DISEGNO IX: TINTORETTO AND THE VITELLIO GRIMANI
Cardinal Domenico Grimani donated a Roman portrait bust, thought to depict the emperor Vitellius, to the Venetian Republic in 1523. His gift was displayed in the Palazzo Ducale continuously through 1593. Because Venice lacked an indigenous classical tradition and had few examples of ancient art, the arrival of Grimani’s bust was of great interest to Venetian artists. The prominent painters granted access to the sculpture were permitted to draw it and to make plaster casts. Those drawings and casts were copied by workshop assistants as part of their training. The distinctive physiognomy of the Vitellius can be spotted on numerous figures in cinquecento Venetian paintings and the bust itself appears in several portraits.
An inventory of Jacopo Tintoretto’s workshop made in 1630 after the death of his son and heir to his practice, Domenico, includes a plaster cast of the Grimani bust. The presence of such a cast could have been inferred from the numerous surviving drawings of the Vitellius made in Tintoretto’s studio. Of the 25+ charcoal drawings that survive, approximately 8 are thought to be autograph, the rest attributed to the workshop. All are of a uniformly high quality and the difficulties in assigning drawings to the master or his students are a testimony to the rigor of the educational component of Tintoretto’s studio.
Compared to his younger contemporaries, Tintoretto modeled relatively few figures in his paintings on the Vitellius. His many drawings of the bust are therefore not preparatory studies. Instead, they suggest an on-going commitment to practice and refine his drawing technique, using the same studio cast as his students. Contrary to the received opinion, the evidence of the Vitellius drawings makes it clear that disegno was as fundamental to artistic training and practice in Venice as it was in central Italy.
Previous DISEGNO installments:
VI: POLIDORO DA CARAVAGGIO
