Tintoretto at His Daughter's Deathbed 1843 - 1877

Achille Martinet created this print, "Tintoretto at His Daughter's Deathbed," in France, sometime in the mid-19th century. It depicts the famous Venetian painter Tintoretto grieving over his daughter's corpse, palette and brushes in hand. The image speaks to 19th-century Romanticism's fascination with intense emotion and the figure of the suffering artist. But there's also an institutional story here: printmaking allowed for the wide dissemination of artworks and ideas, shaping public perceptions of artists like Tintoretto. The print is based on an original painting made in 1846 by the French artist Leon Cogniet. Cogniet was awarded the "Prix de Rome" in 1817, an extremely prestigious scholarship for French art students. To fully understand this print, we can turn to archival sources, exhibition records, and biographies of the artists involved. These resources help us understand the social and institutional forces that shaped both the creation and reception of this image. Art is never made in a vacuum, and its meaning is always shaped by its context.