The story of this, the most Venetian of the Venetian painters and the truest to his native city (for all his life was spent here), may more fittingly be told in this place, near his masterpiece and his portrait (which is just by the door), than elsewhere.  He was born in 1518, in the ninth year of our Henry VIII’s reign, the son of a dyer, or tintore, named Battista Robusti, and since the young Jacopo Robusti helped his father in his trade he was called the little dyer, or il tintoretto.  His father was well to do, and the boy had enough leisure to enable him to copy and to frequent the arcades of S. Mark’s Square, under which such artists as were too poor to afford studios were allowed to work.

The greatest name in Venetian art at that time, and indeed still, was that of Titian, and Tintoretto was naturally anxious to become his pupil.  Titian was by many years Tintoretto’s senior when, at the age of seventeen, the little dyer obtained leave to study under him.  The story has it that so masterly were Tintoretto’s early drawings that Titian, fearing rivalry, refused to teach him any longer.  Whether this be true or not, and one dislikes to think of Titian in this way, Tintoretto left the studio and was thrown upon his own resources and ambition.  Fortunately he did not need money:  he was able even to form a collection of casts from the antique and also from Michael Angelo, the boy’s other idol, who when Tintoretto was seventeen was sixty-one.  Thus supplied, Tintoretto practised drawing and painting, day and night, his motto being “Titian’s colour and Michael Angelo’s form”; and he expressed himself as willing to paint anything anywhere, inside a house or outside, and if necessary for nothing, rather than be idle.  Practice was what he believed in:  practice and study; and he never tired.  All painting worth anything, he held, must be based on sound drawing.  “You can buy colours on the Rialto,” he would remark, “but drawing can come only by labour.”  Some say that he was stung by a sarcasm of his Tuscan hero that the Venetians could not draw; be that as it may, he made accurate drawing his corner-stone; and so thorough was he in his study of chiaroscuro that he devised little toy houses in which to manufacture effects of light and shade.  One of his first pictures to attract attention was a portrait of himself and his brother illuminated by a lamp.

So passed, in miscellaneous work, even to painting furniture, at least ten years, towards the close of which he painted for the Madonna dell’Orto his earliest important work, “The Last Judgment,” which though derived from Michael Angelo yet indicates much personal force.  It was in 1548, when he was thirty, that Tintoretto’s real chance came, for he was then invited to contribute to the decoration of the Scuola of S. Marco, and for it he produced one of his greatest works, “The Miracle of S. Mark,” now in the Accademia.  The novelty of its vivid force and drama, together with its power and assurance, although, as I have said, at first disconcerting to the unprepared critics, soon made an impression; spectators were carried off their feet; and Tintoretto’s fame was assured.  See opposite page 170.