(Venice 1560–1635)
Saint Anthony banishing the devils of temptation,
oil on canvas, 171 x 199.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
sale, Francesco Semenzato & C. Sas, Venice, 8 December 1982, lot 639 (as Domenico Tintoretto, with wrong measurements);
Private European collection;
sale, Wannenes, Genoa, 29 November 2022, lot 307 (as Domenico Tintoretto);
where acquired by the present owner

Literature:
P. Rossi, Per il catalogo di Domenico e Jacopo Tintoretto: novità e precisioni, in: Arte veneta, vol. 55, 1999, p. 34, 36, fig. 9 (as Domenico Tintoretto);
P. Rossi, Disegni della bottega di Jacopo Tintoetto, in: Arte veneta, vol. 68, 2012, mentioned p. 58, note 8 (as Domenico Tintoretto)

The present painting relates to a drawing by Domenico Tintoretto in the British Museum, London (inv. no. 1907,0717.74).

We are grateful to Giorgio Fossaluzza for his help in cataloguing the present lot.

A similar painting by Domenico Tintoretto, of the same dimensions, also representing the temptations of Saint Anthony Abbot was sold at Dorotheum, 10 November 2021, lot 41.

This work demonstrates the inventiveness and pictorial quality of Domenico Tintoretto’s advanced style of painting following the death of his father, Jacopo Tintoretto (Venice 1518–1594). It can be compared to a sizeable group of disegni pennellati (oil and brush works on paper) in the artist’s so-called ‘British Museum album’, in which he revisits the same subject as in the present painting. The album consists of twenty drawings in which Saint Anthony is shown tempted by female figures, while another thirteen depict the saint’s temptation by monstrous creatures (see S. Mason, in: Dal Pordenone a Palma il Giovane: devozione e pietà nel disegno del Cinquecento, Milan 2000, pp. 178–179; W. R. Rearick, Il disegno veneziano del Cinquecento, Milan 2001, pp. 206–207, 236, no. 345).

The artist repeatedly explored this theme throughout his career, experimenting with the subject and composition. Indeed, the subject evidently preoccupied him to such an extent that no other theme within the entirety of his vast corpus was studied by him with equivalent intensity. The rendering of the subject verges on a brusque realism which inclines toward the ugly, almost in a deliberate refusal of beauty, and through this, the erotic passages emerge in a series of dynamic of contrasts (see W. R. Rearick, ibid., 2001, pp. 203–207).

Giorgio Fossaluzza has suggested dating the present work to the beginning of the 1600s, the period during which the artist repeatedly dedicated himself to the subject of the temptation of Saint Anthony (see C. Ridolfi, Le maraviglie dell’arte, vol. II, Venice 1648, p. 259).