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Marietta Robusti

Also known as Marietta Tintoretto or la Tintoretta.

Self portrait by Marietta Robusti, in the Uffizi

Marietta Robusti (1560? – 1590) Tintoretto’s talented and beloved daughter, learned to paint in her father's studio along with her brother Domenico. Back at a time when respectable Venetian women were expected to stay at home, she used to dress as a boy so she could accompany her father on his various commissions. Her other great passion was music.

She specialized as a portraitist, and although both the Emperor Maximilian and King Philip II of Spain offered her a position as court painter, her father refused to let her go because he would miss her too much. When she was 18, her father arranged her marriage to a Venetian jeweller, so she would remain in the city.

She continued painting portraits and small paintings, of which only an handful in museums have been attributed to her; the best known one is a self-portrait playing the harpsichord in the Uffizi in Florence, believed to have been painted for her husband. She died of unknown causes and was buried in Madonna dell' Orto.

High Renaissance

Artists

Text © Dana Facaros & Michael Pauls

Image by PD Art