Personification of Fidelity

Displaying the loose, vibrant brushwork characteristic of late sixteenth-century Venetian painting, this is one of a series of allegorical figures of the Virtues by Domenico Tintoretto. To personify Fidelity, the painting shows a woman accompanied by two dogs. A warm sunset sky is aligned with her gaze, above an illuminated forest canopy indicated by a few cursory marks. The painting is unfinished. The dark brown ground, or imprimatura, is visible throughout, as are the figure’s legs, surrounded by an inchoate swirl of fabric and outlined in brisk, lively contours. It is possible that the artist intended to cover this area later, or that the picture was deliberately left unfinished. Such unfinished works were often prized for what they reveal about the physical process of painting. The celebrated nineteenth-century critic John Ruskin, who owned this work, described it as “a mere sketch . . . but a grand thing.”