Summer

Summer is represented here as Ceres, goddess of agriculture, reclining in front of her attribute, a row of wheat stalks. The work is one of three known paintings from a cycle by Jacopo Tintoretto depicting the personifications of the four Seasons. Spring and Autumn are housed in other collections; there is no trace of Winter. All three of the surviving Seasons feature powerful figures combined with a decorative elegance that is especially prominent in Summer, in the undulating line of stalks of grain silhouetted against the sky, the lacy grape leaves and clustered grapes, and the exquisitely rendered birds.

Tintoretto’s Seasons were created to surround a central ceiling painting in the Casa Barbo a San Pantaleone, in Venice. That painting, the octagonal Allegory of the Dreams of Men (Detroit Institute of Arts), has a complicated network of symbols that, when considered together, comment upon the interaction of human dreams and desires, fortune, and the great cycles governing heaven and earth. The depiction of the Seasons surrounding the central allegory would have complemented the motif of cyclical change.

As in his other youthful works, Tintoretto’s Casa Barbo ensemble demonstrates a clear intent to show off his mastery of the most up-to-date central Italian taste circa 1546–1548. Here, the primary source of inspiration can be identified as the paintings of Giorgio Vasari (Florentine, 1511 - 1574), who had worked in Venice during his stay of 1541–1542.

Credit: Samuel H. Kress Collection