Studi

di
Storia
dell'Arte

27
2016

C
ediart
1a edizione aprile 2017 Iscrizione al R.O.C.
n° 26059
del 24/11/2015
ediart editrice
Classificazione ANVUR della rivista Studi di Storia
DIRETTORE EDITORIALE dell’Arte - Classe A Area 10 -
lEONILDE dOMINICI Scienze dell’antichità, filologico-letterarie e storico-
artistiche: settore B1 -
Direttore Responsabile STORIA DELL'ARTE: Classe A riconosciuta
Marcello Castrichini
m.castrichini@ediart.it
marcellocastrichini@gmail.com
Studi di Storia dell'Arte, 27-2016
pp. 324; ill. b/n e col.; form. 210x297 mm.

ISSN 1123-5683
Studi di Storia dell’Arte - Todi (PG)

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MirKo Santanicchia: 3 foto Carlo Fiorucci; 9 Biblioteca Vaticana; 11, Londra, British Library; Tavv. I, Ia, II Marcello Castrichini.
Gert Kreytenberg: 2, 2a, 3 Alinari; 4 Sopr. Beni AAAS, Arezzo; 5, 10, Firenze, Da Tripps, 1996; 6, 7 Silvestri, Firenze; 9a Da Nenci,
Brogi, Novello, 2004: 9b, Da Herzner, 2005: 9c, Da Dombrowski, 2007; 9d., Da Baldelli, 2007; 9e, KHI 1; 11-14 Nagel, Stuttgart; 16,
17 (Giorgio Laurati), Firenze; 15 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; 18 Dorsten.
Joseph Polzer: 2 photo Musei Civici di Padova; 4 photo Web Gallery of Art; 5 foto; 7 photo Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la
Documentazione; 10 Polo Museale della Campania;11 Museum Catharijne convent, Utrecht, photo of museum; 12 photo Web Gallery
of Art; 13-14, photo Web Gallery of Art); 15 foto Grassi; 16 photo Web Gallery of Art); 17 Abegg Museum, Riggisberg, photo of museum);
18 University, Cambridge, Mass., photo of museum; 19, photo Musei Civici di Padova; 20 photo Web Gallery of Art.
Fabio Geremicca: 4 Londra, British Museum, inv. 1860-8-11-10; © Szépművészeti Múzeum / Museum of Fine Arts Budapest,2017;
15 Christie's Images Limited, 2013.
Fabio Marcelli: 1-2 Londra, The National Gallery; tav. IX Marcello Castrichini.
Erich Schleier: 1 Mibac, Firenze; 2 Patrimonio Nacional di Madrid, © PATRIMONIO NACIONAL; 5 Collection of the John and Mable,
Ringling Museum the State Art Museum of Florida, Florida State University;7 e prima di copertina © Szépművészeti Múzeum/ Museum
of Fine Arts Budapest/ 2017.

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Studi di Storia dell'Arte

COMITATO SCIENTIFICO

Liliana Barroero

Giovanna Capitelli

Stefano Casciu

Stefano Causa

Enrico Maria Dal Pozzolo

Cristina De Benedictis

Cristina Galassi

Gert Kreytenberg

Francesco Federico Mancini

Enrica Neri Lusanna

Steffi Roettgen

Pietro Ruschi

Erich Schleier

Nicolas Schwed

Angelo Tartuferi

Anchise Tempestini
 Sommario

Mirko Santanicchia
San Bevignate di Perugia. Storia e iconografia.
Lo Statuto degli Ortolani alla Biblioteca Vaticana e gli anni di Gian Galeazzo Visconti 9

Gert Kreytenberg
La tomba dell’imperatore Arrigo VII a Pisa. Una revisione 25

Joseph Polzer
Concerning the Origin of the Meditations on the Life of Christ and its early influence 43
on art

Angelo Tartuferi
Per il Maestro di Mezzana e alcuni appunti sulla pittura del Trecento a Prato 65

Fabio Marcelli
Sul ritratto di domenicano di Giovanni Bellini (NG808) 83

Antonio Geremicca
“Sarebbe riuscita insieme un’opera molto onorata”. Per Perino del Vaga a Pisa 93

Louise Arizzoli
Marietta Robusti in Jacopo Tintoretto’s Workshop. Her Likeness and her Role as a Model
for her Father 105

Enrico Maria Dal Pozzolo

Domenikos Theotokopoulos a Creta 115

Panayotis K. Ioannou
El Greco tra i “Madonneri”: la critica, le ideologie, il mercato. Nuove luci sul recupero del
Trittico di Modena (1937) e su alcune sue conseguenze, passate e recenti 151

Arianna De Simone
Domenichino e la musica 175

Cecilia Vicentini
Giuseppe Caletti da Cremona: “un pittore moderno in una bottega antiquaria” 193

Erich Schleier
Aggiunte a Daniele Seiter 201

Tania De Nile
Ascanius e compagni a Roma. La rappresentazione dei Bentvueghels nelle opere
di Domenicus van Wijnen e nuove notizie su Francis van Bossuit e Bonaventura
van Overbeek 211

Cristina De Benedictis
Tra "progetto e sogno". A Dresda il museo di Francesco Algarotti 225

Donatella Biagi Maino

La tecnica del pastello nell'arte di Gaetano Gandolfi 235

Maria Vittoria Thau

Note ai restauri novecenteschi della chiesa dei SS. Apostoli a Firenze 243

Serena Calamai ~ Max Seidel

Federico Fellini: ″L’Olimpo″ 251

Indice dei nomi e dei luoghi 309

 Louise Arizzoli

Marietta Robusti in Jacopo Tintoretto’s

Workshop
Her Likeness and her Role as a Model for her Father

M
arietta Robusti was not the aim of the workshop to en- Tintoretto’s, understood since the
the first daughter of hance individual a particular style, sixteenth century as the expression
the famous Venetian but to produce a certain style, that of an individual temperament”.5
painter of the Renaissance, Jacopo of Tintoretto. Therefore, Marietta’s This paper aims instead to re-
Tintoretto. In modern scholarship, contribution as an artist will prob- discover Marietta’s likeness within
she is generally known because of ably never be fully resolved: “In the paintings of her father and her
her family ties with the great Vene- sixteenth century Venice, the family brother Domenico, something which
tian master.1 However, during her was still a unit of production, and helps claiming that she served as
own time, she must have been quite family businesses of all sorts were a model within Tintoretto’s work-
famous, since she is mentioned in common feature. Tintoretto’s work- shop. The idea that Marietta was the
sources such as Raffaello Borghini’s shop organized around members of model and the muse of her father
Il Riposo and Carlo Ridolfi’s Le Mara- his immediate family, would have has fascinated artists during the
viglie dell’Arte.2 Both authors praise been classified as a craft under guild nineteenth century, a moment when
her talents: she was well educated, a regulation. Similar to the dynastic she became a legendary figure.6 The
good musician and an excellent por- family workshops of Veronese and facts of her real life in sixteenth
traitist. Ridolfi and Borghini insist Bellini in Venice, Pollaiuolo, Ros- century Venice blurred indeed into
on Tintoretto’s predilection for his sellino, and della Robbia in Flor- the myth of a young and talented
older daughter; according to them, ence, the workshop provides the woman painter who died too soon,
she was his favorite child. Today, context within which to examine probably in childbirth, leaving her
however, dealing with Marietta Robusti’s career (or what little we father heart-broken.7 Interestingly,
Robusti is a difficult task, for noth- know of it). At the same time, that several artists represented Tintoretto
ing certain is known about her, as career is inextricably bound up with in the act of portraying his daughter.
if centuries had erased her memory
and her authorship. Marietta was ac- 1.  Léon Cogniet, Tintoretto Painting his Dead Daughter, Bordeaux, Musée
tive in her father’s workshop, where des Beaux-Arts, 1843.
three of her brothers worked as well;
therefore, attributions remain very
problematic.3 Tintoretto’s closest
collaborators, who in fact were
his children, did help with major
commissions, in which the master
would leave them the execution of
marginal parts.4 As Chadwick sug-
gests, our reading of Renaissance
masters as individual geniuses that
started with Vasari’s Livres, sheds
a negative light on those collabora-
tors who remained in the shadow
of the leading artist. These family
workshops have however to be
understood as teamwork, in which
every member had specific responsi-
bilities in order to ensure the quality
of the commissions. Therefore, it is
particularly difficult for us now to
recognize individualities, as it was

