41 The Genius Of Tintoretto Live With Art Historian Paola Vojnovic

So in Venetian art history, there are the three, the Holy Trinity, the three greatest Venetian artists. And of course you have Titian, who is, if you go to the next slide, Titian is the great Titian, the great master, the man really who is, had the European fame, the great European fame. Then you have the new kid on the block, Veronese, who arrives, and of course Tintoretto. But of the, Tintoretto is the great, the third great Venetian master as well. But of these three, only Tintoretto is born in the city. And basically he doesn't leave Venice for the whole of his life. Titian is from the mountains of the Veneto, in a little town called Biave di Cadore. And Veronese, of course, is from Verona, which is a smaller city in Verona. And he arrives when he's very young, as the great talent from the province of the Veneto. And Tintoretto's presence still looms large in Venice. Of all the Venetian painters, Tintoretto is the one who almost wallpapered the city. And in fact, if you want to go and see Titian paintings, the greatest Titian paintings, of course, there are some wonderful Titian paintings in Venice itself, but you have to go to Spain or England or even go to Scotland. And some of those great museums all around the world that house Titian paintings. The same with Veronese, the greatest Veronese painting is in the Louvre that was taken from by Napoleon. But Tintoretto, his paintings are in Venice itself. So if you want to go and see Tintoretto, you have to go to Venice itself. And he produced over 300 paintings in his lifetime. And he was known to finish paintings incredibly quickly. His father came to the city in 1509. And he found work in the booming textile industry, which was a huge employer of the city at the time. So we're talking early 16th century, 1509. And there's thousands of weavers, there's looms, hundreds of dyeing workshops. And his father probably started working with wool cloth, and then progressed as his career progressed, and he got more skillful and, you know, better employment, he probably went on to dyeing silks. So Venice at the time was the silk capital of Europe. And he manages to eventually open his own dyeing workshop in the San Paolo district. His name was actually Jacopo Robosti. But in Venice, and he was born in Venice around 1518. And of course, not into a wealthy family, but the son of a tradesman, his father was a Tintore. So that's why he's called Tintoretto, which basically means a little cloth dyer. And Tintoretto is born in the heart of the city, not very far from the Rialto Bridge in the San Paolo district. And he represents the very essence of Venice. For me, he's the truest of the Venetian artists. But before he ever painted saints, he would have seen fabrics steeped in vats absorbing brilliant colours and watching his father dye silks and wools. Because of course, Venice had become renowned worldwide for exporting luxury items like paintings, of course, but like also like glass, like cloth, like wool, luxury items were pouring out of Venice and Venice was becoming the richest city in Europe. So Tintoretto spent his childhood surrounded by vats of dye, and these brilliant colours. And, you know, he would have, you have to imagine, you know, growing up in a workshop like this and getting these senses coming into him as a child, seeing bright, brilliant colours and seeing, you know, tradespeople and dyers at work. So it's in his father's workshop that he first picks up a famous story that he picks up a charcoal and he starts drawing on the walls. And as soon as his relatives, you know, his father's probably working with his brothers and all kinds of Tintoretto's family are working in the workshop and they see his talent straight away. And they apprenticed him as soon as they could, with the most famous Venetian artist of all time, Titian. Now, it's very hard to know exactly what happened. And we don't know if this story is entirely true. But legend has it that Titian became jealous of Tintoretto's talent and realised that he was a prodigy and he was probably going to compete with Titian and compete with his career. So he kicks him out eventually of his studio. And that kind of sets up the idea that Tintoretto is this young, rebellious, young artist that Titian can't control. And, you know, he didn't want to be involved with him. But basically, he's a young artist at that point in the city with a small amount of training, and he's trying to make a name for himself. And apparently he went to furniture makers to offer his services, to paint furniture. He went to artists that painted facades and interiors, just to see if he could probably learn and, you know, just earn some money, survive and try to make his way as a young artist in the city. It's hard to know, certainly, what exactly went on between him and Titian. But maybe it explains his more robust style that he left the workshop early. And he doesn't have that refinement