MADRID, SPAIN.- This January, the Museo del Prado will be presenting the most important exhibition on the artist since the one held in the Palazzo Pesaro in Venice in 1937: TINTORETTO, on view 30 January – 13 May 2007. The exhibition Tintoretto –sponsored by the Consejería de Cultura de la Comunidad de Madrid- will include around 70 works by the artist loaned from the collections of leading European and American museums and institutions. The exhibition is the first monographic one to be devoted to the artist in Spain as well as the first exhibition on Tintoretto of this size and importance since the one held in Venice seventy years ago. The Prado’s intention is to offer a rigorous and comprehensive survey of the artist’s long career and is itself the fruit of a lengthy and exhaustive research project which will be reflected in the accompanying catalogue.

On 29 January 2007 King Don Juan Carlos and the President of the Italian Republic will preside over the opening of this major exhibition which will offer the public the first opportunity to discover the work of Tintoretto on this scale outside the city of Venice.

Despite being one of the greatest names in the history of painting, Jacopo Tintoretto has been the subject of scant attention on the part of museums and institutions. The limited number of exhibitions devoted to the artist can partly be explained by logistical reasons, given that many of his masterpieces are large-format canvases and are still to be found in Venice in the original buildings for which they were painted. In addition, there are also attributional reasons related to his extremely extensive output, which is often confused with that of his followers and imitators. These reasons have resulted in museological neglect, and since 1937 Tintoretto has only been the subject of exhibitions focusing on specific aspects of his work.

The Museo del Prado has aimed to compensate for this neglect, following an arduous process of research which has involved experts from the US, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Austria and Spain, who have also worked together on the rigorous selection of works for the exhibition.

The exhibition - Featuring a selection of 49 paintings, 13 drawings and 3 sculptures, the exhibition will reveal the variety of registers in which Tintoretto worked and his interest in all the major artistic genres. In particular, it will focus on his facet as a painter of religious narratives, the field in which he produced his most renowned compositions. The exhibition will provide the first chance in 400 years to see together two of his masterpieces of religious art, painted for the church of San Marcuola: The Last Supper (church of San Marcuola, Venice), and Christ washing the Disciples’ Feet (Museo del Prado, Madrid). It will also bring together some of his most important mythological paintings (such as Venus, Vulcan and Mars, Munich, Alte Pinakothek, and The Origins of the Milky Way, London, National Gallery), as well as examples of his work as a portraitist, including the self-portraits from the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia) and the Musée du Louvre (Paris), and the Portrait of Lorenzo Soranzo from the Kunsthistorisches Museum (Vienna).

The exhibition will pay particular attention to the artist’s creative process, placing great emphasis on the concept of “disegno” in the sense of a tool of learning, experimentation and composition, as well as on technical issues, the latter included as an integral part of the exhibition. Drawing was exceptionally important to the artist, and the exhibition features a group of works on paper. These fall into three types: drawings of classical sculptures and sculptures by Michelangelo, drawn from small models which will be displayed alongside these studies; preparatory studies for entire compositions, of which the only surviving one, for Venus and Vulcan (Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin) will be displayed; and preparatory studies of individual figures, often reused by Tintoretto for various different works.

The criterion for the selection of works in the exhibition has been that of quality. Tintoretto was a prolific artist as well as an irregular one; consequently, enormous care has been taken with regard to the present selection. The first sacrifice in this respect relates to the Museo del Prado itself, some of whose works attributed to Tintoretto have been excluded from the exhibition as they lack the required quality. This does not imply that all the works in the exhibition are entirely by his own hand. The notion of authorship in the 16th century was different to the one held today and artists’ workshops relied on assistants and collaborators. In some of the paintings on display, particularly the late ones, the involvement of assistants is evident. This is the case with The Burial of Christ (church of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice), but it does not imply a reduction in quality or a diminution of Tintoretto’s unmistakable artistic style and personality.

The catalogue - The exhibition’s catalogue, whose editorial director is Miguel Falomir, will be published in Spanish and English and includes contributions by the leading international experts on the artist. The rigour and comprehensiveness of this publication will make it a reference point for future studies on Tintoretto.

The catalogue includes three texts by Miguel Falomir: an introduction to the exhibition, a text on the relation between Tintoretto and Spain, and a third text on his activities as a portraitist. It also includes a chronology by Linda Borean, researcher at the University of Udine, and the following essays on the artist: “Tintoretto the Painter” by the art historian Robert Echols; “Tintoretto and the Sister Arts” by Roland Krischel, curator at the Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne; a text on the artist’s technique by Jill Dunkerton of the Conservation Department at the National Gallery, London; and an essay by Frederick Ilchmann, Assistant Curator of painting at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, on Tintoretto’s religious paintings.

The entries on the works and the introductions to each section have been written by Miguel Falomir, Robert Echols and Frederick Ilchmann.

International Conference - To coincide with the exhibition, the Museo del Prado will be holding an international conference on Tintoretto on 26 and 27 February which will count on the presence of leading experts in 16th-century Venetian painting.