Tintoretta, Marietta Robusti

Daughter and follower of Jacopo Robusti Tintoretto, she was known in her time as "buona ritrattista" ("a good portrait painter"), both in Venice and abroad. As with her brother Marco, there is no clear starting point from which to reconstruct her life and artistic activity. There are two drawings by her hand in the Rasini Collection (Milan), and she is also considered responsible for a woman’s portrait at the Galleria degli Uffizi (Florence), as well as one in the Contini collection (Florence) and another at the Museo del Prado ("Venetian Lady", P400). The Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna has a probable self-portrait (n. 245) as well as a "Portrait of an Old Woman with a youth" (n. 37) whose stylistic traits are related to the scarce artistic production attributed to her. Marietta is though to have worked with her father on works such as "The Miracle of Saint Ines" at the church of the Madonna del’Orto in Venice, which contains the same type of heads that appear in two representations of the Virgin now at museums in Cleveland and Detroit, respectively. Her hand is also recognizable in two other works attributed to Tintoretto: a "Baptism" (Murano) and the "Virgin in Glory with Two Saints and Two Dukes" (Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice) (Dizionario enciclopedico dei pittori e degli incisori italiani. Dall'XI al XX secolo, 1972-1983, vol XI, p. 82).