Christ on the Shores of the Sea of Galilee Art

The high quality of Christ at the Sea of Galilee has always been recognized. Seascapes are rare in Venetian painting, and here the turbulent waters, with their flickering highlights, as well as the blustering clouds and the play of lite on the distant shore, are rendered with a painterly brio that has in hindsight evoked the names of Théodore Géricault and Eugène Delacroix. [1] [ane]
Tancred Borenius, "A Seascape by Tintoretto," Apollo 2 (July–December 1925): 249. The disjunction between the vigor of the landscape and the sketchy and attenuated effigy of Christ, evidently unfinished in some passages, contributes to a mystical, almost hallucinatory event that has been compared to some of Jacopo Tintoretto's great paintings at the Scuola Grande di San Rocco. [2] [two]
For example, Terisio Pignatti, in Aureate Century of Venetian Painting (Los Angeles, 1979), 106. Most scholars have considered the picture to be an autograph work by Tintoretto, and many have ranked it amid his masterpieces. Nevertheless, the painting is so fundamentally different from Tintoretto'due south art that it can exist removed from his autograph oeuvre without hesitation.

The picture has never been located convincingly in Tintoretto'south oeuvre: datings have ranged from August 50. Mayer's 1546/1555, through Rodolfo Pallucchini and Paola Rossi's 1558/1562 and Terisio Pignatti'south later 1570s, to Tintoretto's last years, 1591/1594, as favored by Lionello Venturi, Erich von der Bercken, and Pierluigi De Vecchi. [iii] [3]
Rodolfo Pallucchini and Paola Rossi, Tintoretto: Le opere sacre eastward profane (Venice, 1982), 1:178–179, cat. no. 224; Terisio Pignatti, in Gilt Century of Venetian Painting (Los Angeles, 1979), 106; Lionello Venturi, Pitture italiane in America (Milan, 1931), no. 411; Erich von der Bercken, Die Gemälde des Jacopo Tintoretto (Munich, 1942), 88, 118; Pierluigi De Vecchi, L'opera completa del Tintoretto (Milan, 1970), 133, no. 290. A copy of August L. Mayer's manuscript opinion of 1925 is in NGA curatorial files. Nor has the attribution gone unquestioned.

