Venice.  Another dusk is here.

 

 

Study after Michelangelo’s ‘Dusk’, Seen from Above, chalk heightened with white on blue paper.  Tintoretto, 1518-1594, Venetian.    

Loaned in 2019 to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC by the Gallerie Degli Uffizi, Florence

 

In its celebratory exhibition of the 500th anniversary of Tintoretto’s birth,  the National Gallery, Washington, DC, 

notes that Tintoretto had access from the 1540’s of reduced-scale models of The Times of Day (1524-34) sculpted by Michelangelo for the Medici Chapel in Florence. The artist later bought a copy of the casts.

 

 

Dusk (with Dawn not shown), marble, on the tomb of Lorenzo de Medici in the Medici Chapel, San Lorenzo, Florence.  Michelangelo, 1475-1564, Italian. 

Image from Wikimedia

 

 

On his studio wall, say the curators of this exhibition, Tintoretto wrote:  ‘the disegno of Michelangelo and the colorito of Titian.’ 

 

Unlike Titian, Tintoretto made many drawings before he ever addressed brush to canvas especially after the 1540s.  

 

 

As above

 

Likewise, he made many drawings of the of The Times of Day from models and from his casts.  In all lights and from many angles. 

 

And to sleep: 

 Domenico Tintoretto, 1560-1635, Venetian. 

Trained by his father, who often organized in-studio drawing classes using models.

 

 

Reclining Female Nude, c. 1590, chalk on faded blue paper.  Domenico Tintoretto, 1560-1635, Venetian.  Loaned to the National Gallery by the Robert Lehman Collection, Metropolitan Musuem of Art, NY in 2019

 

Reclining Female Nude, c. 1590, chalk on faded blue paper.  Domenico Tintoretto, 1560-1635, Venetian.  Loaned to the National Gallery by the Robert Lehman Collection, Metropolitan Musuem of Art, NY in 2019

 

Reclining Female Nude, 1590-95, chalk on blue paper.  Domenico Tintoretto, 1560-1635, Venetian.  Loaned to the National Gallery by the Albertina, Vienna in 2019