Tintoretto, Jacopo (1518-1594)
Natività (Nativity)
c.1585–1594
Oil on canvas, 111 x 80 cm
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires
The Virgin, reclining on a hay mattress, contemplates the Child Jesus lying on a blue cloth. Saint Joseph, on the right, illuminates them with a torch and directs his gaze towards the right-hand side of the work, from where two women, one of them carrying a basket, observe the Child. An ox and a donkey complete the ensemble. The scene takes place inside a stable, which allows a glimpse of the twilight sky in the background, between the broken timbers.
The Nativity is mentioned briefly in the Bible by Saint Luke, but the unofficial gospels were the most common iconographic sources used by artists from the beginning of the Middle Ages, taking advantage of the large number of details they offer about the birth and childhood of Jesus. The event depicted responds to the story of the apocryphal gospel of Pseudo Matthew: Joseph and pregnant Mary had to move to Bethlehem following the order of the Roman authorities to register in the place of origin; leaving Mary in a cave near Bethlehem, Joseph went in search of two midwives, Salome and Zalomí, who, upon arriving with Mary, found the already born Child. The story indicates that three days later Mary moved to a stable where an ox and a donkey worshipped Jesus, thus fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah: “The ox knew its master and the donkey its master’s manger” (Isaiah 1, 3).
The compact group of people and animals is distributed from the foreground to the background, drawing intricate shapes with their bodies that overlap, generating a surface tension that charges the whole with vigor. Likewise, the loose brushstrokes and the rhythmic distribution of light in the form of flashes on the folded surfaces of the clothes, on the fur of the animals or on the strands of hay give a vibrant energy to the interior scene, which is complemented by the fragmented lighting distributed over the surface of the clouds in the background of the composition.
According to Lionello Venturi, the work belongs to the last ten years of Tintoretto‘s activity, that is, towards the 1580s, when the light effects in his works became increasingly free. The Mannerist tendency to transform light into an abstract factor, far from naturalism, is observed in the configuration of the night sky. This dramatic effect of light contrasts in nocturnal settings can also be seen in a very special way in works from his later period, such as Saint Mary of Egypt in the Desert or Saint Mary Magdalene from the series he painted at the School of San Rocco, Venice, around 1585. Likewise, in the Adoration of the Shepherds, from the same series, the contrast between a warmly lit interior space and a nocturnal exterior that can be seen through the beams that make up the manger, presents affinities with our work.
Little is known about Jacopo Robusti‘s training until 1539, when he was already an active independent painter. Titian was undoubtedly the most prominent figure in Venice at that time, although the young Tintoretto was also exposed to the central Italian variant of Mannerism through artists such as Pordenone (1484-1539) and Lorenzo Lotto (1480-1556). The more than five decades of his artistic activity marked a turning point in his artistic environment of origin. The boundless energy and the violent and expansive movement of his compositions had a great impact on the classical component of Venetian painting, although, as a son of his country, chromatic richness was a key aspect in his works. (Alejo Lo Russo | MNBA)