In 1948, Hans Tietze gave the picture to El Greco, a conclusion reached by Manolis Chatzidakis in 1950 as well. [4] [4]
Hans Tietze, Tintoretto: The Paintings and Drawings (New York, 1948), 381 (and see besides the manuscript opinion by Hans Tietze and Erika Tietze-Conrat quoted below, at note 5); Manolis Chatzidakis, "O Domenikos Theotokopoulos kai eastward kretiké zographiké," Kretika Chronika 4 (1950): 371–440; see also Harold Wethey, El Greco and His Schoolhouse (Princeton, NJ, 1962), 1:90 n. 113, citing Chatzidakis. Hans Tietze, Treasures of the Bully National Galleries; An Introduction to the Paintings in the Famous Museums of the Western World (New York, 1954), 115, 125, is less definitive on the attribution, noting that the picture is "ascribed to Tintoretto, but may also be considered every bit a possible El Greco." In a lengthy written statement in NGA curatorial files, Tietze and Erika Tietze-Conrat argued assuredly that the essential invention, the figure types, the technique, and the coloring of the moving picture are conflicting to Tintoretto at every phase of his career. As the Tietzes noted, Tintoretto's art is e'er based primarily on the human figure and conveys a fundamental sense of the underlying structure and mechanics of the torso, which is absent-minded here. [5] [5]
Equally Hans Tietze and Erika Tietze-Conrat wrote, in Tintoretto's figure'southward one can always "discern a cartoon which explains everything. . . . [Here] Christ is an bogeyman. Instead of a head between his shoulders, instead of skull, heart and oral fissure to say words, in that location is simply a contour, or more exactly the shadow of a profile." An instance that shows how differently Tintoretto treats a comparable figure is provided in the Finding of the Body of Saint Marking (Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan); meet Robert Echols, "Tintoretto, Christ at the Body of water of Galilee, and the Unknown Later Career of Lambert Sustris," Venezia Cinquecento 6, no. 12 (1996): 94. Moreover, in Tintoretto'south paintings, to quote the Tietzes, water is never "in itself an independent means of expression. . . . It is simply the milieu in which some issue takes place. In the Washington pic, the ocean is not a detail, but the subject of the painting." [half-dozen] [six]
A prominent example of Tintoretto's treatment of a stormy bounding main is provided by Saint Mark Rescues a Saracen (Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice). Although cited by Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings (Washington, DC, 1979), i:645, and Terisio Pignatti, in Golden Century of Venetian Painting (Los Angeles, 1979), 106, every bit providing a comparison to the Gallery's painting, the treatment is utterly different there: the bounding main is rendered with long, curving strokes of white representing the cream over a dark blue groundwork. The prominent employ of green globe every bit the principal paint in the seascape in Christ at the Sea of Galilee, noted in the scientific analysis report (run into Technical Summary, note 3), is uncharacteristic of Tintoretto and other Venetian painters; it is more common among fresco painters. See Robert Echols, "Tintoretto, Christ at the Ocean of Galilee, and the Unknown Later Career of Lambert Sustris," Venezia Cinquecento 6, no. 12 (1996): 149 north. 109, and the sources cited there. The painting's unusually thin pictorial technique, employing nigh no impasto, is likewise uncharacteristic of Tintoretto. [seven] [7]
The thinness of the paint layers is peculiarly striking given that there are substantially three paintings on top of one another. On Tintoretto'south pictorial technique, see Jill Dunkerton, "Tintoretto's Painting Technique," in Tintoretto, ed. Miguel Falomir (Madrid, 2007), 139–158; Joyce Plesters, "Preliminary Observations on the Technique and Materials of Tintoretto," in Conservation and Restoration of Pictorial Fine art, ed. Norman Bromelle and Perry Smith (London, 1976), 7–26. Plesters has stated that she never believed the Gallery's painting to exist by Tintoretto (letter of the alphabet to Robert Echols, February 7, 1994, copy in NGA curatorial files). On the other hand, while the Tietzes' attribution to El Greco accords with the picture'southward mannerist elements and loftier quality, the technique, in particular the lack of impasto, is equally inconsistent with that of the Cretan painter. [8] [8]
Among those scholars attributing the painting to Tintoretto, a number have seen a connection to El Greco, stressing the importance of the painting as an influence on the latter and noting how Tintoretto anticipated some of El Greco's effects; encounter Georg Gronau's manuscript opinion of April 28, 1935, transcribed in NGA curatorial files; Harold Wethey, El Greco and His School (Princeton, NJ, 1962), 1:90 n. 113; Denys Sutton, "Venetian Painting of the Golden Age," Apollo 110 (1979): 386; Rodolfo Pallucchini and Paola Rossi, Tintoretto: Le opere sacre east profane (Venice, 1982), 1:179.