105
Marietta Robusti in Jacopo Tintoretto’s ...
2.  P.H. Jeanron, Tintoretto and his
Daughter, Le Mans,
Musée de Tessé, 1857.
Léon Cogniet’s Tintoretto painting
his dead daughter on her deathbed
is perhaps the most famous among
these Romantic paintings, and re-
mains emblematic of Tintoretto’s
fortune in the nineteenth century.8
Cogniet’s canvas depicts the last
desperate gesture of a father who
wants to preserve the final image
of his child (fig. 1). Philippe Au-
guste Jeanron’s painting, shown
at the Salon of 1857, represents
Tintoretto as he captures a likeness
of his daughter in the open air (fig.
2). Her beauty captivates the art-
ist, while Marietta, bathed in the
sunlight, seems self-aware of her
charm. The legend of the profound
affection of the painter for his el-
dest daughter, was transmitted in
biographical sources since the end
of the sixteenth century. Although
this paper remains speculative, it
is tempting to make that connec-
tion with her real life: did Marietta
pose for her father? Was she really
his muse?
106
(a fronte)
3.  Jacopo Tintoretto, Self-portrait,
1546-48, Philadelphia Museum
of Art.
Sources and Biographical
Elements
T
he little information
that we do have about
Marietta can be retrieved
in Raffaele Borghini, and Carlo
Ridolfi’s biographical accounts on
Tintoretto. These sources certainly
set the stage for what would be-
come the myth surrounding the
reality of her life. A recent biogra-
phy on Jacopo Tintoretto and his
family provides, however, new
elements to reconstruct the story
of this woman. Melania Mazzucco
in her voluminous research was
able to interpret and clarify these
early sources, while also offering
abundant evidence of new archival
findings.9
Borghini’s treatise on sixteenth
century painting and sculpture
was first published in Florence in
1584.10 Even though it was written
while Marietta was still alive, he
never saw her paintings in person.
By contrast, Ridolfi’s Le Maraviglie
dell’Arte was compiled later, in
1648, after Jacopo and Marietta’s
deaths. Both accounts however re-
late more or less the same story but
the information they give us is not
firsthand.11 Carlo Ridolfi describes
Tintoretto’s relationship with his
daughter as a very affectionate
one; he also insists that Marietta’s
presence besides her father in the
workshop was an indispensable
dimension of their connection. She
began there as an apprentice and,
as her talent developed, she became
his assistant:
“Marietta Tintoretto, then, lived
in Venice, the daughter of the
famous Tintoretto and the dearest
delight of his soul. He trained her
in design and color, whence later
she painted such works that men
were amazed by her lively talent.
Being small of stature she dressed
like a boy. Her father took her
with him wherever he went and
everyone thought she was a lad.
He also had Giulio Zacchino, a
Neapolitan considered excellent
in music in those days, instruct
her in singing and playing. […]
She made a portrait of Jacopo
Strada, the antiquarian of Em-
peror Maximilian, who presented
it to his majesty as a rare work,
whence the emperor, charmed
by her valor, made enquiries
about her of her father. Philip II,
the King of Spain, and Archduke
Ferdinand also asked him about
her. However, Tintoretto was
satisfied to see her married to
Mario [Marco] Augusta, a jew-
eler, so that she might always be
nearby, rather than be deprived
of her, even though she might be
favored by princes, as he loved
her tenderly […] When she died
her father wept bitterly, taking
it as the loss of a part of his own
inner being”.12
Marietta’s date of birth has cer-
tainly been an argument of debate,
something that is of some impor-
tance for this paper.13 Borghini
asserts that she was born in 1556;
whereas, Ridolfi claims that she
was born four years later in 1560.
However, a document compiled in
the second half of the seventeenth
 Louise Arizzoli

century, “Genealogia di Casa Tin-

toretto”, which is a biographical
account of Tintoretto’s family pro-
viding information that is not to be
found in the artist’s official biogra-
phies, places Marietta’s birth before
Tintoretto’s marriage with Faustina
Episcopi, which occurred at the end
of 1559.14 The original document is
lost but was transcribed in a letter
addressed to the Marquis del Carpio
by his agent Antonio Saurer, while
he was looking for artworks by
Tintoretto to buy for the Marquis.
There is some debate about the re-
liability of this document. Falomir
and then Mazzucco do not discount
it completely however, since it
conveyed information transmitted
from generation to generation that
only members of the family could
have known. One of those facts
concerns Marietta: she was a child
born outside of marriage – perhaps
around 1553-54 - from a relationship
that Tintoretto had with a German
woman.15
Marietta had an unconventional
uprising: in her youth, she was not
confined to the womanly world.
Notably, she used to dress as a boy to courts abroad.20 In his study on Since she stayed in Venice after her
in order to participate to her father Marietta Robusti, Abraham Sil- wedding, she most likely continued
public life, something uncommon verstein suggests that Tintoretto to work in her father’s workshop.
since, at that time period, women might have decided to keep her The date and reason of her death,
belonged to the household and with him because he would have however, is less than certain,
their code of conduct was strictly lost his authority over her, as “any perhaps 1590, as Ridolfi suggests.
supervised.16 In sixteenth century unmarried woman accepting the Her death certificate, however, has
Venice, courtesans were the ones position of court painter automati- not been found.24 We then have
who used to freely circulate dressed cally became the legal ward of her few biographical elements and no
in male attire; this provided them patron”.21 An economic issue could painting that have been irrevocably
with independence. This aspect also have determined his decision: attributed to her since she stayed
of her early life sheds light on the he Could he afford to lose such a in the shadow of her famous and
unconventional bond she had with precious collaborator whose contri- protective father.
her famous father.17 Marietta also butions included active participa-
received a good education, one tion that advanced the fame of his Marietta’s Presumed Likeness
reserved for upper-classes;18 even workshop?
if unmarried, she was allowed to
participate in her father’s circle
of friends that she entertained by
Marietta in fact married in 1578,
while in her mid-twenties - which
seems quite late for the time period
E ven if we do not have any
paintings surely attributed
to Marietta, it may be possible to
playing music and by singing. But - the goldsmith and jeweler Marco trace her presence within her fa-
most of all, she was her father’s Augusta, most likely a German ther’s and her brother’s paintings,
apprentice, and he trained her man coming from Augsburg. 22 and attempt to understand at least
personally.19 Perhaps because he The couple had a daughter named what she would have looked like.
needed her in his workshop, he was Orsola in 1580.23 Therefore, the Mazzucco has harbored such an
reluctant to have her marry and he later myth that Marietta died in idea when she stated that Mari-
did not let her accept invitations childbirth has to be reconsidered. etta’s father and brother must have

