Statement
Marietta
Marietta Robusti (b. 1554-1559) was the daughter of Tintoretto (Jacopo Robusti, b. 1518-1594), a painter of the Venetian school. Marietta was also a painter of the Venetian school during the Renaissance period, and she was also sometimes known as Tintoretta (translation: “dyer girl”). She collaborated in her father’s workshop. Emperor Maximilian (Holy Roman Emperor, b. 1459-1519) and King Phillip II of Spain and other countries (b. 1527-1598) wanted to host Tintoretta as a court painter, but her father refused both proposals. Carlo Ridolfi (b. 1594-1658) stated that she had the same skill as her father while displaying “sentimental femininity, a womanly grace that is strained and resolute”. She died giving birth when she was thirty years old. The only painting that can be attribute to Marietta Robusti is her Self Portrait.
More than six centuries later, in the present work, the Self Portrait of Marietta is distorted in both a mechanical and an organic way. Firstly, the Self Portrait is scanned and then printed. Secondly, the printed image is distorted with organic elements (for example, flowers petals, grass, soil, a pumice stone, and more). Thirdly, the distorted printed image is scanned and printed again. This procedure is repeated ten times. The overarching objective is to present a metaphor of the process of omission and fading away of Marietta’s artistic work through time. The images are presented in the form of a grid consisting of 18 videos. The videos are accompanied by the song “Che si può fare?” (translation: “What can I do?”) of the Italian baroque composer and singer, Barbara Strozzi (b. 1677-1619), who was born more than a century after the death of Marietta Robusti. The song, the present work and the Self Portrait are a fitting combination.
