Overview
Summer is represented here as Ceres, goddess of agriculture, reclining in front of her attribute, a row of wheat stalks. The work is one of three known paintings from a cycle by Jacopo Tintoretto depicting the personifications of the four Seasons. Spring and Autumn are housed in other collections; there is no trace of Winter. All three of the surviving Seasons feature powerful figures combined with a decorative elegance that is especially prominent in Summer, in the undulating line of stalks of grain silhouetted against the sky, the lacy grape leaves and clustered grapes, and the exquisitely rendered birds.
Tintoretto’s Seasons were created to surround a central ceiling painting in the Casa Barbo a San Pantaleone, in Venice. That painting, the octagonal Allegory of the Dreams of Men (Detroit Institute of Arts), has a complicated network of symbols that, when considered together, comment upon the interaction of human dreams and desires, fortune, and the great cycles governing heaven and earth. The depiction of the Seasons surrounding the central allegory would have complemented the motif of cyclical change.
As in his other youthful works, Tintoretto’s Casa Barbo ensemble demonstrates a clear intent to show off his mastery of the most up-to-date central Italian taste circa 1546–1548. Here, the primary source of inspiration can be identified as the paintings of
Entry
Summer is one of three known paintings from a cycle by
Summer is represented as Ceres, goddess of agriculture, with her attribute, stalks of wheat.
Carlo Ridolfi describes a decorative cycle by Tintoretto in the Casa Barbo a San Pantaleone in which “one sees in the paneling (intavolato) of a room a capriccio of dreams and some divinities in the heavens, with various images of the things brought to the minds of mortals in their sleep, and the four Seasons personified in the surrounding area (nel recinto).”
Not all scholars have agreed that the Gallery’s Summer and the other two surviving Seasons come from the Barbo ensemble, or indeed that they are autograph works by Jacopo Tintoretto.
As in his other youthful works, Tintoretto’s Casa Barbo ensemble demonstrates a clear intent to show off his mastery of the most up-to-date central Italian manner. Here the primary source of inspiration can be identified as
Recent archival findings by Stefania Mason have clarified that the Casa Barbo was occupied at midcentury by three brothers, Zuan Francesco, Jacopo, and Alessandro. Francesco and Jacopo were both noted for their culture and erudition and associated with Aretino’s literary circle. Francesco was a historian and collector of antique coins and medals. Jacopo was a poet and scholar to whom Lodovico Dolce dedicated his translation of Seneca’s tragedy Thyestes in 1543 and addressed a letter published in 1552. Alessandro played an active role in Venice’s political life, holding a number of important offices. The brothers lived together under a fidecommesso, an arrangement that ensured that the family’s patrimony would be passed down through a single male heir: Zuan Francesco’s eldest son, Faustino, who would inherit the palace and carry the name forward. In 1557, Faustino’s uncle Alessandro, in his will, noted that at some unspecified time he had spent 212 ducati in restoring the house at San Pantalon that would go to Faustino on the condition that Faustino not raise the rent for Alessandro’s wife and stepson as long as they wished to live there. Faustino married in 1548, and his upcoming wedding could have provided the impetus for the decoration of the house that he would inherit as the future head of the family; nevertheless, the stylistic evidence suggests that if that was the case, the ensemble was begun somewhat before the actual wedding, although it might not have been completed until 1548 or later.
Ridolfi’s description of the Casa Barbo ensemble, which states that the Seasons were “nel recinto,” or in the area surrounding the central allegory, does not make clear whether they were originally high on the wall, at the frieze level, canted at an angle on a vault, or flat on the ceiling. Any of these seems possible. The slightly reduced point of view would have worked in all three positions; although similar figures tend to appear flat on the ceiling in Venetian ensembles of the mid- and later 16th century, there are occasional examples set on vaults and on the wall at the frieze level.
Robert Echols
March 21, 2019
Provenance
Casa Barbo a San Pantaleone, Venice, by 1648.[1] possibly private collection, southern France.[2] (Frederick Mont, Inc., New York), by 1956; sold February 1957 the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[3] gift 1961 to NGA.
Exhibition History
- 1960
- Titian, Tintoretto, Paolo Veronese with a group of sixteenth-century Venetian drawings, Art Gallery of Toronto, 1960, no. 11, repro.