that Titian has in his technicality, in his painting. But, you know, some people like that robust style that Tintoretto has. I particularly love it. And you have to imagine Venice at the time, one of the richest cities in Europe, if not the richest in Europe, and it's just swarming with artists. So how do you stand out? How do you compete with all the other artists that are in the city at the time? Well, you needed an influential patron, a member of the aristocratic class or the political elite. And that's when Pietro Aretino comes into Tintoretto's life. And he was the most influential art critic, hugely popular writer and poet in the city. He had escaped Rome and he had found, you know, he was liberated and living in this very liberal city of Venice at the time. And he had become incredibly wealthy from his pen. And he was, you know, basically Venice's arbiter of good taste. And Tintoretto needs him on his side. Everyone knew Aretino and he knew everyone as well. So early in Tintoretto's career, you know, Aretino is very complimentary about Tintoretto. And he's encouraging and he takes a gamble on him. And he commissions Tintoretto to paint two paintings for his house on the Grand Canal. And they're two mythological scenes. You've got to understand that Aretino entertained ambassadors, poets, you know, all of the important people of the city. So if you've got your paintings on Aretino's wall, it's incredibly significant. So thanks to Aretino's patronage, he starts to get noticed. And therefore, more work comes his way, more commissions come his way and larger paintings start to follow. Towards the end of 1547, he moves his workshop to the area of the city called Cannaregio, which is in the north of the city. It's not very far from Titian's workshop. It's the area of the city that many artists lived in. And it's the quiet area of the city. The cost of property wasn't so high, of course, that's where artists go. It had a lot more green spaces compared to other areas of the city. And he paid 42 ducats a year in rent, which was actually quite a lot. However, considering the highest paid lawyer in Venice at the time was making around 85 ducats a year, you can kind of see how much he was paying. So that gives you an idea of what things cost at the time. So he's paying quite a lot for this house that we can see here in the slide, the central house here. And next to it, slightly lower, you can see his workshop where he would have had his painting workshop. And he stays in this area of the city for the rest of his life. He's actually buried around the corner from his house. And you can still see the church today. It's called the Church of the Madonna dell'Orto. And that's where he's buried. That's where you can see his tomb, which we'll get to later, of course. We know from writings about his studio practice that he would make drawings to prepare his paintings, but he'd also make little sculptures in wax or clay. And then he would study them and study the figures and their relationships with each other, not just single figures, but whole groups of figures together, probably on little stages to understand how they would work and how he designed these larger canvases. Apparently, he would set up these little dioramas, and then he'd make holes in the side of these dioramas, like stage sets, and then put candles next to the stages, the dioramas, and then he would cast strong shadows that would come through. And he'd give his figures this very theatrical look to his work, which we'll discuss later, that very important thing. But that's a very key point. So we can especially see these dramatic light effects in the Squalla di San Rocco, which was his most famous commission. But I think of all the Venetian artists, he, more than anyone, would influence Caravaggio's work, to which, you know, Caravaggio became so famous for his light and dark, his chiaroscuro. But really, Caravaggio is taking the language of Tintoretto. So we think Caravaggio is this great innovator, this man that arrives in Rome and starts painting this light and dark. He is looking at Tintoretto's work, and he's reimagining it in his own style. He's hugely, more than any of the other Venetian artists, hugely influenced by Tintoretto, his cinematic style, his chiaroscuro, light and dark lighting, and his drama. Now, Tintoretto wanted to convince people that looked at his painting at the validity of the stories, of the saints, of the biblical stories, and this heightened drama that he added to it was a key factor. And of course, that also influenced Caravaggio too. Caravaggio wanted people to believe the stories of the Bible. And, you know, he wants people to be moved by looking at his paintings. Even in his early work, we can already see his daring, innovative style and his sensibilities. His early masterpiece is The Last Supper. And this is painted in the church of San Macuola, painted in 1547, just before he moved to Cannaregio. And it's a very powerful painting. It shows his