107
Marietta Robusti in Jacopo Tintoretto’s ...
recorded her likeness somewhere:
“If no artwork by Marietta remains
today, it is legitimate to assume that,
as she was the daughter of an artist,
at least her father and her brother
left some images of her”.25
In the past, there have been at-
tempts to attribute portraits of Mari-
etta by her father, as, for example,
the Portrait of a Lady in the Budapest
Museum of Fine Arts, which Erika
Tietze-Conrat has recognized as a
portrait of Marietta. But the attri-
bution still bears a question mark.
On stylistic grounds, the portrait
is dated to 1550, a date in which
Marietta was not yet born. In order
to be her, the portrait would need
to bear a date falling around 1585.26
Even though it would be tempting
to see Marietta in the Budapest
Museum’s blond woman, there is no
certainty related to this attribution.27
In this paper, I would like to push
Mazzucco’s intimation further but
I will not, however, attempt to look
for portraits of Marietta. My aim is
to trace her presence by searching
for her likeness within the female
representations of both Jacopo and
Domenico Tintoretto. There is in-
deed a recurring facial type which
is not the idealized Venetian beauty
but who rather has some specific
physiognomic features comparable
to the famous portrait that Tintoretto
did of himself when he was around
thirty years old, and which is now
preserved at the Philadelphia Mu-
seum of Art (fig. 3; Tav. XII).
To discuss the supposed likeness
of Marietta Robusti, it is first indis-
pensable to look at a portrait now
preserved at the Uffizi, dated 1580
ca., which is traditionally recognized
as her self-portrait28 (fig. 4; Tav. XIII).
The history of its attribution is fairly
complex and has been uncovered by
Lucia and Ugo Procacci through a
study of the letters exchanged by
Marco Boschini and the cardinal
Leopodo de Medici, who acquired
the canvas in 1675. The painting
belonged first to Nicolas Régnier,
a Flemish painter established in
Venice, who attempted to sell it as a
108
Tintoretto in 1665; it then passed to
a certain cavalier Francesco Fontana,
who believed the canvas was by Tit-
ian and proposed it to the Cardinal
de Medici as such. The transaction
failed the first time but was secured
by Boschini, who served as an inter-
mediary between the cardinal and
the cavalier Fontana, through his
attribution to Marietta Robusti.29
Recently, however, some scholars
began to doubt this attribution.
Woods Marsden suggests that the
quality of this painting is mediocre,
and would not fit Ridolfi’s praise of
the young woman’s talent. Duncan
Bull claims that the work could
belong more easily to the Verona
area rather than to Venice, a char-
acteristic which would discount it
from Tintoretto’s workshop.30 Other
factors can reinforce this supposi-
tion. If compared to other women
artists’ self-portraits is seems also
more conventional, especially those
self-portraits of women playing mu-
sic, such as Sophonisba Anguissola’s
and Lavinia Fontana’s, for example.
They convey a different kind of mes-
sage. Anguissola and Fontana stress
their act of playing the instrument as
an idea of self-management, while
the women supposed to be Marietta
is depicted beside the instrument,
more as a way to passively “display”
her beauty.31 It presents the image
of a beautiful, blond-haired woman
with porcelain-white skin, dressed
elegantly and with no individual-
ized features. Moreover, she invites
the viewer to look at her and at the
book of madrigals she is holding.
The musical text has been identified
as a madrigal by Philippe Verdelot,
titled Madonna per voi ardo - my lady
I burn with love for you32 - , which
looks rather like a declaration from
a man, the painter, to his beloved,
the sitter.
Duncan Bull prefers to see Mari-
etta’s features in a double-portrait in
the Dresden Gemäldegalerie, which
was originally attributed to Tin-
toretto’s workshop, and sometimes
more specifically to Domenico’s
hand33 (fig. 5). Bull attempts how-
ever to demonstrate that Marietta
may have created the canvas, and
that she would have represented
herself in her male attire. The scholar
based his argument by recognizing
Jacopo Strada in the second, older,
character in the painting for the
similarity with Titian’s portrait of
Emperor Maximilian’s antiquary
now preserved in the Kunsthisto-
risches Museum of Vienna.34 The
date for the double portrait would
then be similar to Titian’s and refers
to Strada’s visit to Venice with his
son Ottavio in 1567-68. Furthermore,
Borghini in his Riposo, reports that
Marietta executed a portrait of
Strada as well as her self-portrait
to send to the emperor. Borghini,
however, never saw her paintings,
and his description is somewhat
ambiguous: “She has made many
beautiful works, and among others a
portrait of Jacopo Strada, antiquary
to the emperor Maximilian and a
portrait of herself, which as a rare
thing the emperor Maximilian kept
to himself in his own room”.35
Bull points out that it is difficult
to say if these were separate por-
traits or if they belonged to the same
canvas: the portraits - i quali- are one
rare thing – una cosa rara. Perhaps
these two portraits were indeed
on one canvas?36 In his article, the
author has made another convinc-
ing point. The young lad on the left
4.  Marietta Robusti (?), Self-Portrait,
ca. 1580, Uffizi Gallery.