Equally the present writer has argued elsewhere, the best caption for the picture's peculiar genius lies in an attribution to the Amsterdam-born painter Lambert Sustris during his later on career in Venice, a period which has remained mysterious and largely unexplored. [ix] [9]
Robert Echols, "Tintoretto, Christ at the Sea of Galilee, and the Unknown Subsequently Career of Lambert Sustris," Venezia Cinquecento half-dozen, no. 12 (1996): 93–149. Built-in around 1515, Sustris is recorded in Rome in 1536, and inside a year or two he had settled in Venice. His paintings in that location show him to be extremely versatile, moving comfortably back and along between the conventions of central Italian mannerism, Titian (in whose studio he is reported to accept worked), and northern literalism. [ten] [10]
Robert Echols, "Tintoretto, Christ at the Sea of Galilee, and the Unknown Later Career of Lambert Sustris," Venezia Cinquecento 6, no. 12 (1996): 96–102, and bibliography at note 10; Bert W. Meijer, in Venezia da stato a mito (Venice, 1997), 133–135, 141–143, 532–537; Vincenzo Mancini, Lambert Sustris a Padova: La Villa Bigolin a Selvazzano (Selvazzano Dentro, 1993). In the 1540s he was active as a painter of fresco cycles decorating palaces and villas on the Venetian terraferma, and he seems to accept played a role in developing the characteristic domestic decoration mode there, specially its mural components, which combine the Roman antique landscapes of Polidoro da Caravaggio with elements of northern panorama and Venetian pastoral lyricism [fig. one] [fig. 1] Lambert Sustris, Mural, 1549/1551, fresco, Lonedo di Lugo di Vicenza, Villa Godi Valmarana, Sala dei Cesari. © Bibliotheca Hertziana / Foto: Bartsch, Tatjana . [11] [11]
Vincenzo Mancini, Lambert Sustris a Padova: La Villa Bigolin a Selvazzano (Selvazzano Dentro, 1993), 35–37; Bert Westward. Meijer, "Lambert Sustris in Padua: Fresco's en tekeningen," Oud Holland 107 (1993): 9–10. He is as well recorded by early sources as one of the northern artists who worked in Tintoretto'due south studio, likewise equally Titian'due south, painting landscapes. [12] [12]
"Lamberto si tratenne per qualche tempo in Venetia, servendo medesimamente alcuna volta à Titiano & al Tintoretto nel far paesi." Carlo Ridolfi, Le maraviglie dell'arte, overo Le vite de gl'illustri pittori veneti, e dello stato (Venice, 1648), ane:204–205; Carlo Ridolfi, Le maraviglie dell'arte, overo Le vite de gl'illustri pittori veneti, e dello stato, ed. Detlev von Hadeln (Berlin, 1914), one:225. Giorgio Vasari's 1568 Lives implies that Lambert was still alive only no longer in Venice, and his career is not usually discussed beyond this bespeak. [xiii] [13]
Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de' più eccellenti pittori scultori e architettori, ed. Gaetano Milanesi (Florence, 1906), 7:586 Yet, as get-go noted past Arthur Peltzer, there are indications that he continued to work in Venice, at least occasionally, for more three decades and received payments in that location under the proper name of "Alberto d'Ollanda" for three official portraits in 1591 that Tintoretto was unable to consummate. (Sustris signed paintings equally Alberto earlier in his career, and he is identified by the proper name in at least two documents.) [14] [14]
The list of the Venetian painter's club includes the name "Alberto Fiammingo," and no other name that could reasonably refer to Lambert Sustris. In addition, the visual evidence provided by the three documented "Alberto" portraits of 1591 is consequent with what Lambert might be expected to have produced some iv decades after his documented portraits, now working in a more Tintoretto-influenced mode. Robert Echols, "Tintoretto, Christ at the Sea of Galilee, and the Unknown Later Career of Lambert Sustris," Venezia Cinquecento half-dozen, no. 12 (1996): 102–110. On Lambert Sustris as "Albert d'Ollanda," encounter Arthur Peltzer, "Chi è il pittore 'Alberto de Ollanda,'" Arte Veneta 4 (1950): 118–122; run into also Bert W. Meijer, in Venezia da stato a mito (Venice, 1997), 134–135. Many direct links between paintings previously attributed to Tintoretto and works by Lambert suggest that during this afterwards phase of his career, Sustris had an association of some kind with Tintoretto. Although the structure of Tintoretto'south studio remains unclear, it seems likely that he had some associates who worked in that location relatively independently. Northern artists particularly seemed to have gravitated to the Tintoretto bottega. [15] [15]
Robert Echols, "Tintoretto, Christ at the Sea of Galilee, and the Unknown Later Career of Lambert Sustris," Venezia Cinquecento six, no. 12 (1996): 110–113, 124–137; Bert Due west. Meijer, "Flemish and Dutch Artists in Venetian Workshops: The Case of Jacopo Tintoretto," in Renaissance Venice and the Northward: Crosscurrents in the Fourth dimension of Dürer, Bellini and Titian, ed. Bernard Aikema and Beverly Louise Chocolate-brown (Milan, 1999), 133–143; Robert Echols 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), 107–109. Lambert Sustris may well have been one of them.

