Tintoretto's Suppers (Extra Assignment)
Finding the Tintoretto Last Suppers throughout Venice forced us to explore more of the city. It was interesting to me because I had already passed by three of the five churches with Tintoretto’s suppers just walking around the city. For San Polo and San Stefano in particular, not only did I pass them on my way back from the wine shop the day prior, but we got to San Stafano too early, then we got to San Polo too early and went back to San Stefano. This looping made me very familiar with the area and I knew exactly which streets to take, and even heading back to Academia after the scavenger hunt, we saw that we passed San Trovaso, but on the other side that we went in. I even recognized the restaurant that we would do our last supper at. I was also happy to enter San Giorgio, as I wanted to go there anyways, and San Rocco had many other fantastic pieces of art to see beyond the Last Supper. It is sad that we missed one of the Last Suppers, but the San Marcuola church was quite confusing to find when it was open.
There was little need to interact with locals on our
adventures, so there’s not much to write with that. We sometimes had to talk to
a guy selling tickets, but this was our extent of social interaction. In order
to find the right paintings, we did need to do some consultation, but only with
the internet. The only time that it was not obvious which painting was right
was in San Trovaso, where there are two Last Suppers, but only one by
Tintoretto. The church was empty, so it felt nice to have the internet to
confirm the right painting. We did have some interaction with locals when
getting food (I found out at breakfast that “noci” doesn’t always mean all
treenuts as the lady told me the pistachio croissant had “no noci”) and when I
swung by the music museum (I had a whole conversation about the performance the
night prior and the music playing on the loudspeakers with the lady manning the
front), and while these experiences were not directly a part of the scavenger
hunt, they were part of the experience of navigating Venice.
I will now shift to looking at the art pieces themselves. We
ended up seeing San Trovaso (1566), San Stefano(1570), San Polo (1574), San
Rocco (1578-81), and San Giorgio (1592-94). San Trovaso had a fairly simplistic
visualization of the Last Supper, with only Jesus and the 12 apostles present.
Unlike Leonardo’s Last Supper, this painting doesn’t have all of the figures on
one side and does have them seated around a table. He has also begun to play
with light in this art, with Jesus bathed in the light from outside and two
white heavenly figures behind him, while what I assume is Judas is shaded
almost completely in black, signaling him out as the dark betrayer. San Stefano
was much more subtle in its lighting. It also added additional figures and a
dog and much of the picture is just black as the entire painting is very dark,
although everyone has a halo. San Polo is very different because it adds
movement. Jesus is now standing to separate his quarreling apostles, and
everyone is moving to avoid the fight. There is now a child in the painting and
the painting is brightened by having the outside in view once again.
Perspective is clear with a tiled floor. Only Jesus has a halo now. San Rocco
sees the addition of the dog and adds halos back to the apostles, but Jesus has
an especially large halo. More people now surround the cupper and the dog is
back. He seems to like this tile floor and keeps it here. His final painting of
the Last Supper and his most famous is in San Giorgio. Here, he plays with
light the most, adding several sources but mostly focusing on a lamp on the
left side of the painting. The tiles are gone, but there is now a whole crowd
at the dinner. At least eight additional guests are on the painting, including
a woman washing dishes. This painting causes your eye to move around (the
others did as well, but this one did it best) starting with the bright area by
Jesus and circling left towards the lamp and past the apostles, ending in the
dark area with the nameless commoners. The apostles are now on one side of the
table, which works for movement, but breaks the realism. Tintoretto became
obsessed with perfecting this painting and constantly changed how to approach
it. He started playing very heavily into the idea of lights and darks but
became more subtle with that over time and played more with movement. He wants
our eyes to wander the painting. He was clearly indecisive about some ideas,
like whether to make perspective obvious and whether to include a dog in his
paintings. He also gave up on realism a little in the end in order to have
better movement by placing the apostles all on one side of the table. I found
his obsession with the Last Supper interesting and it was useful to see his
development as an artist over time and how he learned to be more subtle and how
to better use movement.
San Giorgio
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