does not look like Ottavio, who was
portrayed in the very same years
1567-68 by Tintoretto himself. 37
Strada's son had dark hair and a
fairly different hair style, whereas
the boy in the double portrait not
only looks younger but has blond
hair.
Another possible depiction of
Marietta as a little girl this time,
give plausibility to circa 1553 as her
possible date of birth. Indeed, the
seventeenth century document “Ge-
nealogia di Casa Tintoretto” which
discusses Marietta’s illegitimate
birth, adds that Tintoretto painted
his young daughter holding the
hand of her mother in the Church of
the Madonna dell’Orto, in the paint-
ing representing the Presentation of
the Virgin to the Temple.38 The paint-
ing was commissioned to adorn the
outer wings of the church’s organ
shutters in 1551, but as Ilchman
has demonstrated, it can be dated
closer to 1556, date in which the
artist received his last payment.39
Marietta could have been around
three years old by that date and
could have served as the model for
the Virgin, who was herself that
age when she was presented to the
temple, according to the Golden
Legend. If we believe Tintoretto’s
Genealogia, Marietta could also
have been the model for the two
additional little girls in the painting,
who have the same hair style and
wear the same outfit. Moreover, the
detail with the woman seated on
the stairs embracing her daughter
and sharing a moment of intimacy
is so vibrant that it seems captured
from life.
Then, if we can place Marietta’s
birth around 1553, she could be
fourteen or fifteen in the Dresden
double-portrait, which not only
helps reinforcing Bull’s attribution
but would give to the Venetian
woman painter a peculiar portrait
of herself.
Interestingly, other visual evi-
dence contributes to this hypoth-
esis, as well as it defines Marietta’s
personality with more precision. In
fact, two additional depictions of
Marietta can serve as the basis for
a physiognomic comparison. The
first one is the engraving which
opens Ridolfi’s biography (fig. 6)
and the second portrait illustrates
Joachim von Sandrart’s biography
of Marietta in Academia nobilissimae
artis pictoriae, 1684 (fig. 7). They are
both engravings after a lost portrait
of Marietta.40 These images bear
clear physiognomic similarities to
each other, and they show indi-
vidualized features of her face. In
Louise Arizzoli
Ridolfi’s portrait, Marietta wears
a very low-necked dress, with a
string of pearl, her hair is breaded
and gathered behind her head. In
Sandrart’s image, she also wears a
low-necked dress, but does not have
pearls. She has her hair arranged in
curls forming a half-moon on the
top of her head, as was typical for
Venetian noblewoman of the second
half of the sixteenth century.41 The
bulbous nose, the full lips and the
large forehead are very similar in
the two portraits, as well as the
woman’s large, dewy eyes. These
facial features are not so far from
what the younger Marietta looked
like in the Dresden portrait, dressed
as a boy. The shape of her nose is
probably the most distinguishable
feature, and clearly looks like the
bulbous nose of her father Jacopo
(fig. 3).
Marietta, a model
in the workshop
A
little more of Marietta
can be grasped if we
look closer at Jacopo
and Domenico Tintoretto’s oeuvre.
Although she was not frequently
portrayed by her relatives, they
may have used her to pose for them
in a wide variety of situations for a
5.  Domenico or Marietta Robusti
(?), Double-Portrait, Dresden
Gemäldgalerie Alte Meister, 1567-68.
6.  Portrait of Marietta Robusti, in
Carlo Ridolfi, Le Maraviglie dell’Arte,
1648.
109
Marietta Robusti in Jacopo Tintoretto’s ...
different range of characters.
We know that during the six-
teenth century, artists used mainly
male models or statuary for pic-
turing the human body.42 These
male models generally were part
110
of the workshop; they may have
been assistants or apprentices. For
depictions of female bodies, artists
may have used courtesans as well,
as their customs were freed from
proper rules of conduct. Sketching
in more if sketching in an intimate,
domestic setting, artists they could
more easily disregard a prohibition
regarding the depiction of nude
women. For this kind of depiction,
male artists often copied women
who were their lovers: Raphael’s
Fornarina is believed to be the
painter’s mistress.43 In his Autobi-
ography, Benevenuto Cellini offers
additional evidence that women
who served as models, especially
if they were appearing in the nude,
was an occurrence that took place
in the private sphere: “I had taken a
charming and very beautiful young
girl as my maidservant; I used
her as a model, and also enjoyed
her in bed to satisfy my youthful
desires”.44
During the sixteenth century,
artists commonly employed cour-
tesan and working-class women as
live models, but it also happened
that they used members of their
own family.45 A good example of
the practice of using family mem-
bers as models for painters can be
revisited in paintings produced by a
contemporary of Tintoretto, Palma
il Giovane. In contrast to Tintoretto,
Palma did many portraits of his
wife Andriana, as well as of his
children.46 One painting, though,
preserved now at the Palma did
many portraits of his wife Andriana,
as well as of his children. University
Art Museum, representing St. John
the Baptist Preaching, bears portraits
of the artist with his wife Andri-
ana and two of his sons, Marco
and Iulio, as figures who stand in
the crowd of believers.47 A later
example can be found in the other
famous father/daughter couple,
Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi.
In fact, in a 2001 study on the artistic
pair, Christiansen and Mann pro-
posed the hypothesis that Artemisia
posed for her father as a common,
but secret duty within her father’s
workshop. The scholars go as far
as suggesting that she may have
posed nude for her father.48
Tintoretto’s use of his daughter
as a model may have thus been