potential and his trademark use of this dramatic light that I keep talking about. But it also shows his skill with the brush and his bravura, which he became characteristic of his work. He was often commissioned to do religious themes, of course, and the painting in San Macuola was the first Last Supper scene that he painted, of about 12 that he painted throughout his career. But what distinguishes Tintoretto's Last Supper paintings are this energy that he has, and the forms that are moving towards the viewer, inwards, and then away from the viewer, like we can see in the next slide. So he's attempting to do these very ambitious designs. But also what's important to note is that these settings are always humble, like we're in a Venetian tavern that he would probably go to sit in at the time as well. Clothes that the characters and the figures in his paintings have, they've got patches on them. The chairs in the scenes are broken. He's trying to give a sense that these amazing, incredible biblical stories happened in impoverished circumstances. And that's very important to Tintoretto. He has a strong sympathy and affinity with the poor. And this is what Caravaggio would do in his paintings too. And I'm sure that he looked at Tintoretto's paintings and thought, I understand this language. I understand what he's trying to do. And he copied this style. This is not very spoken about in art history, the huge effect that Tintoretto had on Caravaggio. And I think it's something that's completely overlooked and really has to be appreciated more. But by the early 1540s, Tintoretto is mainly selling his pictures to smaller confraternities or artisans representing the likes of fishmongers or tailors of the city. So these smaller confraternities. And he knew that he was only going to become a great painter in the city if he secured a big commission from one of the big confraternities or a squalor grande. Now, the squalor grande system in Venice is very important to understand. There were seven grande squalors in Venice at the time, and then there were hundreds of smaller squalor or squalor. Now, he was probably painting for the smaller squalor, so the squalor of the fishmongers or the squalor of the tailors. And he wants to get in with the big grande squalor. OK, so squalor is Italian for school, but it's not a school. It's something very particular to Venice. So these early ones in the city were basically lay foundations, and they were started in the early medieval times of the 12th and 13th century. Now, these evolved to become a sort of welfare system within the city of Venice itself, a confraternity, like I say, a kind of guild, a place that helps the local community, a place that gives help to the poor. It's an institution in Venice where a rich citizen, merchant, of course, the Venetians were the famous merchants of Europe. They can express their status and their power because they almost become a parallel state to the Republic and the political elite itself. So it's a place of influence for the rich merchant class. Patrons would devote themselves financially and also spiritually to one of these places in the city. And if you can be part of a squalor, it's a great sign of social status for a Venetian. So if we're taking ourselves back to 16th century Venetian society, you have to understand the significance of the squalor system within Venice. And for Tintoretto, it's also a great advert, a great PR stunt for him to get into a place like this. And he might become part of the squalor. And this also gives him status within Venetian society. Now, these buildings, the squalor, were housed in grand buildings and designed by eminent architects. They had huge halls, massive altars, and typically they were filled with paintings of the most celebrated artists in the city. Now today, they are the keepers of the absolute greatest Renaissance art in Venice. And Tintoretto's squalor di San Rocco is really the greatest of them all. It's Tintoretto's Sistine Chapel. But before he could paint there, before he won that commission from the squalor di San Rocco, he wins a major commission from the squalor di Grande di San Marco. And it's housed in one of the most iconic buildings of Renaissance Venice. It's in the place that many people say Tintoretto painted his first great masterpiece, The Miracle of the Slave. And he began painting this in 1547. And it took him a year to finish. He finished the painting in 1548. The painting shows the miracle of St. Mark, the patron saint of Venice, just after his death. St. Mark comes rushing in from above, almost looking like Superman, to protect the devoted follower. And all of the torture tools that the people around the devoted follower of St. Mark have break and smash to pieces. Now this painting is full of action. And it really sums up the famous motto that apparently Tintoretto wrote on his studio wall, which was the drawing of Michelangelo and the paint handling and colour of Titian. So that's very interesting to