Double portrait du Tintoret et du Titien

ATTRIBUÉ À DOMENICO ROBUSTI DIT DOMENICO TINTORETTO (1560-1635)
Double portrait du Tintoret et du Titien
huile sur toile, agrandie le long du bord droit
53,3 x 66,2 cm (21 x 26 in.)

Vente anonyme, Subastas de Arte y Antigüedades, Barcelone, 14 mars 1979, lot 282 (comme 'Homenaje a Tiziano').
Collection particulière espagnole.

ATTRIBUTED TO DOMENICO ROBUSTI CALLED DOMENICO TINTORETTO (1560-1635), DOUBLE PORTRAIT OF TINTORETTO AND TITIAN, OIL ON CANVAS

This double portrait attributed to Domenico Tintoretto (1560-1635) pays tribute to his father, Tintoretto (1518-1594), and Titian (1488-1576), the two great Venetian masters of the previous generation.

With its lively brushstrokes and the white highlights so distinctive of the work of both father and son, Jacopo Tintoretto's portrait seems to have been painted from life. No other version of this portrait is known. Tintoretto's gaze is focused on the observer and, by extension, on his son, the artist, establishing him as a worthy heir to his father.

For the portrait of Titian, Domenico, who would have been too young to know the Venetian master well, chose to use his self-portrait, executed around 1546, which remained in the collection of his son Pomponio Vecellio (1523-1594) after his father's death (now in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, inv. no. 163). In this version, The young Tintoretto did not include the chain of the Order of the Golden Spur, bestowed on the artist by Emperor Charles V (1500-1558) in 1533, which Titian wears in the original version.

Many versions of Titian's self-portrait do not show the chain of the order or the pale pink shirt he wears in the original. A significant example preserved in the Royal Collection, in the King's bedroom at Windsor Castle (inv. no. RCIN 402841), places the older artist behind his friend Andrea de Franceschi (died 1551) and a third unknown man. It is interesting to note that the canvas in the present painting has been enlarged along the right-hand edge, so that the composition would originally have been more square. This raises the question of whether the artist might have considered adding a third person, as in the Windsor painting.