not such an uncommon practice
in sixteenth century Venice. If we
consider the examples examined
thus far, and if we believe the
family resemblance to be convinc-
ing, it is possible to highlight this
recurring likeness in Tintoretto and
Domenico’s oeuvre. I wish to pres-
ent here three additional examples
that would confirm this hypothesis
and which belong to the period
between 1577 and 1586. The three
artworks provide representations
of a particularized physiognomic
typology which correspond to the
traits depicting Marietta in Ridolfi’s
engraving. This same woman can
be found in the figure of the maid
in the Danaë now preserved in the
Musée des Beaux-Art of Lyon (fig.
8), as well as in the figure of Saint
Agnes in the Miracle of Saint Agnes,
an altarpiece which hangs in the
Contarini Chapel in the church
of Santa Maria dell’Orto, Venice49
(a fronte)
7.  Portrait of Marietta Robusti, in
Joachim von Sandrart, Academia
nobilissimae artis pictoriae, 1683.
8.  Jacopo Tintoretto, Danaë, 1577-
80, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon.
(fig. 9) and in the figure of Mary-
Magdalene painted by Domenico
and preserved at the Musei Capi-
tolini of Rome (fig. 10).
The Danaë now in Lyon50 can be
dated around 1577-80, and it has
been largely discussed by scholars
for Tintoretto’s complex iconogra-
phy and composition. There have
also been some speculations regard-
ing the individuation of a second
hand - perhaps Domenico’s or as
Ilchman and Echols have demon-
strated a lesser assistant - especially
regarding the figure of the maid.51
Tintoretto’s painting is clearly
inspired by Titian’s earlier Danaë
(1553-54, Prado Museum) through
the presence of the maid attempting
to catch the golden coins showering
from above.52 The canvas, however,
departs from Titian’s in many ways,
but mainly for its association of the
myth of Acrisios’ daughter with the
Venetian world of courtesans, and
9.  Jacopo Tintoretto, Saint Agnes, detail, Santa Madonna dell’Orto,
Venice, 1578.
10.  Domenico Robusti, Mary-Magdalene, Rome, Pinacoteca Capitolina,
1580 -86 ca.
Louise Arizzoli
its moral satire of venal love.53 In
Tintoretto’s canvas, moreover, the
maid is not old, but rather, she is
as young as the princess, and she
exhibits a certain degree of realism
in her physiognomy. Interestingly,
Pallucchini and Rossi have noticed
and emphasized the realism with
which Tintoretto has depicted the
young servant;54 a characteristic
that can lead us to believe that
the painter had a model in front
of him.
A second example, which had
been similarly dated to the very end
of the seventies of the sixteenth cen-
tury, is the altarpiece representing
Saint Agnes while she performs the
miracle of the resurrection of Licin-
ius, the son of a Roman prefect, in
the Contarini chapel, in the church
of Santa Maria dell’Orto. There has
been some disagreement for the
date of the altarpiece among art
historians. Its commission has been
111
Marietta Robusti in Jacopo Tintoretto’s ...
related to the death of Tommaso
Contarini in 1578, a hypothesis that
has been confirmed by Pallucchini
and Rossi in their monograph, but
Douglas-Scott tends to pre-date
the altarpiece to the mid-sixties.55
Scholars generally believe that
Tintoretto may have executed this
altarpiece with a talented assistant,
and Adolfo Venturi went as far
as to suggest that this helper may
have been Marietta herself.56 The
young saint with flowing hair and
a white satin dress, kneeling in
the foreground, bears very specific
physiognomic features, similar to
the ones described above: the bul-
bous nose, the large forehead, the
wide, dewy eyes and full lips. This
similarity again makes us believe
that she is referring to someone
specific (fig. 9). Interestingly, if the
painting has to be dated to the mid-
sixties, Marietta would have been
around thirteen, or the same age as
Saint Agnes when she performed
the miracle.
A last artwork that features
a very similar model can be dis-
covered in the Mary Magdalene
executed by the young Domenico
Tintoretto (fig. 10. Indeed, Do-
menico painted at least three can-
vases with the same subject, with
two of them being almost exact
copies of each other: one of these
is preserved in the church of Saint
Bartholomew in Pilzno, Poland, and
the other is housed in the Musei
Capitolini of Rome.57 Both saints
have intense facial expressions as
well as character, and together, they
suggest that Domenico may have
been inspired by a specific model
because of the acute realism of the
figures. In an article devoted to the
Mary Magdalene now in the Musei
Capitolini, Michiaki Koshikawa
dates the canvas in the Capitoline
Museum to the mid-1580s, based
on its similarity with the Pilzno
altarpiece, which itself is signed
and dated to 1586. He also empha-
sizes the similarity of the figure of
the Mary Magdalene with Danaë’s
maid, as if both women were sisters.
112
His comparison would help seeing
Domenico’s hand in the canvas
preserved in Lyon:
“As for the Mary Magdalene
now in the Capitoline Museum,
we need to consider the possibil-
ity to insert it among the works
Domenico produced when he
was young […] a second example
can be pointed as the Danaë in
the Musée des Beaux-Arts of
Lyon. Rossi’s date of 1578 for
this painting is very plausible
[…] This painting also presents a
significant detail. If we compare
the face of the kneeling maid
with that of the Mary Magdalene,
we can immediately notice a
close similarity, as if they were
sisters”.58
Clearly, the same model was
available in the workshop to both
father and son; why could not that
be Marietta herself, who changed
attributes and clothes to become the
incarnation of different characters?
If this kind of practice was not so
unusual among artists of the early
modern period, since the need of
woman models was certainly in-
creasing, it is thus possible to sug-
gest that Tintoretto and Domenico
asked Marietta to pose for them.
Marietta Robusti was certainly
a recognized artist during her own
time, and her portraits were appre-
ciated not only in Venice but also
throughout Europe, as some kings
and emperors enquired about her.
Her work, however, never received
extensive attention in modern times
because she spent all of her short life
in the workshop of her father, as one
of his main assistants. The question
of the attribution of her work is thus
still problematic. Through a small
group of images that record her
likeness, it is possible to affirm that
she played a role that was diverse
and more complex than what has
usually been believed. As a talented
assistant, she most likely covered
important responsibilities in Tin-
toretto’s atelier in order to ensure
a high quality for the numerous
paintings produced there. At the
same time, she could have been a
source of inspiration for her brother
and her father, for whom she posed
as a model.
1)
  This paper was made possible thanks
to the many years spent working for Dr.
Adelheid Gealt, Director Emerita of the IU
Eskenazi Museum of Art Indiana University
Art Museum, to whom I would like to extend
my heartfelt gratitude. I participated as her
research assistant to her ongoing project
on artists’ representations of their families
titled Creative Attachments: A Study of how
visual artists responded to family and friends,
from Albrecht Dürer to Lucian Freud, to which
this paper is clearly indebted. I also would
like to thank Frederick Ilchman and Lorenzo
Buonanno for inviting me to participate to
their Tintoretto panel at the Renaissance
Society of America in 2016, as well as Liliana
Barroero for her support.. For second-hand,
scholarly literature on Marietta Robusti, see:
A. Zappa, Maria del Tintoretto, Milan 1907; E.
Tietze-Conrat, Marietta, fille du Tintoret. Peintre
de Portraits, in “  Gazette des Beaux-Arts  ”,
12, 1934, pp. 258-261; R. Gallo, La Famiglia di
Jacopo Tintoretto, “Ateneo Veneto”, 1941, pp.
73-92; A. Venturi, Storia dell’Arte Italiana, 9,
vol. 4, Milan 1929, pp. 684-686; G. Greer, The
Obstacle Race: the Fortunes of Women Painters
and theirm, New York 1979, pp. 14-15; A. M.
Silverstein, Marietta Robusti; la Tintoretta,
Daughter of Tintoretto. PhD diss., 1998; D.
Bull, A Double-Portrait attributable to Marietta
Tintoretto, “The Burlington Magazine”, 151,
2009-10, pp. 678-681; M. Mazzucco, Jacomo
Tintoretto e i suoi figli. Storia di una famiglia
veneziana, Milan 2009.
2)
  R. Borghini, Il Riposo, Lloyd H. Ellis (ed. and
trans.), Toronto 2007; and C. Ridolfi, The Life of
Tintoretto and of his Children Domenico e Mari-
etta, Catherine and Robert Engass (Trans.),
University Park and London 1984.
3)
  Marietta’s early biographers only describe
three works that she may have done: a self-
portrait that she sent to Maximilian II, a
portrait of Jacopo Strada, Maximilian II’s
antiquarian, and a portrait of Marco Episcopi,
her grand-father with his son Pietro. See
Ridolfi 1984, p. 98; Mazzucco 2009, p. 253.
Other artworks have been attributed to her
in the past, but none of these attributions is
certain. For example, Erica Tietze-Conrat
attributes her a portrait of an old man with
child of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in
Vienna, in which she recognizes Marco Epis-
copi with her son, see Tietze-Conrat 1934, p.
259, while Roland Krischel has attributed her
a painting in Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum,
representing Ottavio, son of Jacopo Strada,
see R. Krischel, Jacopo Tintoretto 1519-1594,
Köln 2000, pp. 130-132.
4)
  See Mazzucco 2009, pp. 260-263. For Jacopo
Tintoretto’s workshop see also: Stefania
Mason, Domenico Tintoretto e l’eredità della
bottega, in Jacopo Tintoretto. Proceedings of the
International Symposium Jacopo Tintoretto. M.
Falomir (ed.), Madrid 2007, pp. 84-90: “Nato

