The Washing of the Feet

Jacopo Robusti Tintoretto

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Jacopo Robusti Tintoretto

Venice (Italy), 1518 - Venice, 1594

The Washing of the Feet

1548 - 1549. Oil on canvas.
Room 025

This scene from the New Testament (John 13, 1-20) shows the moment just before the Last Supper, when Jesus washed Saint Peter´s feet as an example of humility and service to others. The displacement of the main characters, Christ and Saint Peter, to one end of the composition is due to the original location of this work on the right wall of the presbytery of San Marcuola, where the image of Christ washing Saint Peter´s feet was on the part of the canvas closest to the congregation. When seen from the right, the painting is extraordinarily coherent. The dead spaces among the characters disappear and the composition appears ordered along a diagonal that begins with Christ and Saint Peter and continues along the table and the Apostles around it, to end at the Arch behind the canal, which is the work´s true vanishing point. This work is taken from “La Scena Tragica”, an engraving in Sebastiano Serlio´s Secondo libro di prospettiva (Paris, 1545). On the right, the celebration of the Last Supper is taking place in another room. The inclusion of that episode is justified because those are two successive moments in the Bible story, but also as an allusion to the painting hanging across from this one at the presbytery of San Marcuola, which was a Last Supper, also by Tintoretto. This work was acquired by Charles I of England. When he died, it was purchased by Luis de Haro, who gave it to Felipe IV. The King had it hung in the sacristy at El Escorial, where it remained until it entered the Prado Museum in 1936.

Workshop replicas are preserved in the same church of S. Marcuola in Venice, in the Shipley Art Gallery in Gateshead (inv. E3691, 215.5 x 533.3 cm) and in the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto (inv. 58 /51, 154´9 x 407´7 cm)

Museo Nacional del Prado, La almoneda del siglo: relaciones artísticas entre España y Gran Bretaña, 1604-1655, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado, 2002, p.238

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Perspective in "The Washing of the Feet", by Tintoretto

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Weekly sessions in English: "The Abduction of Helen", by Tintoretto (1578-1579)

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"The Washing of the Feet" by Tintoretto

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Inventory number: P002824
Author: Jacopo Robusti Tintoretto
Title: The Washing of the Feet
Date: 1548 - 1549
Technique: Oil
Support: Canvas
Dimension: Height: 210 cm; Width: 533 cm
Provenance: San Marcuola, Venecia; acquired by Ferdinando Gonzaga, VI Duke of Mantua, ca. 1610; colecction of Charles I of England; aquired in the Commonwealth Sale (Charles I´s collection) by Houghton, 1651; acquired by Alonso de Cárdenas, 1654, for the Luis Méndez de Haro collection's, who gives it to Felipe IV. Royal Collection (Salas Capitulares, Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, Madrid, 1656-1936; deposited in the Prado Museum by the Junta de Incautación y Protección del Tesoro Artístico Nacional, 1936; by Decree of 02.03.1943 it was established temporary deposit in the Prado Museum. On permanent loan from Patrimonio Nacional, belonging to the Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial
Entry date: 1936

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