Le Paradis de Tintoret
Musée du Louvre
Musée du Louvre, Aile Sully, until 8 may 2006.
01.40.20.53.17.
Few artistic events join sometimes
historical stakes. It is the
case of this huge work of Tintoret which took part in a strange graphic
tournament. After a fire which damaged seriously the palate of
the doges, between 1578 and 1588, the Venetian authorities launched a
contest of painters whose stake was important : the Crowning of
the Virgin, also called Paradise, placed at the place the most viewed
of Venice: the platform of the doge in the room of the Council of
the large Ducal palate. This biblical topic was supposed to teach
the paradise on ground, symbolic wish of propaganda for the venetian
republic. Five famous artists took share with the contest :
Veronèse, Tintoret, Francesco Bassano, Palma the young and
Zuccaro. This extraordinary exhibition of the Museum of the
Louvre recalls the event such as it proceeded at the time. It
joins together around the draft of the Paradise of Tintoret preserved
at the Louvre, four other known drafts, a large drawing and several
preparatory studies. Thirty works enable us to visualize, in the
same room, the various studies of Tintoret itself beside the projects
of Véronèse and Bassano, both gaining ex-aequo first
contest. Already old, Véronèse died out before
beginning work. A second contest gave the opportunity to
Tintoret, considered as the greatest Venetian painter alive of the
time, after Véronèse.