intorno al 1560, Domenico deve aver cominciato
prestissimo il suo apprendistato nella bottega
paterna, ma il raggiungimento della maggiore
età […] aveva coinciso con l’aumento vertiginoso
della produzione di Jacopo, soprattutto per i grandi
cicli di stato, che solo con l’aiuto di collaboratori si
sarebbero potuti portare a termine. […]la difficile
individuazione degli interventi di collaboratori
esterni nella ferrea organizzazione della bottega
Tintorettiana, che tende a spersonalizzare l’apporto
individuale, diventa quasi impossibile per gli
aiuti interni, obbligati ad una vicinanza stilistica
con il maestro”, as well as, R. Echols and F.
Ilchman, Toward a new Tintoretto Catalogue,
with a Checklist of Revised Attributions and a
New Chronology, in M. Falomir (ed.) 2007,
pp. 91-150, specifically, 99-100: “A teaming
bottega, often populated with relatives, was
a Venetian feature from the Trecento to the
fall of the Republic. Large workshops were as
common in Venice at the end of the Cinque-
cento as they had been a century earlier […]
This system was based on a concept that 21st
century corporation might call “branding” or
“quality control.”
5)
  W. Chadwick, Women, Art and Society,
London 2002, p. 18.
6)
  Marietta became the subject of numerous
nineteenth century artworks and plays;
George Sand started this tradition in her
novel Les Maîtres Mosaïstes, Paris 1838 by
creating a literary character out of the little
known information that circulated in Venice
about her. Then an Italian playwright, Luigi
Marta, developed the story of Tintoretto and
his daughter by turning it into a drama of
love and death, Tintoretto e sua figlia, a text
which was performed on stage in 1846, see
Mazzucco 2009, pp. 423-24.
7)
  See AL. Lepschy, Tintoretto Observed: A
Documentary Survey of Critical Reaction from
Sixteenth to Twentieth Century, Ravenna 1983,
pp. 89-9 and Mazzucco 2009, pp. 421-443.
8)
  M. Levey, The painter depicted. The Painter
as Subject in Painting, London 1981, pp. 62-
63; F. Haskell, The Old masters in Nineteenth
Century French Paintings, “ The Art Quarterly”,
XXXIV, 1, 1971, p. 62, n. 12; E. Foucart-Walter,
Léon Cogniet, 1794-1880, Orléans 1990, no. 41;
MT. Caracciolo, Le Romantisme, Paris 2013,
pp. 324, 457.
9)
  Mazzucco 2009, chapters 4, 9, 10, 13, 15, 16
and 17 are specifically dedicated to Marietta.
10)
  R. Borghini, p. 558: “Ha il Tintoretto una
figliola chiamata Marietta, e detta da tutti Tin-
toretta, la quale oltre alla bellezza e alla grazia, e
al saper suonar di gravicembolo, di liuto e d’altri
strumenti, dipigne benissimo, e ha fatto molte
bell’opere, e fra l’altre fece il ritratto di Jacopo
Strada, antiquario dell’Imperadore Massimiliano
II, e il ritratto di lei stessa, i quali come cosa rara,
Sua Maestà gli tenne in camera sua, e fece ogni
opera di avere appresso a sé questa donna eccel-
lente, la quale fu ancora mandata a chiedere al
Padre dal re Filippo, e dall’arciduca Ferdinando;
ma egli molto amandola non la si volle tor di vista;
ma avendola maritata si gode delle sue virtù,
ed ella non lascia continovamente di dipingere,
ritrovandosi intorno ai 28 anni; ma perché io
non ho particolare notizia delle opere sue, di lei
ragionando, non passerò più avanti.”
11)
  In Jacomo Tintoretto e I suoi figli, Melania
Mazzucco mentions two additional sources
in which Marietta is discussed. Karel Van
Mander talks briefly about her in his bi-
ography of the northern European painter
Pieter Vlerinck, who stayed in Tintoretto’s
household for a short period, in 1564-5. Van
Mander mentions Marietta, she was then
a young girl and lived with her father; he
also adds that Vlerinck regretted not having
proposed her marriage. See K. Van Mander,
Het Schilderboeck, Haarlem 1604, p. 243, and
Mazzucco 2009, pp. 239-41. Another seven-
teenth century biography of Marietta does
exist and is very similar to Ridolfi’s; it is by
J. von Sandrart, Academia nobilissimae artis
pictoriae, Nüremberg 1683, LXXII, p. 240.
12)
  Ridolfi 1984, pp. 98-99.
13)
  Most scholars who wrote about Marietta
Robusti discussed her possible date of birth,
see for example: Tietze-Conrat 1934, p. 259;
Gallo 1941, p. 77; Silverstein 1998, p. 14; Bull
2009, p. 681 and Mazzucco 2009, pp. 411-12.
14)
  It seems however that Tintoretto married
slightly later, at the end of 1559 – beginning
of 1560 his very young wife, Faustina, even
though no wedding certificate was found to
corroborate this information, see Mazzucco
2009, pp. 140-41.
15)
  See F. Checa Cremades, El Marqués del
Carpio (1629-1687) y la pintura veneziana del
Renascimiento. Negociaciones de Antonio Saurer,
in “Anales de Hitoria del Arte”, 14, 2004,
pp. 193-212, especially 204-205. A passage
of this document is worth of notice as it
describes Marietta’s illegitimate birth, 205:
“A Marieta Tintoretta famosa en el retratar,
la tuvo Jacome de una mujer tudesca, de quien
estava enamoradísimo, de manera que estando
pintando un cuadro grande en la Iglesia que se
llama la Madonna del Orto, ofreciéndosele azer
una muger i niña por la mano, pintó a Madre
e hixa, de suerte que quantos ven le acción no
se sazian de alavar la fuerza, i afectó con que la
exprime, i naturaliza. Caso Marieta con Marco
Augusta tudesco, en que no ubo ijos.”; as well
as M. Falomir, Jacopo Comin, alias Robusti,
alias Tintoretto: an Exhibition and Catalog,
in Tintoretto, exh. cat. (Madrid, Museo del
Prado), M. Falomir (ed.), Madrid 2007; and
Mazzucco 2009, pp. 133, 139.
16)
  S. Chojnacki, La Posizione della Donna a
Venezia nel Cinquecento, in Tiziano e Venezia.
Convegno Internazionale di Studi, M. Gemin
(ed.), Vicenza 1980, p. 66.
17)
  For Mazzucco’s discussion of Marietta
being dressed as a boy see Mazzucco 2009,
p. 242. For the courtesan’s habit to dress as
men see Anonym., Leggi e memorie venete sulla
prostituzione fino alla caduta della Repubblica,
121-22; and L. Lawner, Lives of the Courtesans.
Portraits of the Renaissance, New York 1987,
p. 23. For descriptions of the way courtesans
dressed see also: C. Vecellio, Habiti Antichi
e Moderni. The Clothing of the Renaissance
World, Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas, M.
Rosenthal and AR. Jones (eds.), London 2008,
pp. 190, 198-199: “Prostitutes who want to
win respect by means of feigned modesty
wear widows’ and married women’s style
of dress, especially in the colors worn by
brides […] because they are forbidden to wear
pearls, they reveal themselves as prostitutes
when they expose their bare neck […] Public
