Terribilis ingenio

Tintoretto’s Heresy in the Sacred Space of the Last Supper

Abstract

The essay delves into the representation of the Last Supper in an era, the Mannerist era, in which artistic freedom on one of the most powerful themes of the collective imagination had to undergo the heavy control of the religious authorities in the name of the clarity and decorum of the sacred scriptures. Regional treaties and prescriptions were in agreement in condemning and repressing the passionate and expressive spirit before the Council of Trent that sanctioned the start of the Counter-Reformation and, thus, the permissibility of the use of images in the religious field. The well-known Vincentian example, respecting Alberti's indications on spatial composition, on the proportional relationships between the compositional elements of the scene, on the social level of the characters, did not stop Tintoretto's fervid imagination from distorting not only the representation of the institution of the Eucharistic sacrament but also the context in which the narrative is set. Unlike Veronese, who was forced to undergo a trial by the Inquisition for not respecting the iconographic norms established by the Tridentine Council, Tintoretto tenaciously defended his work and his freedom of thought without accepting compromises due to pressing religious censure. By comparing some of Jacopo Robusti's Last Suppers and turning our gaze both to the singular temporal moments depicted and, above all, to the painted architecture, we realise, through 2D analysis and 3D reconstructions, how Robusti destabilises the viewer's gaze by placing his characters in inappropriate places and yet evading the intransigent officials of the dreaded Catholic controlling body. It is a representational heresy capable of reconfiguring the sacred space of the Last Supper by going beyond the rules commonly accepted or imposed by the Church through the introduction of daring perspective views in which democratisation of holy space is implemented, unlike Caliari.