Copy of Tintoretto's Children of Israel Gathering Manna

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.

Working in pen and brown ink and brush and brown wash, with brush and red (chalk?) wash and blue gouache, heightened with white gouache at 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.), Jacopo Tintoretto constructs depth through value contrast rather than outline, letting figures emerge from darkness the way they would under candlelight or through a shuttered window.

Look closely and the painting opens up. Objects you might pass over — a folded letter, a half-drawn curtain, the angle of a glance — were placed to be read. Likeness was only part of the job; the painting also had to argue for the sitter's place in the world.

Housed at Cleveland Museum of Art in Cleveland, the painting has passed through the hands of collectors, dealers, and institutions before reaching public view — a provenance that is itself part of the object's story.

“A silence so complete it becomes its own witness.”