prostitutes who work in tawdry places do
Louise Arizzoli
not have a single way of dressing […] still,
all of them have a garment tending toward
men’s clothing.”
18)
  Venice in the sixteenth century was
ruled through a very rigid social hierarchy,
people were divided according to three social
classes: nobles, citizens and artisans (common
people). Tintoretto was born as a plebeian but
his father attempted to raise his social status
to the class of the citizens. Faustina however
was born in a relatively wealthy family,
the Episcopi, who were citizens. Tintoretto
therefore did a good marriage, in establishing
his family at a higher rank within Venetian
society. See Mazzucco 2009, pp. 139-40.
19)
  Marietta was trained in her father’s
workshop, a study drawing of the head of
Vitellius is the only artwork that bear her
signature - “ questa testa si e’ de ma[n] de ma-
dona Marietta” - and shows that she gained
a regular training doing copies from antique
busts, see R. Krischel, “Tintoretto y las artas
hermanas”, in Falomir 2007, pp. 120-121; R.
Krischel, Tintoretto , Hamburg 1994, pp. 62,
65 and M. Laclotte (ed.), Le siècle de Titien.
L’age d’or de la peinture à Venise, Paris 1993,
p. 218 (n. 238 verso, 586).
20)
  It is worth of notice that Marietta received
an offer to join a foreign court, most likely
before her marriage while her father by that
date had not received the same kind of
proposition.
21)
  Silverstein 1998, p. 38.
22)
  See Mazzucco 2009, p. 391. Five documents
attest of her existence: her wedding certificate
and publication of it, her daughter’s baptism
record, as well as her being mentioned in
Antonio de Comin’s – her father’s uncle -
will, and the receipt of her receiving that
money in 1583.
23)
  See Mazzucco 2009, p. 381: “1580 9 aprile:
Orsola et Benvegnuda fiola di messer Marco
Augusta et Madonna Marieta giugali battizai
io pre Isepo compare il magnifico messer Tomaso
Loreda’ e messer Daniel della riva (ASMGV,
parocchia di San Stin, Registro dei Battesimi
n. 1 (1564-1588), c. 68).”
24)
  See Mazzucco 2009, pp. 411-1417; although
she was not able to find Marietta’s death cer-
tificate, Mazzucco studied the papers related
to Tintoretto’s activities at the Scuola di San
Rocco in the last years of his life. She discusses
the possibility that Marietta may have in fact
died in the late part of the year 1590, because
there are four months in which the painter
abnormally disappears of his regular duties
at the Scuola di San Rocco, may be because he
was mourning his beloved daughter?
25)
  Mazzucco 2009, p. 276: “ma se di Marietta
non è rimasta nemmeno un’opera, poiché fu figlia
di un artista è legittimo ipotizzare che almeno
restino le immagini che il padre e il fratello Do-
menico lasciarono di lei.”
26)
  Tietze-Conrat 1934, 258-59. Based on
Tietze-Conrat’s attribution, Melania Maz-
zucco claims that the engraving opening
Ridolfi’s biography relies on this painting,
see Mazzucco 2009, pp. 446-48.
27)
  There is another portrait of a woman,
preserved at the Prado Museum, that Sanchez-
Canton attributes as a portrait of Marietta by
the hand of her brother Domenico. The Prado
canvas can be related to a series of similar
113
Marietta Robusti in Jacopo Tintoretto’s ...
portraits of courtesans executed by Domenico
Tintoretto around the same time. Miguel Fa-
lomir believes that the discussed canvas is the
first of a series portraying the same woman,
clearly a courtesan, in various stages, as she
removes her clothes. This same woman can
also be individuated in the courtesan whose
image is preserved at the Worcester Museum,
see: FJ. Sanchez-Canton, Museo del Prado.
Catalogo de las pinturas, Madrid 1963, p. 684,
De Tiziano a Bassano. Maestros Venecianos del
Museo del Prado, exh. cat. (Barcelona: Museu
National d’Arte de la Catalunya), F. Checa,
(ed), 1997, pp. 103-117, particularly no 16 and
17 and P. Rossi, I Ritratti Femminili di Domenico
Tintoretto, “Arte Illustrata”, 3, 30-31, 32-33,
1970, pp. 92-99, specifically, 93-94.
28)
  For the Uffizi Self-Portrait which is still
largely attributed to Marietta Robusti, but not
without problems see: Tietze-Conrat 1934, pp.
259-62, L. and U. Procacci, Il carteggio di Marco
Boschini con il Cardinal Leopoldo de’ Medici in
Saggi e memorie di Storia dell’Arte, 4, Venice
1965, pp. 85-114; F. Trincheri Camiz, Marietta
Robusti detta la Tintoretta in Cinque secoli di
stampa musicale in Europa, Silvia Cassani and
Nerina Bevilacqua (eds.), Milano 1985, pp.
251, 262. M. Chiarini et alii, Jacopo Tintoretto
1519-1594. Il grande collezionismo Mediceo,
Florence 1995, no. 23; C. Caneva, Il Corridoio
Vasariano agli Uffizi, Milano 2002, pp. 182-183;
Mazzucco 2009, pp. 455-69.
29)
  For a detailed discussion of the vicissitudes
of the sale of this self-portrait see specifically:
Procacci 1965, pp. 85-114 and Mazzucco 2009,
pp. 455-69.
30)
  J. Woods Marsden, Renaissance Self-Por-
traiture. The Visual Construction of Identity and
the Social Status of the Artist, New Haven and
London 1998, p. 218 and Bull 2009, p. 678.
31)
  For women artists’ self-portraits see:
C. King, Looking a Sight: Sixteenth-Century
Portraits of Woman Artists, in Zeitschrift für
Kunstgeschichte, 58. Bd., H. 3, 1995, pp. 381-
406, and MD. Garrard, Here’s Looking at Me:
Sofonisba Anguissola and the Problem of the
Woman Artists, “Renaissance Quarterly”, 47,
no 3, Autumn 1994, pp. 556-622.
32)
  See Trincheri Camiz 1985, p. 262.
33)
  The Double-portrait entered the Dresden
collection in 1749, before then it was preserved
in the Imperial collections of Prague, see: H.
Marx (ed.), Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister Dresden,
Köln 2005, p. 216.
34)
  On Jacopo Strada and Titian’s portrait,
see: DJ. Jansen, J. Coignard, Jacopo Strada et
le commerce d'art, “Revue de l'Art”, 1987, n°
77, p. 13.
35)
  Borghini 2007, p. 558: “[…] ha fatto molte
bell’opere, e fra l’altre il ritratto di Jacopo Strada
Antiquario dell’Imperador Massimiliano secondo,
e il ritratto di lei stessa, I quali, come cosa rara,
sua Maesta gli tenne in camera sua […]” in Bull
2009 p. 681.
36)
  Bull 2009, p. 680.
37)
  Bull is also convincingly linking the Dres-
den double portrait with Tintoretto’s Portrait of
Ottavio Strada, preserved at the Rijksmuseum,
Amsterdam, through the inverted pose of the
younger sitter in the Dresden canvas, Bull
2009, p. 680.
38)
  See footnote 13.
39)
  For the date see F. Ilchman, Jacopo Tintoretto
114
in Process: The Making of a Venetian Master,
1540-1560, PhDiss. Columbia University,
