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Dimensions: 104 by 134.5 cm.; 41 by 53 in.
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Provenance: PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION
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Literature: E. von der Bercken, "Neue Beiträge zum oeuvre Jacopo Tintorettos", in Pantheon, vol. XVII, 1936, p. 116;
E. von der Bercken, Die Gemälde des Jacopo Tintoretto, Munich 1942, p. 132, reproduced pp. 203 and 204 (detail);
R. Pallucchini, La giovinezza del Tintoretto, Milan 1950, p. 98;
R. Pallucchini & P. Rossi, Tintoretto. Le opere sacre e profane, vol. I, Milan 1982, p. 178, cat. no. 222, reproduced vol. II, fig. 288.
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Notes: Jacopo Robusti, better known as "Tintoretto" (a name given to him in reference to his father's profession as a cloth-dyer), was by far the most successful painter in Venice in the latter half of the 16th Century. His ability to execute paintings rapidly and on a large scale, together with his dramatic story-telling, found an eager audience amongst both the Signoria and the religious institutions (or Scuole). His decorative cycle for the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, executed in two different stages (1564-67 and 1575-88), was (and still is) regarded as one of the most important narrative cycles of the 16th Century in Italy, not just in Venice.
This moving representation of The Deposition was almost certainly commissioned for an altar in a private chapel. It dates from the artist's maturity and though considered by Von der Bercken (see Literature, 1942) to have been painted in the decade 1575-85, the painting is much more plausibly dated to the end of the 1550s by Pallucchini and Rossi (see Literature). As they observed, the picture was executed at a time when Tintoretto was experimenting with variations on the theme of the Deposition, searching for different compositional solutions for the subject. In particular it may be compared to his painting in Nancy (perhaps more a Lamentation than a Deposition), and its variant (formerly in a Viennese private collection, sold in these Rooms, 11 December 1991, lot 26, as Domenico Tintoretto), where the mourners similarly spiral outwards from the body of the dead Christ (see Pallucchini & Rossi, op. cit., cat. nos. 216 and 215, reproduced figs. 282 and 281 respectively). In the present canvas - a particularly moving representation of the subject - the scene takes place at dusk; the penumbra underlining the dramatic intensity of the scene. The movement of the figures is far more convincing here, their expressiveness far greater, and the masterful foreshortening of Christ's body adds far greater depth to the composition than in the Nancy or Vienna canvases where the figures are arranged in a frieze-like manner. The body of Christ rests limply across the whole picture plane and the secondary figures twist and turn around his body: the Madonna faints to the left, the red of her robe striking a colourful note in an otherwise gloomy scene; the Magdalene kneels beside Christ and stares intently at his head, tossed back in abandon; an elderly man (possibly Joseph of Arimathea) stands halfway up a ladder in a contrasted pose, his body tense under the weight of Christ's body, supported by a sheet held taut by his extended right arm. The figures' dynamic poses and the muted colours are characteristic of Tintoretto and, in particular, of his paintings produced around this time.
