the figures’ draperies, the landscape and Christ’s halo all find parallels in the present work.⁴ The broad folds of the figures’ draperies, and the figure of the Magdalene in particular, may be compared to other works by Domenico, such as his Allegory of Venice crowning the lion of Saint Mark in the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, datable to the end of the 16th century.⁵ Most comparable, both for the figure types and for the depiction of landscapes that surround them, are Domenico’s series of Personifications of Virtues, some of which had also previously been attributed to Jacopo, but all of which are now given to his son Domenico and dated to the end of the 1590s.⁶

 

1 Written communications from Federico Zeri (1966) and Antonio Morassi (1967 and 1969) in the files of the Toledo Museum of Art.  In a written communication from Rodolfo Pallucchini (1975) the painting is given to Domenico Tintoretto and in another from Robert Echols (1999) to Jacopo’s studio. Notes made during a visit to the museum by Fritz Heinemann (1974) record the scholar’s opinion that it is by Jacopo and datable to the 1560s, and during a later visit by Nicholas Penny (1999) that it is probably by Domenico. For Pallucchini and Rossi, (see Literature).
2  Florence, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, inv. 7475; reproduced in G. Delogu, Drawings by Tintoretto, New York 1969, plate 21. This may be a first idea for John the Baptist, as his raised left arm and the bowl(?) he holds in his right hand might suggest. Another drawing for the same figure, also in black chalk and on blue squared paper, is in the Uffizi, inv. no. 12943 F (A. Forlani, Mostra di Disegni di Jacopo Tintoretto e della sua Scuola, Florence 1956, cat. no. 36, reproduced fig. 11), and the presence of numerous drawings relating to this painting in the Uffizi collections would suggest that they were all once together in the same album.
3  For the painting of The Baptism of Christ see Pallucchini and Rossi, op. cit., vol. I, p. 218, cat. no. 408, reproduced vol. II, p. 559, fig. 521.
4  Sold, New York, Sotheby’s, January 28, 1999, lot 475 (oil on canvas, 175.3 by 135.3 cm.).
5  Pallucchini and Rossi, ibid., vol. I, cat. no. A29, reproduced vol. II, fig. 656.
6  The set includes: Fides sold London, Sotheby’s, December 11, 2003, lot 182; Vigilance in the Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, Alabama; Faith in the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Pride sold New York, Sotheby’s, October 14, 1999, lot 140; Prudence sold New York, Christie’s, May 21, 1992, lot 30; Temperance sold London, Sotheby’s, July 6, 2000, lot 167; and Generosity sold London, Sotheby’s, July 8, 2004, lot 305.