Bleeding paper – The use of red oil paint on Tintoretto’s workshop drawings; Tintoretto 500 Symposium Oxford, Keble College (Oct 26th 2019) (original) (raw)
Bleeding paper – The use of red oil paint on Tintoretto’s workshop drawings Amongst the drawings by Tintoretto and his workshop there are some twenty sheets showing figure studies on the recto and tracings made with reddish brown oil paint of the same figure on the verso. Sometimes these tracings appear also on the recto, covering the black chalk contour lines of the body shapes with pasty paint. Only the outlines are rendered or copied as if to create a plain stencil of the figures position without highlighting or adding also the inner volumes of the portly body or muscular silhouette. It seems that no other artist of the time in Venice used this particular technique and its function remains unclear until today as these drawings while being kept in famous drawing collections (Uffizi, Morgan Library, British Museum, Royal Collection) have yet to be studied. The talk will focus exclusively on these drawings and seeks to explore their appearance and making from a practical as well as from a theoretical point of view. In the practical part the handling of the drawings in the workshop from which these kind of renderings surely must derive will be discussed. The second step will allow a confrontation of the first results of the practical examination with the art theoretical literature especially concerning methods of tracing and copying of compositions, to arrive at a conclusion on how red colored tracings can be interpreted in terms of their function. This paper will be published with the conference proceedings.
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2022
Maria Aresin, Bleeding Paper: The Use of Red Oil Paint in Drawings from Tintoretto’sWorkshop Amongst the drawings by Tintoretto and his workshop there are some twenty sheets showing figure studies on the recto and tracings made with reddish brown oil paint of the same figure on the verso. Sometimes these tracings appear again on the recto, covering the black chalk contour lines of the body shapes with pasty paint. Only the outlines are rendered or copied as if to create a plain stencil of the figures position without highlighting or adding also the inner body volumes or muscles. It seems that no other artist at the time in Venice used this particular technique. Until now, its function has been unclear, particularly because although these drawings are kept in famous drawing collections (Uffizi, Morgan Library, Museo Capodimonte), they have yet to be studied. This paper will shed light on Tintoretto’s use of oil paint on blue or buff brown paper as a method of mirroring the figure to create new possibilities and adapt the postures to many paintings at the same time, thus recycling his figure studies for different purposes. Understanding that process of tracing, reversing and adapting the figure helps to better understand the process of preparing a painting in the Tintoretto workshop.
Drawings and Draughtsmanship in Sixteenth-Century Venice: Tintoretto and Veronese in Comparison
Artibus et Historiae, 2018
Jacopo Tintoretto and Paolo Veronese were two of the most prolific draftsmen of Renaissance Venice, as testified by the relevant number of surviving drawings attributed to them. The black chalk, occasionally heightened with white, had been Tintoretto’s preferred medium, whereas Veronese always preferred pen and ink. Moreover, drawings of the latter belonged to different categories (sketches, studies of figures, chiaroscuro drawings), while Tintoretto drew chiefly single figure studies. The reason behind these differences should be sought in the use these artists made of drawings: Tintoretto used it exclusively as a vehicle in his progress towards the finished painting and not as an intellectual tool, as Veronese did. It is well known that Tintoretto and Veronese had reciprocally studied themselves, but their approach to drawing has never been compared before. Highlighting the differences of their corpus graphicum, this article aims to compare the drawing practice inside Tintoretto and Veronese’s workshops and their working methods.
Some Early Views and Uses of the Painted Sketch
Beitraege zur Geschichtee der Oelskizze, 1984
Although there is clear evidence for the appreciation and collection of oil sketches as early as the seventeenth century, it is not nearly so certain that the artists and collectors of that time viewed and categorized the oil sketch in quite the same way as we do today. Cardinal Leopoldo de' Medici, for example, has come to be recognized as one of the foremost early collectors of painted sketches thanks to the excellent work on his collections undertaken by our Florentine colleagues.
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