The Entombment, after Jacopo Tintoretto

This plate reproduces the lower part of an altarpiece, now in the National Gallery of Scotland, that Tintoretto created for the church of San Francesco della Vigna in Venice. It comes from a collection of etchings after important sixteenth-century Venetian paintings. Apart from this series, Scacciati’s activity is poorly documented and little known. Nonetheless, his use of aquatint is remarkable for the very early date—the technique had been invented in France just a few years earlier—and for the fluency with which it is employed to suggest painterly effects.