John Marciari's Drawing in Tintoretto's Venice was published in conjunction with an exhibition at the Morgan Library and Museum, New York, and at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Organized into seven chapters, the book is mostly dedicated to the drawings of Jacopo Tintoretto but also to those of his predecessors: Domenico Tintoretto, Palma Giovane, and a group of drawings possibly by El Greco. The introduction and epilogue serve to frame questions about the criticism of Jacopo's role as a draftsman, and more broadly about disegno in Venetian Renaissance artists’ workshops. In his introduction, Marciari states his interest in correcting misperceptions of Tintoretto as an artist who did not draw, noting that several hundred drawings remaining by Tintoretto and members of his circle remain largely unknown to the public. The author further posits that it is necessary move away from the Florentine-Venetian stylistic dichotomies established by Vasari toward a closer analysis of Jacopo's drawings themselves.
Chapter 1 examines Jacopo's antecedents and contemporaries in order to challenge assumptions about Venetian drawings. Marciari points out that close comparisons can be made between the drawings of Tintoretto and Andrea Schiavone, including their use of thick outlines and similar figural types. In chapter 2's discussion of the evolution of Tintoretto's drawing style, it becomes increasingly clear that while Tintoretto drew from the imagination, he returned to his early methods of drawing from life throughout his career. Tintoretto's studio drawing exercises include The Kneeling Man with a Staff (ca. 1548–50, National Gallery, Washington, DC), which anticipated the drawings of Annibale, Agostino, and Ludovico Carracci. The discussion of Tintoretto's use of squaring for establishing figural proportions rather than for direct transfer to a painting is interesting; one example is the Study of a Man with Raised Arms (ca. 1562–66, British Museum, London), related to The Finding of the Body of Saint Mark (ca. 1562–66, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan).
Tintoretto's sculpture drawings are discussed in chapter 3, and special attention is payed to his studies after Michelangelo's Samson and the Philistines (ca. 1540, Bargello, Florence). Marciari views this practice as a reflection of Tintoretto's need to train his workshop and his interest in studying bodies in space rather than as part of a colore-disegno debate. Discussion of Tintoretto's large-scale workshop continues in chapter 4, which considers studies dal vivo inserted into compositional studies—for example, Reclining Nude Seen from Behind (ca. 1580, British Museum, London) for the painting of the Resurrection of Lazarus (ca. 1580, Minneapolis Institute of Art)—as well as figures traced from the recto to the verso of a drawing. In chapter 5, Domenico emerges as a much less interesting draftsman than his father. However, the immediacy of his studies from life, as visible in his Reclining Female Nude (ca. 1590, Metropolitan Museum of Art), is striking. Chapter 6 presents a group of mystery drawings previously assigned to Venetian artists but recently reattributed to El Greco by Nicholas Turner. One example is the Last Supper (ca. 1575, Morgan Library and Museum, New York), which Stefania Mason instead attributes to Alessandro Maganza. Marciari's contentment with allowing the mystery to remain unsolved is refreshing. In chapter 7, the author presents Palma Giovane's multiple modes of drawing as a conclusion of the Venetian Renaissance tradition rather than a change to it.
The idea of Tintoretto's legacy is carried forward in the epilogue with a discussion of his interest in sculpture drawings as a specific means of teaching through drawing. Interpreting Palma's contributions to drawing manuals as an extension of Tintoretto's achievements for Venetian disegno, Marciari closes with an idea that is as much about the importance of drawing in Venice as it is about Tintoretto's legacy as a draftsman. Throughout his text, Marciari directly engages with much of the previous scholarship on Venetian drawings, including by Hans Tietze, Erika Tietze-Conrat, Anna Forlani, and David Rosand. The author raises questions about attribution and the function of drawings in Tintoretto's studio. Relationships with the Carracci's methods of drawing repeated throughout the chapters might be worth expanding into a further discussion. The book is a fascinating reevaluation of Tintoretto's oeuvre of drawings and an excellent resource that functions independently from its related exhibition.