- 1994
- Allegory of the Dreams of Men, Detroit Institute of Arts, 1994, no catalogue.
- 2007
- Tintoretto, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, 2007, no. 6, repro.
- 2018
- Tintoretto: Artist of Renaissance Venice, Gallerie dell'Accademia and Palazzo Ducale, Venice; National Gallery of Art, Washington, 2018-2019, no. 79, repro.
Technical Summary
The painting was executed on a piece of medium-weight fabric with a twill weave. Plain-weave fabric has been added at the corners to convert the original shape of an elongated octagon into a rectangle. Additional fabric has been added at the top (2.5 centimeters) and bottom (4 centimeters) edges. Tintoretto did not use a ground to prepare the canvas. Instead, he drew the design directly on the fabric in black paint, then drew it again in layers of warm white and brown paint.
The painting is in good condition overall. Some abrasion is apparent, most notably in the left background, where the canvas threads are visible. A 12-centimeter circular tear is located in the sky and grapes at the top of the picture near the left corner. In 1959–1960 Mario Modestini applied varnish and retouched the painting. By 2016 that varnish had discolored and the painting was treated again between 2016 and 2018 to remove it and to reduce an earlier discolored varnish that had only been selectively removed in the past.
Joanna Dunn and Robert Echols based on the examination reports by Michael Swicklik and Joanna Dunn
March 21, 2019
Bibliography
- 1959
- Suida Manning, Bertina. “Two ‘Seasons’ by Jacopo Tintoretto.” Studies in the History of Art dedicated to William E. Suida on his Eightieth Birthday. London, 1959: 253-257, figs. 2, 6.
- 1962
- Suida Manning, Bertina. “Titian, Veronese and Tintoretto in the Collection of Walter
P. Chrysler, Jr.” Arte Veneta 16 (1962): 54-55.
- 1965
- Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. .National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 128.
- 1968
- National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 114, repro.
- 1968
- Schulz, Jürgen. Venetian Painted Ceilings of the Renaissance. Berkeley, 1968: 118.
- 1969
- Pallucchini, Rodolfo. “Inediti di Jacopo Tintoretto.” Arte Veneta 23 (1969): 46.
- 1970
- De Vecchi, Pierluigi. L’opera completa del Tintoretto. Milan, 1970: 107, no. 166.
- 1972
- Fredericksen, Burton B., and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 201.
- 1973
- Shapley, Fern Rusk. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XVI-XVIII Century. London, 1973: 51-52, fig. 94.
- 1975
- European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 342, repro.
- 1978
- Gandolfo, Francesco. Il “Dolce Tempo”: mistica, ermetismo e sogno nel Cinquecento. Rome, 1978: 237.
- 1979
- Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1979: 1:470-471; 2:pl. 335.
- 1982
- Pallucchini, Rodolfo, and Paola Rossi. Tintoretto: le opere sacre e profane. 2 vols. Venice, 1982: 1:176, no. 210, 2:fig. 276.
- 1984
- Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 230, no. 292, color repro.
- 1985
- European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 394, repro.
- 1993
- Echols, Robert. "Jacopo Tintoretto and Venetian Painting, 1538-1548." Ph.D. dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park, 1993. Ann Arbor, MI, 1994: 181-191.
- 1996
- Echols, Robert. “‘Jacopo nel corso, presso al palio’: dal soffitto per l’Aretino al Miracolo dello Schiavo.” In Jacopo Tintoretto nel quarto centenario della morte: atti del convegno internationale di studi. Edited by Paola Rossi and Lionello Puppi. Padua, 1996: 78-79.
- 2007
- Butterfield, Andrew. "Brush with Genius [review of the exhibition Tintoretto, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, 2007] ." The New York Review of Books (26 April 2007): 12, repro. 14.
- 2009
- Echols, Robert, and Frederick Ilchman. “Toward a New Tintoretto Catalogue, with a Checklist of Revised Attributions and a New Chronology.” In Jacopo Tintoretto: Actas del congreso internacional/Proceedings of the International Symposium, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, February 26-27, 2007. Madrid, 2009: 122, no. 40.
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