The Tintoretto Effect: Longhi, Sartre, Bernhard

Abstract

Searching for the core of Tintoretto’s ‘modern’ thinking and for his attractivity, the issue touches two different perspectives on the Venetian painter. Different in genre but not so in content, Sartre’s essays on Tintoretto’s paintings and Bernhard’s novel Ancient Masters look at the new relation between the painter and his public as a fundamental feature in his way of working. The painter’s aspiration after changing the city, its people and the same rules of the art market is not his only way to go beyond the limits. Also useful for this aim is the theme of perception, of looking, that, peculiarly developed by Tintoretto, as Sartre displays, becomes also an interesting aspect in Bernhard’s novel. In the presence of a rather nonfamous portrait by the Venetian painter, The Man with a white Beard, the novel goes beyond and debates on great general artistic questions: originality, masterpiece, tradition and critic.