note that that was on his studio wall. So he was obviously a huge fan of Titian still, even though he was kicked out of his studio when he was a young apprentice. Now in the painting, we can see these bold, strong contours of the figures, this beautiful brushwork all over the surface of the painting. And people in the scene look on in astonishment, and he makes it seem as if this is happening right in front of He's daringly placing the slave centre stage, making him the slave, not the making the slave the main character and not St. Mark, the patron saint. So it's very innovative as well. It's sort of revolutionary. And it offends the confraternity so much that they reject the commission. Pietro Aretino, however, declares the painting to be spectacular. And of course, whatever his words, whatever he says, goes in Venice, because he is the arbiter of good taste, as I mentioned before. So I think it changes really Venetian Renaissance art forever. It's that much of a powerful painting. And with this endorsement from Pietro Aretino, again, he officially arrives as the greatest painter in the city at the time. Titian at the time, was in Augsburg, in the Germanic states, painting for the Prince of Spain. And he eventually returns to Venice. And there's a new kid on the block. And it's Tintoretto, again, who Titian kicked out of his studio. And he's furious that this artist, while he was away in Germany, has come back, and he's the new kid on the block, and he can't believe it. And I can imagine Titian would have been absolutely furious with Aretino, and they would have had very stern words at probably dinner. And Titian would have said to Aretino, you know, you either choose me or Tintoretto. But you have to make your choice. Either support him or you support me. And of course, Aretino's deep loyalty was with Titian. And as the story goes, when Aretino posed for Tintoretto before, for a portrait, which has been lost, we don't have this portrait, Tintoretto actually threatened him to stop criticising his work. And it's such a legendary story that the French artist Ingres painted the scene, as you can see here in the slide. But there's just something tantalising about the story that this young artist would take on the likes of Aretino, this great, formidable art critic, poet, writer, great man of the city, and take him on and stand up to him toe to toe. But despite this, the miracle of the slave is finished, and he wins the commission for the richest squalor in the city at the time, the Squalor di San Rocco. Now, you have to understand that San Rocco is the saint rock, is the saint protector against the plague. So Saint Rocco is a French patron saint, and he is the protector against the plague. So in the context of what this means for Venice, it's one of the worst hit cities in Europe of plague and plague hits Venice over and over again throughout its history. It's like the Shanghai or the Hong Kong or the New York of its day. It's this incredibly rich commercial port, where ships are arriving in droves every day. And of course, this makes it very susceptible to disease. However, his first commission for the Squalor di San Rocco is in the church that sits right next door. And Tintoretto paints, San Rocco cures the plague victims, which sits on the sidewall of the main altar in the church. It's a groundbreaking painting, because it's the first time that any artist depicts a Venetian interior of the island of Lazaretto. Now, Lazaretto is a key important thing in this whole context. So he paints a space where we see figures, both men and women, charged with emotion, as is typical of Tintoretto. It's a scene full of religious sentiment and deep humanity. But again, it's a great example of his use of magnificent lighting. And as I keep on saying, he goes on to influence the greats like Caravaggio. He's not afraid to paint the ugly interior space of the Lazaretto, which is named after one of Venice's small islands. It was the first sort of social containment that a city instituted in Europe, along with another system of protection, which was quarantine. Now, the word quarantine comes from the Italian word quaranta, which basically means 40. Well, it does mean 40. So when a ship would arrive in Venice, everybody on the ship would have to spend 40 days on the island of Lazaretto to try and keep Venice safe from any potential plague threats. It didn't matter who you were, you had to go and spend 40 days on the Lazaretto. The Venetian government chose two locations. In the 1400s, there was the Lazaretto Vecchio, which is still there today, of course, and it's the old Leper Hospital. And then they built the Lazaretto Nuovo, which you can see in this slide. They're both side by side. The new Lazaretto, to put them in quarantine, to prepare them to have access to the main city. So 40 days, and then they can have access to Venice as long as they didn't show any signs of contamination of disease. Now, this is the first painting that Tintoretto does for the