"Essence and repetition in Tintoretto's 'The Washing of the Feet'" by Dan Jemmett
Conference "From the church to the market: Essence and repetition in Tintoretto's 'The Washing of the Feet'" given by Dan Jemmett (Director and playwright) on the 7th June 2025, as part of the conference series "Poets at the Prado VI. What could happen"."From the church to the market: Essence and repetition in Tintoretto's 'The Washing of the Feet'"
I find it interesting to look at Tintoretto's painting The Lavatory and, in particular, how it relates to issues in my own work on scenic design, spatial organization, and the notion of repeated functions. Western art has long had a fascinating relationship with innovations in architectural practice. Vitruvius's Ten Books of Architecture exerted a major influence on the construction of early Elizabethan theaters, Palladio was crucial to the development of Inigo Jones's theatrical vision, and Tintoretto's The Lavatorium was inspired by Sebastiano Serlio's book on scenic design perspective. There are four centuries of distance between Serlio's theatrical designs and Peter Brook's Empty Space, but even so, the eternally pondering question of representation (what are we looking at? Exactly where are the actors representing?) forms the starting point for every new theatrical production.
It is fascinating that, in Tintoretto's large canvas, the scene of Christ washing the feet takes place on the front right and that the perspective of the painting only really makes sense when viewed from this angle. Indeed, the painting was hung to the right of the altar in the church of San Marcuola in Venice, provoking in the parishioners (the public?) a spatial awareness, not only of the painting but also of the architecture of the church itself. Could Tintoretto's painting be an early example of theater in situ? What does it mean to take the painting out of its original ritual context and present it in a museum?
Antonin Artaud spoke about the power of the event, the singular spectacle that would leave a unique and indelible mark in the minds of those who might witness it. Was Artaud right? Is it possible to claim an essential, original artistic gesture in theater, whose repetition is nothing more than a cultural sublimation (hence a repression) of that primary impulse? Was there ever a moment in painting and theater before the representation (in French, performance) in which the show and the shown were the same thing? And again, thinking of Tintoretto's painting, could a reflection on pictorial art and the sacred space of the church of San Marcuola in Venice contain the answer to such a question?
"Poets at the Prado VI. What could happen"
According to Aristotle, the difference between a historian and a dramatic poet is the following: one tells what has happened and the other what could happen. There are historian painters and dramatic painters: painters who tell what has happened and others, what could happen. Let's look at two of the versions of Susannah and the Elders that are kept in the Prado Museum: Tintoretto would be a historian painter and Guercino a dramatic painter? Drama is very similar to classical painting. There is a space that is framed. In that space inhabit characters who, always in the present before our eyes, are in action. Even posing is an action. If the characters act according to the given circumstances, a conflict can well be represented in the paintings. Painting is very much like classical drama and is therefore, in a way, a living record of the theatrical imagination. In dramatic poetry, again according to Aristotle, one thing can happen after another, but it is more interesting if one thing happens because of another. It is always interesting to see what has happened, but even more so to be able to represent what might happen.
To give two other examples: we theatricals are interested in the tension of that dog that can awaken Adonis from the dream of Love in Veronese's painting; or the gaze fixed on the two gendarmes of the child before the dead body of his father in José Uría's After the Strike.
In this cycle, the Poets at the Prado are dramatic: action, gesture, light, space and music. They seek to represent the language of life not because they have to imitate what has happened, but because they like to interpret what could happen.
Poets at the Prado VI. What could happen – March 1, April 5, May 10, June 7, and July 5, 2025
https://youtu.be/AT6_oRkUqO0 (SPA)
https://youtu.be/tOJ3Fxp-PSk (SPA)
https://youtu.be/-EaGCM5vPxk (SPA)
https://youtu.be/kq6SnsTQDHo (SPA) – https://youtu.be/hU0cq21jM1s (ENG)
More information: https://www.museodelprado.es/recurso/poetas-en-el-prado-vi-lo-que-podria-suceder/1aece35f-4e22-4874-953c-3a5557656e98 Receive SMS online on sms24.me
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