The attribution of the Gallery's painting to Lambert Sustris is based upon strong similarities in works by Lambert to the figure of Christ, the pocket-sized figures of the apostles, and the landscape. The adulterate effigy of Christ, with his rectangular-shaped head, follows the mannerist conventions that Sustris frequently used in his early on paintings. Because of the sketchiness of the effigy, especially close connections can be plant in Lambert'due south drawings. For example, in a drawing depicting a Cede to Priapus (Albertina, Vienna) [fig. 2] [fig. 2] Lambert Sustris, Sacrifice to Priapus, 1540s, ink and wash on paper, The Albertina Museum, Vienna. Photo © Albertina, Vienna , a female nude seen from the rear is articulated in exactly the aforementioned manner equally the figure of Christ, especially in the definition of the dorsum, the shoulders, the calves, and the feet, as well as the distinctive mannerist facial contour. [16] [16]
Run into Robert Echols, "Tintoretto, Christ at the Sea of Galilee, and the Unknown Later Career of Lambert Sustris," Venezia Cinquecento vi, no. 12 (1996): figs. viii, 9a, and 9b. For other comparable figures, encounter 113 and figs. 10 and 14 in the same article. Christ's exaggeratedly extended finger reflects a morphological trait that appears in the fundamental figure in armor in the Sacrifice to Priapus and numerous other drawings and paintings (encounter fig. 1) by Sustris. [17] [17]
See Robert Echols, "Tintoretto, Christ at the Sea of Galilee, and the Unknown After Career of Lambert Sustris," Venezia Cinquecento 6, no. 12 (1996): figs. 8, x, 13, and 14. The picayune figures of the apostles in the boat are analogous to those who populate Lambert'due south frescoed landscapes, and even closer to figures in his drawings, where the sketchily rendered faces oftentimes show the aforementioned hollow-eyed, skull-like appearance and summary treatment of the limbs. They are particularly close to a compositional sketch for a Roman triumph (Gabinetto dei Disegni, Uffizi, Florence) [fig. iii] [fig. 3] Lambert Sustris, A Roman Triumph, 1540s, ink and wash, with white heightening, on paper, Gabinetto dei Disegni due east delle Stampe, Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence. Photograph: Gabinetto Fotografico delle Gallerie degli Uffizi . [eighteen] [18]
Run across Robert Echols, "Tintoretto, Christ at the Bounding main of Galilee, and the Unknown Later Career of Lambert Sustris," Venezia Cinquecento 6, no. 12 (1996): 121, fig. fourteen, identified by Vincenzo Mancini, Lambert Sustris a Padova: La Villa Bigolin a Selvazzano (Selvazzano Dentro, 1993), 47, fig. 40. See also Echols, "Tintoretto, Christ at the Sea of Galilee, and . . . Lambert Sustris," figs. 15a, 15b, and 15c.