Scuola di San Rocco. But Tintoretto paints the Lazaretto Vecchio in this masterpiece, and Saint Rock cures the plague victims. So what an amazing idea for a painting. However, due to Titian's hostility towards Tintoretto, and we're getting some idea of what kind of character Titian is by this point, I guess, he'd have to wait another 15 years for the next commission from the Scuola di San Rocco. What happened exactly is not documented. What people think happened is that Titian is a member of the confraternity, and he basically sabotaged Tintoretto's career prospects, basically due to jealousy. And we know that Titian had a difficult character, that he actually fell out with one of his sons, and didn't speak to him again until his death. So Tintoretto is the opposite of Titian. He's not just unorthodox in his behavior, but he's also very different in the way he paints. He's got much more robust style than Titian's refinement. So there's these two masters of Venetian art, but they're very different characters, very different styles. And their careers were very different as well. Titian was the preferred painter of all of European nobility. His greatest patron is the King of Spain, and he worked for big buyers outside of Venice. That's where he produced his market, because basically Titian realized that he could sell his work for more money outside of Venice, so he created that market. Whereas Tintoretto, on the other hand, only painted for Venice itself, and he painted for the Venetian confraternities and for the Venetian state. So Titian's paintings have this wonderful harmony and balance, and he uses color in this really majestic way to cover his paint surfaces and his canvases. But in stark contrast with that, Tintoretto's paintings tend to be much darker, as we can see in this slide. He uses, you know, the chiaroscuro technique more. He also makes it his own thing, and he would use this very dark ground on his paintings, which was unusual for the time. Most artists would have a lighter ground on their canvases to start a painting, but Tintoretto built things up from very dark ground and into the light, as Caravaggio went on to do. Caravaggio used this exact technique in his paintings. There's also this element of Tintoretto being very efficient, you know, as quick as he possibly could, and this dark ground sped up the painting process. But it's also a stylistic choice that he's making, and this quickness became one of his trademarks. Titian's style is very polished, very refined. Tintoretto works with very quick brush marks, leaving parts of the paintings unfinished on purpose, so he gets criticized for his lack of attention to detail. He developed a way of painting that was quick, that didn't show the high finish, that was really expected of Renaissance art. So his style was famously fast and furious, and his fast and unfinished brush strokes were made possible by this use of this dark undercoat that I keep coming back to. So he was really only interested in the final result, and he seemed to have this clear vision of what he wanted to create, and he just strove to achieve this vision as quickly and as efficiently as he could. Let's not forget, these artists were businessmen in the city of Venice, this highly mercantile place, and they had to get paid, and the more paintings they could produce, the more money they could make. So until then, all preparatory mixes were made of chalk and this kind of glue, and they were very pale. But Tintoretto adds colour, probably using pigments that were just in his studio, left over from other paintings. But his grounds that he uses to set his canvases up are much darker on X-ray when you look at Tintoretto's paintings than any of the other Renaissance masters of Venice. Now, the next key figure arrives into Venice. Paolo Veronese comes, and he was 10 years younger than Tintoretto, and for the second half of the 16th century, he will dominate the Venetian art scene with Titian and Tintoretto. But by the 1550s, Tintoretto is doing really well in his career, and when Veronese arrives in the city, people fall in love with his style. He's got beautiful colours, very harmonious compositions, apparently he was a very elegant man, he liked to dress very well, he was very charming, very polite, and Tintoretto's none of these things. He's a local working-class kid, speaks in the harsh Venetian dialect, he's got this very bombastic personality, he's not scared of standing up to people. And there's this idea that Titian is the painter of kings and popes, Veronese appealed to the aristocrats of Venetian society, and Tintoretto, by contrast, really just painted for the people of Venice. So in 1553, thanks to the cultural and the political support of the Venetian state, Veronese gets a commission to paint the ceilings of the Palazzo Ducali, which is the seat of political power in Venice. The end result is incredible, and the aristocratic families are completely enchanted by the talent of this new young