Tintoretto by S.L. Bensusan

Thanks to Carlo Ridolfi we can form a fairly correct idea of the conditions under which young Tintoretto lived in the early days. The expulsion from Titian's studio must have been a very serious blow to his hopes and ambitions, but he did not repine unduly -- he was made of sterner stuff. He took a small apartment and began those unremitting labours that were to land him in the first rank of draughtsmen. Through Daniele da Volterra, a pupil of Michaelangelo, he secured the models of the master's work that were to teach him so much about anatomy, and were to be used for experiments in foreshortening, and the treatment of light and shade. He had one friend, an artist known as Schiavone, a man almost as poor as himself in those first days of struggle and disappointment -- a man who had likewise sought instruction in Titian's studio but had left it without incurring that great master's ill-will. One of the earliest commissions that fell to Schiavone was for the decoration of St. Mark's Library, but Tintoretto had to wait longer for work, and some years would seem to have passed before he realised his ambition and received a commission to paint altar-pieces. There are some workers to whom enforced idleness would be fatal, and Tintoretto might have been one of them, but for the fact that he had no capacity for indolence, and would work even though he worked for nothing.

The first church to give him a commission would seem to be that of Santa Maria del Carmine, and the impression that he gave to his masters must have been a very favourable one, for we find that the churches of St. Benedetto and Santo Spirito gave him orders soon after. Then the Scuola della Trinita recognised his talent, and gave him an order for certain pictures, including the famous "Death of Abel" and the equally famous "Adam and Eve," of which John Ruskin said, "this in absolute power of painting is the supremest work in all the world. " These Scuoli or confraternities were both wealthy and powerful bodies, able and eager to give valuable commissions to artists. They would often grant permanent pay and regular work to the man whose accomplishment satisfied their requirements, and the work that remains to us shows that the directors of the Scuoli were men of taste and discretion.