The landscape in the Gallery'southward picture shows striking similarities to Lambert'due south Paduan frescoes (for example, i at the Villa Godi at Lonedo, Lugo di Vicenza; see fig. one), especially in the treatment of the receding shoreline, the swaths of yellow and green defining the hills in the heart distance, the tree stump, the puffy clouds, and even the gunkhole itself. [xix] [19]
Another example is provided by the decoration of the Villa dei Vescovi at Luvigliano. Come across Robert Echols, "Tintoretto, Christ at the Sea of Galilee, and the Unknown Later on Career of Lambert Sustris," Venezia Cinquecento half dozen, no. 12 (1996): 98, 145 n. 25, 146 n. 32, figs. 12 and 13; Vincenzo Mancini, Lambert Sustris a Padova: La Villa Bigolin a Selvazzano (Selvazzano Dentro, 1993), 73, 136–137; Bert W. Meijer, "Lambert Sustris in Padua: Fresco's en tekeningen," Oud Holland 107 (1993): five. In improver, the panoramic mural lying beneath the current painting, though visible only through 10-radiography and infrared reflectography at one.v to 1.8 microns [fig. four] [fig. four] Infrared reflectogram, Circumvolve of Jacopo Tintoretto (Probably Lambert Sustris), Christ at the Sea of Galilee, c. 1570s, oil on sail, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection , [20] [xx]
Infrared reflectography was performed using a Santa Barbara Focalplane InSb photographic camera fitted with an H astronomy filter. tin also be linked to Lambert's paintings. Equally in his Paduan frescoes and other works, the compages includes both classicizing and contemporary buildings. Amid them are several that replicate structures in Lambert's paintings—for example, a triple-arched bridge with exact counterparts in his fresco cycles. [21] [21]
See Vincenzo Mancini, Lambert Sustris a Padova: La Villa Bigolin a Selvazzano (Selvazzano Dentro, 1993), figs. 33, 34, and 78. While it is not possible to make judgments about attribution based on the incomplete image of the unfinished portrait painted over the panoramic mural, what can be seen of the portrait through infrared reflectography is generally consistent with both Lambert'south earlier document portraits and the 1591 paintings by "Alberto d'Ollanda," while the x-radiographs reveal that information technology lacks the bold brushwork that Tintoretto typically used to sketch in the structural forms of the head when he began his portraits. [22] [22]
For example, in A Procurator of Saint Mark's, National Gallery of Fine art, Washington, 1952.5.79.

Tintoretto specialists accept remained mostly silent nigh the attribution of the Christ at the Sea of Galilee since it has been linked to Sustris. [23] [23]
Bert W. Meijer, "Flemish and Dutch Artists in Venetian Workshops: The Case of Jacopo Tintoretto," in Renaissance Venice and the North: Crosscurrents in the Fourth dimension of Dürer, Bellini and Titian, ed. Bernard Aikema and Beverly Louise Brown (Milan, 1999), 143, rejected Echols's attribution to Sustris of several other paintings previously assigned to Tintoretto, without caption, while attributing the landscapes in these pictures to northern painters. He did not, however, include Christ at the Sea of Galilee amongst the group that he discussed. Robert Echols 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), 149, no. C90, reaffirmed the Sustris attribution. They placed the movie in their "Circle of Tintoretto" checklist rather than because it a studio piece of work, stating, "Although it is possible that this film was executed [by Sustris] in Tintoretto'southward studio, it is far more distinctive than related works . . . which exemplify the Tintoretto studio 'firm style.' Given its exceptionally high quality and the individuality of its style, an attribution to 'studio of Tintoretto' as an culling to Sustris would not be advisable in this case, and therefore we do not include it with the related works in the studio category." Guillaume Cassegrain, Tintoret (Paris, 2010), 45, cited the painting as an case of the complexities involved in the Tintoretto catalog, arguing that it might represent either an "exercise in way" on the office of Tintoretto, a difference from his usual manner, or the work of a northern painter in Tintoretto'southward studio, such as Sustris. While the attribution to Sustris cannot be confirmed with certainty, the moving picture is surely the piece of work of a painter who fits Sustris's contour: 1 who was agile in Venice in the second one-half of the cinquecento; probably having some association with Tintoretto and certainly aware of his oeuvre and types; familiar with the iconography of northern painting; and painting in a mode that combines mannerist effigy types with the landscape way characteristic of Venetian villa decorations of the 1540s.