artist in Venice. And so is Titian, by the way, who states publicly that he prefers Veronese's style over Tintoretto's. So we can see that this animosity is still going on. But this is a critical junction in Tintoretto's life. He's in his late 30s, and Titian seems like he's relentlessly hostile towards him, and is trying to slow his career progress down. And then Veronese arrives and becomes another threat to his position, and he needs to act fast. He needs to do something to challenge his rivals, and he needs to win a big commission to paint a big, important public space. Now, Tintoretto and Veronese, of course, they knew each other. They didn't live in the same area of the city, but they frequented each other's studios, and they respected each other professionally. They watched each other progress throughout their careers, and of course, they learned from each other. They would go and see the techniques, and they would understand how they The rivalry between them was never a personal thing. They didn't dislike each other like Titian and Tintoretto did. Their rivalry was purely artistic. What Veronese did not accept about Tintoretto, and I want to make this very clear, was his methods in which he gained his He was very happy to copy other artists' styles, even lower his fees, and sometimes he'd even offer to paint for free. So Veronese did not like this behavior. He found it unforgivable, and he believed that he was going to destroy the essence of the profession of painting in the city. You know, the Venetians were very proud of their painting tradition. They were the first artists They were the first artists to really understand how to use oil paint, and Veronese thought that Tintoretto was being, you know, destroying the quality and the essence of the profession of painting within Venice. When you look at their paintings, you can see how much they influenced and challenged each other throughout their careers. Veronese had this special brand. You know, he's got these very elegant figurative compositions, incredible, huge compositions of figures. He's got this certain palette which he uses, which is, you know, soft pastel colors, pale blues, lemon yellows, salmon pinks, lime greens, and he uses these colors again and again and again. So from across the room, a visitor to the 16th century would basically say that's a museum now. You can tell a Veronese painting straight away as well. It's got this very distinctive style that's hugely popular. Tintoretto's colors are different. They tend to be darker, rich reds, greens, blues, darker colors, lots of blacks, lots of grey, lots of brown. And now we get to the two most important commissions of Tintoretto's career. These are the most important commissions to focus on in the whole of Tintoretto's career. So the first story is how he won the commission of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco. Now remember, he's painted in the church, which is next to the Scuola Grande, but now he wins the commission in 1564 to actually paint the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, which is Venice's richest, most prestigious confraternity within the city, and they are seeking an artist to decorate the ceiling. Now naturally, the great names of Venice assemble, and among them is Paolo Veronese, as well as Giuseppe Salviati. Titian was, at this point, he was too wealthy and too well known in Europe to be bothered with some sort of competition to win a commission, but Veronese and Tintoretto are certainly involved in this competition to win this great commission. Now, they were invited to submit a sketch, a modest sketch, a proposal, something that could be judged and discussed and then eventually chosen, but Tintoretto did not play by those rules. Instead of preparing a sketch, like the others, he secretly measured the ceiling space in advance, and then rather than presenting a drawing, he arrived on the appointed day with a fully finished painting of a luminous canvas of Saint Roc in glory, already completed and put in situ in the ceiling itself. The other artists unrolled their designs carefully, but Tintoretto already had his painting installed directly above them into the ceiling framework, and the members of the Scuola were stunned that this wasn't a proposal. He'd already got his foot in the door, but it was a masterstroke. Tintoretto declared that he was not offering the painting for a competition at all. He was donating it for free, and according to the statutes of the Scuola, they could not refuse a gift, so they couldn't reject it. It was sacrilegious to reject it, so there it was. The painting was in place. It was already theirs. What could they do? They protested, of course. Veronese was not happy with this at all, but of course, they had to accept the gift, but with that bold gesture, Tintoretto didn't just win the commission. He secured something incredible, and over the following two decades, he would go on to decorate the entire building of the Scuola di San