pp. 196, 243.
40)
  See Mazzucco 2009, p. 446.
41)
  See Vecellio 2008, pp. 182-84.
42)
  JG. Bernstein, The Female Model and the Re-
naissance Nude: Dürer, Giorgione, and Raphael, in
“Artibus Historiae”, 13, 26, 1992, pp. 49-50.
43)
  D. Brown , K. Oberhuber, Monna Vanna
and Fornarina. Leonardo and Raphael in Rome, in
Essays presented to Myron P. Gilmore, Florence
1978, II, p. 49. For a recent study on Raphael’s
La Fornarina, which rather identifies the model
as the wife of one of Raphael’s closest friends
and patron, Agostino Chigi, see: A. Ferrigno,
Une nouvelle identification de la Fornarina de
Raphaël (vers 1518-19). Le peintre, la belle et le
banquier, in Les Cahiers d’Histoire de l’Art, 11,
2013, pp. 7-13.
44)
  B. Cellini, The Autobiography of Benvenuto
Cellini, G. Bull (Trans.), Harmondsworth,
Middlesex-New York 1956, p. 101.
45)
  For a wealth of additional examples see A.
Gealt, Creative Attachments, forthcoming and
A. Gealt, Pierre Daura (1896-1976). Picturing
Attachments, exh. cat. (University of Georgia:
Georgia Museum of Art), 2014.
46)
  Stefania Mason Rinaldi (ed.), Palma il Gio-
vane 1548-1628. Disegni e dipinti. Milan 1990,
p. 12, 17, 39, 43, 55, 66.
47)
  On Palma’s Saint John the Baptist Preach-
ing see: A. Gealt, “The Indiana University Art
Museum's Palma Giovane,” in Indiana Uni-
versity Art Museum Bulletin, Fall 1978, pp.
58-67; Stefania Mason, Palma il Giovane. Opera
complete, Milan 1986, p. 76 and A. Gealt (ed.),
Masterworks from the Indiana University Art
Museum, Bloomington 2007, pp. 250-251.
48)
  Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi, exh. cat.
(New York: Metropolitan Museum Of Art),
K. Christiansen and J. Mann (ed.), 2001, no
17, 98 and n. 39, 186. Scholars recognized
a similarity between certain female figures
in Orazio’s paintings, such as the figure of
Cleopatra, a figure of Judith (1621-24) and a
lute player that he executed at the Casino delle
Muse. For further details on the role Artemisia
played in her father household, see Patrizia
Cavazzini, “Artemisia nella casa paterna”, pp.
283-295, specifically 286, 379-80: “Orazio aveva
certamente usato Artemisia come modella dando
credito a voci che posasse anche nuda”.
49)
  For Jacopo Tintoretto and the Church of
Santa Maria dell’Orto see: P. Rossi, Jacopo
Tintoretto alla Madonna dell’Orto in, La Chiesa
del Tintoretto. Madonna dell’Orto, L. Moretti et
alii (eds.), Venice 1994, pp. 128-134, and M.
Douglas-Scott, Jacopo Tintoretto's Altarpiece of St
Agnes at the Madonna dell'Orto in Venice and the
Memorialization of Cardinal Contarini, “Journal
of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes”, 60,
1997, pp. 130-163.
50)
  The canvas was bought as a Tintoretto in
1624 by Balthazar Gerbier for George Villiers;
it was then acquired for the emperor Ferdi-
nand III of Hapsburg in 1649 and remained
in Prague until 1718, and then went to Vi-
enna until 1796; It was seized by Napoleon
Bonaparte in 1809 and sent to Lyon in 1811.
See Tintoretto, exh. cat. (Rome, Scuderie del
Quirinale), Vittorio Sgarbi (ed.), Milan 2012,
no 22, 61.
51)
  Miguel Falomir (ed.), Jacopo Tintoretto
(Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado, 2009),
367-69; Echols and Ilchman, “Toward a new
Tintoretto Catalogue”, 109, 130, no 217.
52)
  For a detailed discussion of the canvas see
R. Pallucchini and P. Rossi, Tintoretto, le opere
sacre e profane, Venezia 1982, I, no 478; Sgarbi
(ed.) 2012, no 22. On Tintoretto’s satirical ap-
proach and allusion to corruption and venal
sex see: T. Nichols, False gods: Tintoretto’s
mythologies as ‘anti-poesie’ in Jacopo Tintoretto,
Falomir (ed.), 2009, pp. 36-44 and F. Alberti,
Bizzarri componimenti e straordinarie invenzioni:
la Danaé de Tintoret, une peinture comique,
“Studiolo”, 7, 2009, pp. 11-39.
53)
  F. Pedrocco, Il gioco dell’amore. Le cortigiane
di Venezia dal Trecento al Settecento, in Irene
Ariano (ed.), Milan 1990, p. 85; Alberti, 2009,
pp. 14-15; Sgarbi (ed.) 2012, no 22.
54)
  Pallucchini and Rossi 1982, I, n. 478.
55)
  P. Rossi 1994, pp. 130-132; M. Douglas-
Scott 1997, p. 142.
56)
  Venturi 1929, pp. 684-689.
57)
  Rossi 1970, p. 93 and M. Koshikawa, La
Maddalena Penitente della Pinacoteca Capitolina
di Domenico Tintoretto, in Jacopo Tintoretto nel
Quarto Centenario della sua Morte, P. Rossi and
L. Puppi (eds.), Venice 1994, p. 116.
58)
  Koshikawa 1994, p. 116: “Tornando alla
Maddalena della Pinacoteca Capitolina, dobbiamo
considerare se quest’opera possa essere inserita
in modo ragionevole nella serie di quelle prodotte
dal giovane Domenico … il secondo esempio è
la Danae del Musée des Beaux-Arts di Lione.
La datazione fatta risalire dalla Rossi intorno
all’anno 1578, può essere condivisa appieno…
Anche questo dipinto presenta un particolare
significativo. Mettendo a confronto il viso della
serva inginocchiata con la Maddalena, possiamo
subito notare una stretta somiglianza tra i due
volti femminili: sembra siano sorelle. L’affinità
stilistica tra questi particolari e la Maddalena
capitolina non solo giustificano una datazione
anteriore, ma anche sembra confermare il parziale
intervento del giovane figlio nell’esecuzione delle
sopra citate due opera paterne.”
Abstract
Marietta Robusti was the first daughter of
the famous Venetian painter of the Renais-
sance, Jacopo Tintoretto. She was certainly
a recognized artist during her own time, and
her portraits were appreciated not only in
Venice but also throughout Europe. Her work,
however, never received extensive attention
in modern times because she spent all of her
short life in the workshop of her father, as
one of his main assistants. While attributions
remain problematic, this paper aims to redis-
cover her likeness within the paintings of her
father Jacopo and of her brother Domenico.
The individualized features of her face can
in fact be recognized in a group of paintings,
dating from the late 1570s and the mid-1580s.
It is thus possible to think that she played
a role that was diverse and more complex
than has usually been believed. She not only
was Tintoretto’s talented assistant, but she
also was, most likely, a source of inspiration
for her brother and her father, for whom she
posed as a model.
larizzol@olemiss.edu
 XI.  Perino del Vaga, Annunciazione, Assunzione e
Incoronazione della Vergine, Londra, British Museum.

Louise Arizzoli, p. 105

XII.  Jacopo Tintoretto, Self-portrait, 1546-48,

Philadelphia Museum of Art.
XIII.  Marietta Robusti (?), Self-Portrait, ca. 1580,
Uffizi Gallery.