Tintoretto

Tintoretto painted faster, cheaper and more theatrically than anyone in Venice, and covered more wall than any of them. Born Jacopo Robusti in 1518, the son of a dyer — tintore, hence the name — he stayed in the city almost his entire life.

He won the Scuola Grande di San Rocco commission in 1564 by a trick that Venice never quite forgave: asked to submit a sketch in competition, he installed a finished painting in the ceiling instead and offered it as a gift, which the confraternity could not refuse. He then spent over twenty years filling the building with more than fifty canvases. They are still there, in the rooms they were made for and in the low light they were made for.

His method was built for speed and drama: figures lit from unexpected angles, plunging diagonals, foreshortening pushed past comfort, and small wax models arranged in boxes so he could study extreme viewpoints before painting them. It made him divisive — admirers found him thrilling, critics found him careless.

He is buried in Madonna dell'Orto, his parish church, which also holds two of his largest canvases.