Marietta Robusti was an Italian painter of the Renaissance period.
Background
Marietta Robusti was born around 1560 in Venice, Italy. She was the daughter of the Venetian painter Tintoretto (Jacopo Robusti). Considered the favorite of his seven children, she was his eldest daughter and often called "la Tintoretta" (translated as "little dyer girl", after Jacopo’s father’s occupation as a tintore, or dyer). She had three brothers and four sisters.
Education
Robusti's artistic training consisted of serving an apprenticeship in the collaborative environment of her father’s workshop, where she probably contributed to her father’s paintings with backgrounds and figure blocking.
Career
Robusti worked in her father's workshop. Especially renowned for her portraits of aristocratic Venetians, she painted in the same flamboyant style that characterized her father's work. As her talents were a close match to his, it has proved consistently difficult for experts to distinguish their hands.
Marietta's portraiture received acceptance and fame by the 1580s. Although both Holy Roman Emperor Maximillian II and King Philip II of Spain invited Robusti to be a painter in their courts, her father, reluctant to part with her, urged her not to accept the invitations.
She died most likely in childbirth, four years after her marriage, in 1590, and was buried in Santa Maria del’Orto in Venice, Italy.
Marietta Robusti was married to Mario Augusta, a Venetian jeweler and silversmith, who agreed to live in the family home, because her father could not be parted from her.