Day 241 - Tintoretto and Rubens Oil Sketches



March 12, 2021


Gallery 623 contains oil sketches from the 16th and 17th centuries. Many of these works appear quite finished to me, but the two I want to discuss today really are sketches, in which outlines  and/or color schemes are only barely indicated.

The first,  painted by Tintoretto around 1577,  is a sketch for a large painting that was to be placed in the Doge's Palace. The sketch, approximately seven feet long and four feet high, shows, at the center and kneeling, the Doge Alvise Mocenigo, who headed the Venetian Republic at the time of the Venetian fleet's victory over the Turks at Lepanto in 1571. Mocenigo also served as doge during the plague year of 1576, after which he pledged to build the church of the Redentore. Appropriately, in the sketch Mocenigo is presented to the Redeemer, the latter clad in flowing blue robes and suspended in the air by angels. There are other bits of Venetian iconography packed into the sketch: ships representing the victorious fleet in the water behind the doge, Saint Mark (though I couldn't tell you which figure he is), and the facade of a building I think I remember as being near the entrance to St. Mark's Square (wherever it is, the building is distinctively Venetian in appearance). Finally, in  the picture's lower left-hand corner is a big blob that, upon closer inspection (and reading the placard) I recognize to be the Venetian lion. I don't know whether the work was completed, but the sketch suggests that if it was, it must have been impressive.

The second sketch, executed some 50 years later, is by Rubens and is equally celebratory: It depicts Henri IV's victorious  entry into Paris as a Roman triumphal procession, with Henri shown holding an olive branch and riding a chariot drawn by three white horses, while a winged Victory suspends a crown over his (bald!) head. The work is small in format (maybe 32 inches or so wide and 20 inches high), but I can count at least 17 people and several horses in the composition; it's evident what a master Rubens was at inventing crowd scenes.  The sketch is mostly done in tones of brown, but Henri's armor really stands out: it's dark, except where Rubens added dabs of white to make it glint. Most of the figures are dressed in imaginary Roman attire, but Henri's armor looks pretty 16th century to me.
 

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