Rocco, one of the most extraordinary immersive cycles of painting in the history of art. The first room that he painted was below the ceiling. It was the Sala dell'Albergo, and it is filled with scenes from The Passion of the Christ. This room is where he first gifted the painting in the ceiling, and then below, we have this incredible series of The Passion of the Christ. As you walk into the room, the painting that you see in the slide is the Crucifixion, and it opens up like a cinematic masterpiece. All of these things are designed, the entrance into the room, the opening up of the space. All of these things were thought out by Tintoretto in the most incredible, inspiring way. If we go to the next slide, the next commission that we have to understand for Venice is in 1577. Something terrible, terrible happened to the Palazzo Ducali, which is the political center in Venice itself. On the night of the 20th of December in 1577, there was a devastating fire that tore through the Doge's Palace. It gutted the Great Council Chamber, which is the largest civic hall in the whole of Europe. It destroyed centuries of frescoes and centuries of paintings. The hall was where the governing body of Venice met beneath these paintings. Suddenly, that hall was burnt to the ground. Now, as we have stated, Veronese painted the ceiling, but if we go to the next slide, Tintoretto, by this point, was in his 70s. He'd already been spending 20 years painting the Scuola di San Rocco. He's in his 70s, he's exhausted, he's half blind, his hands are arthritic, his reputation is immense within Venice itself, but he spent decades and decades of painting at ferocious speed, undercutting rivals, often working for less money just to secure commissions and basically wallpaper the city of Venice itself. But what he paints is Paradiso. Paradiso would be his last great commission that Tintoretto ever received in his life. The painting is executed in the Great Hall, the largest interior space, not only in Venice, but in the whole of Europe. It's a painting that's so vast that he has to paint it in the Scuola Grande di Misericordia, which is in the area of Cannaregio where he lives. It's in this huge interior space that's about 100 metres wide. It's just basically down the road from Tintoretto's studio. So if you go to Tintoretto's house today, and you walk out of his house and look left, you can basically see the hall that he painted this painting in. This painting is the largest painting on canvas in the world. Then it was, and still is today. It's an incredible work of art. Hundreds of figures spiral around Christ and the Virgin who sit at the centre, like this point of a storm. When Paradiso is finally installed in 1592, it's an absolute wonder. Venetians are dazzled by it. They've got this new hall that's being decorated by the greatest artists of Venice. But you have to understand, this hall is a celebration of what Venetian artists can create. There's no other hall or no other room in the world decorated like this. If you go to this hall today, the whole place is covered in oil paintings by Veronese, by Tintoretto, by Titian, by some of the greatest artists that have ever been produced from Venice. So it's a celebration of Venetian painting, Venetian artists itself, and only Venice could execute something like this, something on this scale. John Ruskin, the great English art critic, said that he has no, I have no hesitation in asserting this picture to be by far the most precious work of art of any kind whatsoever now existing in the world. So that's what John Ruskin thought of Paradiso. And it's like I said, it's the last commission that Tintoretto gets in his life. He didn't live long after the completion and the installation of Paradiso. He died in 1594, two years later, having poured the last of himself into that painting. His son Domenico continued to maintain and adjust the work, but the vision was complete and the vision was Tintoretto's. And it really marked the end of an era. This painting marked the end of an era. It was the last great civic painting of Renaissance Venice. And by the time of his death in 1594, Venice itself was changing. The great age of the Renaissance was giving way to something different, something more theatrical, the early stirrings of the Baroque era were coming into play. This is when Caravaggio starts making a name for himself in Rome. So really it's when Venetian art starts to be on the wane and other areas of Europe start to take the spotlight. But Tintoretto stands at this threshold. And he's the most incredible artist to go and study when you're in Venice. If you walk through Venice today, in a sense, you're walking through Tintoretto's imagination. His canvases embed the churches, they're on the walls of the halls, they're everywhere around the He decorates the interiors of his beloved Venice. And he stands as, I think, the greatest Venetian master. His paintings are still there in all their glory in the city itself today.