Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese: Rivals in Renaissance Venice

Holy nights

In the latter half of the sixteenth century, with the new religious sensibility born of the Counter-Reformation, night scenes relating to the life and Passion of Christ became common. In the wake of Titian, new-generation artists such as Tintoretto or Bassano would make night scenes into a kind of trademark of Venetian painting.
Titian’s first real nocturne was the Saint Jerome in the Musée du Louvre. While he himself appeared to regret the incomplete nature of his work, he embarked upon a new technique of the dissolution of matter through light using broad brushstrokes in an ever-increasing naturalistic pursuit. Until the end of his life he would continue to explore the disintegration of matter in light, particularly in night settings. The finest artists of the following generation were to take over and revise this tragic effect of light and color.
From the outset, Tintoretto’s night scenes were imbued with supernatural lighting and colors distorted by bold contrasts of light. Throughout his long career, he would resort to lively effects of lighting, adding a sense of drama to his breathtaking compositions.
With his penchant for bright hues and crystal-clear luminosity, Veronese would not allow his style to be influenced by Titian’s experimentations with light until after the latter’s death. His nighttime settings then took on a denseness that reflected the dramatic tension; his technique became more fragmented, with stronger and more expressive contrasts.
Jacopo Bassano was a direct heir to Titian’s experimentations with light in the relationship of light and matter in night scenes that were gradually to take on a harrowing sense of drama. Forms carved from color and lashed with light would spring out of the darkness, conveying a distressing sense of anguish.
More than anyone else, Venetian painters worked on representing the paradox of Christ’s resurrection—not only did Christ rise, but he was dead for three days. The issue was therefore not to paint him as if he were alive but to attempt to express this passage via death.
By plunging certain daylight scenes—such as the Annunciation, Christ Crowned with Thorns, or the martyrdom of saints—into an artificial half-light, artists would emphasize the tragic nature of the representation. Night combines with day, and death with life. Emotion is not conveyed through iconography alone; the colors themselves are imbued with expressiveness and pathos. The artists create a whole interplay of hues that are absorbed by dark shades as if dragged down by death. The scene’s orchestration, colors, and chiaroscuro interplays are all geared to casting the viewer into a harrowing state of contemplation.