CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/24/2019

Celebrating Tintoretto through the eyes of John Ruskin

In celebration of the 500th anniversary of the birth of Venetian Renaissance master Jacopo Tintoretto, the National Gallery in Washington D.C. opens a major—and extremely rare—Tintoretto exhibition today, after a government-shutdown related delay. We're celebrating too, with several new books from new D.A.P. publisher Marsilio, including Tintoretto in Venice: A Guide, Tintoretto and Architecture (forthcoming in May), Art, Faith and Medicine in Tintoretto's Venice and Looking at Tintoretto with John Ruskin, an illustrated collection of the Victorian critic's writings on the artist. (This year happens to mark the 200th anniversary of Ruskin's birth as well.) Of "Visitation," pictured here, Ruskin writes, "A small picture, painted in his very best manner; exquisite in its simplicity, unrivaled in vigour, well preserved, and, as a piece of painting, certainly one of the most precious in Venice. Of course, it does not show any of his high inventive powers: nor can a picture of four middle-sized figures be made a proper subject of comparison with large canvases containing forty or fifty; but it is, for this very reason, painted with such perfect ease, and yet with no slackness either of affection or power, that there is no picture that I covet so much."