Marietta Robusti

Marietta Robusti (sometimes nicknamed Tintoretta), from a 1745 French publication.

Marietta Robusti (1560? - 1590) was a female Venetian painter of the Renaissance period who was trained by her father, Jacopo Tintoretto. She worked in her father's studio and gained fame for her portrait work. She was known as "La Tintoretta" after her father. She was invited by both Emperor Maximillian and King Phillip II of Spain to work at their court, but her father would not allow it. Although she painted many portraits in her day, few remain and others may be miss attributed to other artists as women artists were an anomaly in her time and only one of her paintings was signed "MR."

She is one of very few known women artists of this period, a group that included Sofonisba Anguissola, Lucia Anguissola, Lavinia Fontana, and Diana Scultori Ghisi.

She was married to Mario Augusta, a Venetian jeweler who agreed to live in the family home, because her father could not be parted from her. She was trained in music, to sing and play the lute. She died in childbirth four years after her marriage, around age 30.

Biography

The only known primary source for details of Marietta Robusti’s life is Carlo Ridolfi’s Life of Tintoretto, first published in 1642, although she is mentioned briefly in Raffaelo Borghini’s Il Riposo della Pitura e della Scultura of 1584. These two sources disagree on the year of her birth: according to Borghini, she was born in 1555, but Carlo Ridolfi indicates that she was born in 1560.

Marietta was born and died in Venice, the eldest daughter of seven children of the painter Jacopo Robusti, from whom she inherited her nickname, la Tintoretta (translated as little dyer girl, after Jocopo’s father’s occupation as a tintore, or dyer). She is thus variously known as Marietta Robusti, Marietta Tintoretto, and la Tintoretta.

Jacopo Tintoretto, Self portrait

Since conventions of the time dictated that women remained in the privacy of the domestic sphere and were not welcome in the public world of art production and sale, Marietta and her female contemporaries gained access to the art world through their artist fathers or brothers. Marietta's artistic training consisted of serving an apprenticeship in the collaborative environment of her father’s workshop, where she probably contributed to her father’s paintings with backgrounds and figure blocking, as was the usual distribution of labor in painting workshops of the time.

Evidence suggests that Marietta received no commissions for major religious works such as altarpieces or other church decorations, and that she was mainly a portraitist.

Ridolfi describes Marietta’s close relationship with her father at great length. Not only did she learn at his knee, as a child she also dressed like a boy so that she could go everywhere with Jacopo and work in his studio. She learned her father's artistic style and by the time she was a teenager, their respective works were almost indistinguishable. Marietta was also a trained to sing and play the harpsichord or lute, having been privately tutored by Neapolitan Giulio Zacchino. She often played and sang for her father while he worked.

By the 1580s Marietta's portraiture achieved success and fame. In the aristocratic circles of Venice it even became fashionable to sit for La Tintoretto. Her likeness of antiquarian Jacopo Strada so impressed Emperor Maximilian that he sent her an invitation to be the painter of his court. As well, King Philip II of Spain and Archduke Ferdinand also expressed interest in hosting her as a court painter, but at her father's urging, Marietta refused all offers to leave his house because he couldn’t bear to part with her. In 1578 he arranged for her to marry a Venetian jeweler, Mario Augusta, to ensure she would always stay near him. Jacopo also had Marietta instructed in singing and playing the harpsichord, clavicord, and lute.

She died of unrecorded causes in 1590 but most likely in childbirth, just four years after being married and was buried in Santa Maria dell’Orto in Venice.

Attributions

There is still disagreement about the surviving works of Marietta. Until recently, the "Portrait of an Old Man with Boy," (c. 1585; Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna); had been attributed to her father, but is now considered to be her own work. Another work, although more controversial, is "Portrait of a Woman with a little Dog." This painting had long been thought of as a work by El Greco, but is now thought to belong to "La Tintoretta." Considering the great number of works that were commissioned from her, and her popularity during her life time, it seems very likely that many of her paintings have been attributed to either her father or another male painter of the day. Women artists were not easily accepted nor respected by society, and although there were several who did paint, they were often just forgotten or overlooked after their deaths. Current feminist scholarship is trying to rectify this historical error.

