The Story
Copy of Tintoretto's Children of Israel Gathering Manna, after 1594. Copy after Jacopo Tintoretto (Italian, 1518–1594). Pen and brown ink and brush and brown wash, with brush and red (chalk?) wash and blue gouache, heightened with white gouache; sheet: 31.6 x 44.2 cm (12 7/16 x 17 3/8 in.); secondary support: 33.5 x 47.1 cm (13 3/16 x 18 9/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Dudley P. Allen Fund, 1929.534
Created in 1594 during the Late Renaissance/Mannerism period, this work belongs firmly within the portrait tradition. Jacopo Tintoretto worked at a moment when the rivalry between Catholic Baroque drama and Protestant restraint reshaped what a painting could mean. Every gesture, fabric, and gleam of light was decoded by contemporary viewers like a private language.
Executed in pen and brown ink and brush and brown wash, with brush and red (chalk?) wash and blue gouache, heightened with white gouache, measuring Sheet: 31.6 x 44.2 cm (12 7/16 x 17 3/8 in.); Secondary Support: 33.5 x 47.1 cm (13 3/16 x 18 9/16 in.), the surface rewards close looking. Jacopo Tintoretto builds the composition through layered glazes and a tightly controlled palette, letting cool shadows recede so that the warm, lit passages step forward. The brushwork shifts from the precise to the almost dissolved — a hallmark of mature Baroque practice.
“A silence so complete it becomes its own witness.”
