Tintoretto's paintings for the 'Banco del Sacramento' in S. Margherita - painter Jacopo Tintoretto

Jacopo Tintoretto designed three paintings for the Venetian parish house of worship of S. Margherita, a large Last evening meal (137 1/2 x 208 1/2 in. [349 x 530 m]) and sum of two units smaller works of unequal size, Christ Washing the Apostles' Feet (131 x 90 3/4 in. [333 x 2305 m]) and the Agony in the Garden (131 1/2 x 115 1/4 in. [334 x 293 m]) They are now in s Stefano in Venice [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURES 1-3 OMITTED]. The paintings were commissioned by dint of the Scuola del SS. Sacramento in s Margherita, that is, the Confraternity of the ask [i]or[/i] implore a blessing uponed Sacrament, also known as the Scuola del Corpo di Cristo or the Scuola del Santissimo.

The paintings, especially the largest, have been discussed in sum of two units main contexts, apart from that of Tintoretto's oeuvre in general. First, the Last tea is one of around ten versions of the theme that the artist designed, each quite distinct. Collectively they are as spectacular a display of pictorial inventiveness as can be fix in sixteenth-century narrative art, and their iconography has attracted the attention of several scholars.(1) The other approach to the paintings has been end the patron, the Scuola del Sacramento. Maurice Cope's published dissertation is the greatest in quantity notable study of this aspect."

I too will approach the paintings from one side the patron, but in a way actual different from previous writers. Until now it has always been assumed that the paintings were made for the walls of the Sacrament Chapel of s Margherita, the chapel where the entertainer was reserved.(3) They were not. They were made to make progress above the confraternity's banco, a bench and desk fabricateed in the aisle of the meeting-house close to the Sacrament Chapel. In the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries the banco del Sacramento was an important focus of patronage. At individual time or another, at least a quarter, and perhaps almost half, of Venetian parish churches had a painting above or adjacent to the banco, usually a Last tea This is a remarkable circumstance that has hardly been noticed, a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of less studied.(4)

My first drift then, is to examine Tintoretto's paintings for s Margherita in light of their original situation: what did the paintings signify to the organization that paid for them? what other was on or near the banco? by what means did the nature of the banco affect the artist's composition? I address the same questions for the other Last evening meals that Tintoretto made for a banco del Sacramento, in s Marcuola [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 11 OMITTED], s Simeon Grande [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 13 OMITTED], and s Polo [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 15 OMITTED]. The confraternity and its furnishings are worth studying, for the paintings were no more intended to stand alone than is an altarpiece.

My next to the first purpose is to consider a certain number of of the ways in which Tintoretto adjusted his paintings for the actual viewing conditions. In s Margherita, S. Marcuola, and s Simeon, the paintings hung upon the side wall of a narrow aisle. From the nave, they would have been seen piecemeal end the intervening arcade. Here my regard is with how the paintings would have been seen in the greatest in quantity literal sense: what would the organ of sight of a spectator have taken in? by what mode would the architecture affect what the viewer could see? in what manner did Tintoretto's paintings acknowledge their original surroundings?

Both of these aims be pendent on an accurate reconstruction of the original situation of the paintings. Of all the paintings that were made for a banco del Sacramento, three are still in situ above a desk or at least near it: Tintoretto's Last evening meals in S. Simeon and s Polo and the Multiplication of Loaves and Fishes attributed to Palma Giovane in s Giacomo dall'Orio.(5) In each case, however, the house of god has been so stripped and mutilated that what survives of the banco is sole a shadow of what was originally there. Nothing at all remains of the medieval churches of s Margherita and S. Marcuola that Tintoretto knew for the pair were torn down in the seventeenth hundred and rebuilt in a true different form. If reconstructions are crucial, they are necessarily conjectural, especially in the details [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURES 8-10 12 14 OMITTED]. Any reader unwilling to take them upon faith should refer to the documentation in Appendixes 1 and 3

As part of this close attention Tintoretto's paintings for S. Margherita and s Polo are newly dated upon the basis of previously unpublished documents.

The Paintings for s Margherita

Recent scholars have generally dated the paintings for s Margherita to around 1580 because they are stylistically and iconographically similar to exhibitions from the Life of Christ in the Scuola di s Rocco, which Tintoretto painted between 1577 and 1582; and there appear to bes to have been an unstated assumption that the more dark works from S. Margherita ought to hang on the more famous singles in S. Rocco.(6) The s Margherita paintings could not have been made later than 1581 since Francesco Sansovino mentioned them in his Venetia citta nobilissima, published in that year.

The paintings were in the chancel of s Margherita in 1664, when Boschini described their placement unambiguously (see Appendix 2) There was each reason to suppose that they were made for the chancel, especially since Sansovino implied - misleadingly - that they were already there in 1581(7)