Christ'south pose is loosely related to several other paintings from the Tintoretto studio, including two versions of the Raising of Lazarus, datable to 1573 (private drove) and 1576 (Katharinenkirche, Lübeck). [24] [24]
Rodolfo Pallucchini and Paola Rossi, Tintoretto: Le opere sacre e profane (Venice, 1982), 1: cat. nos. 327 and 357; Robert Echols 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), nos. 159 and 172. A Miraculous Draught of Fishes (private collection; offered Christie'southward, New York, May 31, 1991, lot 62) by a Tintoretto follower shows a very similar pose; see Pallucchini and Rossi, Tintoretto: Le opere sacre e profane, 1: cat. no. 197; Echols and Ilchman, "Toward a New Tintoretto Catalogue," no. C79. The Gallery'southward painting tin be tentatively dated to effectually the 1570s on the theory that in that location must be some relationship among the pictures.

The painting represents one of Christ'due south several earthly manifestations following the Resurrection, his advent on the shore of Lake Galilee on the occasion traditionally known as the 2nd "miraculous draught of fishes." As recounted in John 21:1–13, seven apostles had fished all night in a boat on Lake Galilee, without success. At dawn, Christ appeared at the shore and told them to cast their nets to the right side of the boat, where the catch would be plentiful. When Peter recognized Christ, he cast himself into the water to swim to the shore. The subject is more frequent in northern than in Italian painting, and the limerick of the Washington painting, with its panoramic landscape, is characteristically northern in type. [25] [25]
An early prototype appears in Konrad Witz's Saint Peter Altarpiece of 1444 (Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Geneva). Mid-16th-century examples include Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Mural with Christ at the Sea of Galilee (individual collection, England), 1553, and Maerten van Heemskerck, Christ on the Ocean of Tiberias (Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, England), 1567; run into Fritz Grossman, Bruegel: The Paintings, 2nd ed. (London, 1966), ane: pl. ii; and Rainald Grosshans, Maerten van Heemskerck: Die Gemälde (Berlin, 1980), true cat. no. 100, fig. 156. A limerick peculiarly close to that in the Washington painting occurs in the background of a print after Lambert Lombard illustrating the Phenomenon of the Loaves and Fishes, dated 1555; come across Robert Echols, "Tintoretto, Christ at the Sea of Galilee, and the Unknown Later Career of Lambert Sustris," Venezia Cinquecento 6, no. 12 (1996): 126, fig. 16 (detail); and Walter S. Gibson, Mirror of the Earth: The World Landscape in Sixteenth-Century Flemish Painting (Princeton, NJ, 1989), 33, fig. ii.59. The Gallery's picture has sometimes been seen as representing Christ walking on the h2o during a storm, and Peter about to attempt to follow his example, as told in Matthew 14:22–29. [26] [26]
While early ascriptions of this latter field of study to the nowadays painting may have been based on the fact that it appears to show Christ with i foot on the surface of the water, Anna Pallucchini, followed by Pallucchini and Rossi, insisted on the stormy water as the defining element. The subject has been identified every bit Christ walking on the water past Tancred Borenius, "A Seascape past Tintoretto," Apollo 2 (July–Dec 1925): 249; Lionello Venturi, Pitture italiane in America (Milan, 1931), no. 411 ("Christ saving Peter"); Harold Wethey, El Greco and His School (Princeton, NJ, 1962), 1:90 due north. 113; Anna Pallucchini, National Gallery, Washington: Musei del Mondo (Milan, 1968), 5; and Rodolfo Pallucchini and Paola Rossi, Tintoretto: Le opere sacre due east profane (Venice, 1982), ane:178–179, cat. no. 224. Still, the iconography of the painting as a whole makes information technology clear that the bailiwick is indeed the occasion described in John 21: Christ is continuing on the shore, as evidenced past the rocks and vegetation at his feet; in that location are seven apostles on the boat (not twelve as in the scene of Christ walking on the h2o); the apostles are casting the net off the right side of the boat; and the sky suggests that the outcome takes place at sunrise.

In 16th-century Venice, biblical narrative pictures of this size and format were ofttimes hung in the big central halls (portego or sala) of private palaces. [27] [27]
Monika Schmitter, "The Quadro da Portego in Sixteenth-Century Venetian Art," Renaissance Quarterly 64, no. iii (2011): 693–751.

Robert Echols

March 21, 2019

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Source: https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.41637.html

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