The only painting that can be conclusively attributed to Marietta Robusti is her Self Portrait (c. 1580; Uffizi Gallery, Florence). This portrait depicts Marietta posed before a harpsichord, holding a musical text that has been identified as a madrigal by Philippe Verdelot, "Madonna per voi ardo." It has been postulated that the inclusion of this text, whose opening lines are "My Lady, I burn with love for you and you do not believe it," suggests that the painting was created for a male viewer, possibly Marietta's husband. Another portrait with the same exact face is named as being painted much earlier by an unknown artist. This painting seems to be yet another "self-portrait" but has not been conclusively determined to be another painting by Marietta.

Another current attribution to Marietta is Portrait of Ottavio Strada (c. 1567-68; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam); and two small paintings of the Virgin and Child (dates unknown, Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio). Portrait of Two Men (Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden), signed "MR," is thought to be Marietta Robusti's only surviving signed work.

Miss attribution has long been a problem with women artists from the past. Modern art historians have uncovered a number of Renaissance women artists who had not been well known in the past but now are being recognized, a few are Sofonisba Anguissola and her sister Lucia Anguissola, Lavinia Fontana, and Diana Scultori Ghisi. These women lived at the time of Michaelangelo and other masters, but only Sofonisba was ever recognized by Michaelangelo and informally tutored by him.

Legacy

Marietta painted in her father's studio for 15 years while simultaneously completing scores of portrait commissions. She won great popularity during her lifetime as a portraitist and had many commissions, although few survive. She could have become quite famous and her work well known by becoming a court painter for either Emperor Maximillian or King Philip II of Spain, but her father could not let her leave his side. Women during this time were subject to the desires of their fathers or husbands. Her career was always under the control of her father, and thus did not have the opportunity to develop broadly. Yet as she worked alongside her father, his work and hers became indistinguishable and they worked on many paintings together. Jacopo relied so deeply on his daughter for his personal happiness and his work. Only after a suitor agreed to live with her under the Tintoretto roof did Jacopo allow Marietta to marry. Her life and its lack of freedom was typical of sixteenth century women.

A few paintings survive that can be attributed to her (see above), and the fact that she was popular in her age as a portraitist did aid in opening the doors of society for other women artists to be accepted. She was a contemporary of Sofonisba Anguissola (1532 - 1625), who did become a court painter for 18 years to King Philip II of Spain.

See also

• Sofonisba Anguissola
• Lucia Anguissola
• Lavinia Fontana
• Diana Scultori Ghisi
• High Renaissance

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• McIver, Katherine A. "Lavinia Fontana's 'Self-Portrait Making Music'," Women's Art Journal 19, no. 1 (Spring-Summer 1998): 3-8.
• Murdock, Wendy and Carrie Carolin. Women artists in history, W. Murdock and C. Carolin, 1990. OCLC 44252524
• Newton, Eric. Tintoretto. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1952. OCLC 1953735
• Niceley, H.T. "A Door Ajar: The Professional Position of Women Artists," Art Education 45, no. 2 (Mar., 1992): 6-13.
• Ridolfi, Carlo. The Life of Tintoretto and of his children Domenico and Marietta. Translated by Catherine Enggass and Robert Enggass. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1984. ISBN 0271003693
• Silverstein, Abraham M. Marietta Robusti: la Tintoretta, daughter of Tintoretto, 1998. OCLC 83892208

External Links

All links retrieved February 3, 2009.

• Self Portrait at Scholars Resource (thumbnail)
• Portrait of Ottavio Strada at Web Gallery of Art
• Marietta Robusti in Dictionary of Painters and Engravers: Biographical and Critical by Michael Bryan
• Women Artists in History by Wendy Russ
• Marietta Robusti
• Gallery of Storytelling through Visual Images

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