Art historians tend to have little to say about Marietta Robusti, daughter of the celebrated Venetian painter Jacopo Robusti, known as Tintoretto (1518–1594). What they almost invariably cite as a contemporary source is the art-theoretical work Il Riposo by Raffaello Borghini (1537–1588), which includes a short section on Marietta.1 In addition to the near-obligatory praise of the artist’s beauty and her musical and artistic talent, the author also mentions a portrait of Jacopo Strada (1507–1588), antiquary to Emperor Maximilian II, and the artist herself, which the emperor was said to treasure as something of a rarity by placing it in his chamber. Borghini went on to say that although King Philip II of Spain, Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, and the Habsburg emperor had all wanted to attract this outstanding artist to their courts, her father would not allow it. According to Borghini, Marietta was about 28 years old and a painter, but, in the absence of any further information about her oeuvre, he preferred not to continue writing about her. In his Maraviglie dell’arte, her later biographer Carlo Ridolfi (1594–1658) had little more to report than Borghini, on whomhe drew heavily.2 He added that Tintoretto had taught his daughter to paint and draw and took her everywhere he went, for which purpose she would dress like a boy. According to Ridolfi, she was a good portraitist who had created numerous portraits of Venetian noblemen, among them one of Marco de’ Vescovi (with a long beard) and his son (figliuolo) Pietro. We also learn that Marietta was given in marriage to the goldsmith Marco Augusta and went on to produce many portraits of her husband’s friends, most of which are lost. She died in 1590 at the age of 30 and was buried in the church of Madonna dell’Orto. The dearth of sources containing any further or even divergent information about the artist means that art historians remain as divided over the dates of her life as they are over her oeuvre – if indeed one can speak of it as such. THE I LLEGI T IMATE DAUGHTER A later but important reference, which the biographies do not mention, is found in the Genealogia della Casa Tintoretto of 1682.3 There it is claimed that Marietta was the daughter of Jacopo and a German woman whom the artist had loved very much. He is said to have immortalised mother and daughter in a painting of a woman holding a girl’s hand for the church of the Madonna dell’Orto.4 Although the source is viewed with some scepticism by scholars, the reference to this painting does deserve attention. For Madonna dell’Orto was not only the parish church of the Cannaregio district in Venice, to which Tintoretto moved in 1547, it was also a church for which he was to execute several works. In 1551 he signed a contract to produce a painting of the Presentation of the Virgin at the Temple for the two organ shutters of the church.5 He appears not to have completed it until 1556, for it was in that year that he received the final payment.6 Around 1560, he produced two further large-format works, the Worship of the Golden Calf and the Last Judgement. Between the end of 1559 and the beginning of 1560, Jacopomarried √ Detail from fig. 1
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