Travel: A painterly city: Dalya Alberge has a perfect excuse to revisit Venice: Tintoretto's 400th anniversary (CORRECTED)

CORRECTION (PUBLISHED 17 APRIL 1994) INCORPORATED INTO THIS ARTICLE

YOU NEVER need an excuse to go to Venice, but this year there is an added incentive. The city of islands is celebrating the 400th anniversary of one of its great sons, Jacopo Robusti, better known as Tintoretto, one of the greatest painters of the second half of the 16th century - a dramatist in paint.

Although the list of Old Masters associated with Venice is impressive - Bellini, Titian, Veronese, Tiepolo, Canaletto, Guardi, among others - few great artists' lives have been so closely interwoven with this city as Tintoretto's. The son of a cloth-dyer - from whom he got his nickname (Tintoretto means 'little dyer') - he rarely if ever left Venice: on the one known occasion, a trip to Mantua, he could not wait to get back. In a way, he has never left it: unlike most artists, whose output was largely exported around the world, more than half his works always remained there. Venice is the place to see Tintoretto, especially this anniversary year, with its added attraction of special exhibitions, some showing works that are rarely accessible.

The most powerful magnet is the superlative collection of Tintoretto paintings in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, which Ruskin called one of Italy's three most precious buildings. Once the home of a charitable brotherhood founded in 1478 for helping the sick, the Scuola and its paintings have been specially restored for the celebrations. The Biblioteca Marciana, too, has been renovated; at this 16th-century library, normally closed to the public, you can meet Tintoretto's philosophers, so powerful that they seem to be stepping out of their canvases.

For the dyed-in-the-wool Tintorettoist, there is a pilgrimage guide-map, indicating the main places showing his works. But, like most visitors, I first headed for the Piazza San Marco - 'the most beautiful drawing-room in Europe', as Napoleon called it. It was a few minutes' stroll from my hotel, but then everything in Venice is only a short walk away. So many hotels seem to boast a palazzo facade that looks out over the Grand Canal to the church of Santa Maria della Salute, a landmark that seemingly figures like a Venetian signature on every painting.

Although Venice's season lasts all year - several hotels were full in mid-March - tourists do not outnumber Venetians until summer (at least by day; at night many locals slip away on commuter boats to dormitory towns, leaving a mere 78,000 in the city). Wise tourists should therefore choose spring. The narrow streets may occasionally be swamped by rising water, but the duckboards are always prepared, and that is preferable to being swamped by other visitors. And for hardy northern Europeans, the days are warm enough to sit out.

Walking across the immense piazza, you get that buzz of seeing, with an uninterrupted view, the Doges' Palace and Basilica of San Marco for the first time - and you remember seeing them a hundred different times before by so many artists, from Bellini to Canaletto. The basilica is the most exotic of Europe's cathedrals, an extraordinary mix of architecture (Byzantine, Gothic, Islamic, Renaissance). In the almost windowless interior, the kaleidoscope of mosaics and tesserae glisten, and images emerge only once your eyes are accustomed to the dark.

In the Doges' Palace, where the city's rulers lived and governed, I found my first Tintorettos. Among them is his famous Paradise which, at 72ft by 23ft, is said to be the world's largest painting: it is peopled with some 500 figures, great waves of them seemingly being tossed frenziedly around the canvas. Not my idea of a good rest in Paradise, but undeniably a magnificent painting. The room where it hangs is both a work of art and a feat of engineering in that the massive 172ft by 82ft space was constructed, as early as 500 years ago, without any central pillars.

This palazzo was the ultimate status symbol: the vulgarly ornate gold ceiling in one of the council chambers spoke volumes about the city's trading wealth; and the gigantic figures of Mars and Neptune, dominating Sansovino's 1560s monumental Staircase of the Giants where the doges were crowned, symbolised Venice's power on land and sea. But within its marvellous geometric marble facade there are also unpleasant reminders - dungeons, the two red-stained pillars in the beautiful inner courtyard where people were sentenced, and the infamous Bridge of Sighs, along which prisoners were taken to their place of execution.

In search of more Tintorettos, with map in hand, I strolled the meandering back-street rios and calles, and up and down the hump- backed bridges, listening to water gently lapping against the buildings - and gently rotting them away. At times I took it easy in the water-buses that ply the Grand Canal, docking at stops as quickly as buses on land. Considering how regular and cheap they are, a local demo about their 'poor service' surprised me. Wandering round, I realised that the city cannot have changed much since Tintoretto's day. He would have recognised many palazzos (there are some 900 of them, most dating from the 13th to 16th centuries), but he would have been shocked at their dire need of restoration. Yet, however much they are crumbling and cracking, their beauty lingers.

Tintoretto would also have felt at home in the churches. Ask any Venetian passer-by and they will direct you. They are likely to wax lyrical about a Tintoretto or a Titian in the church you ask for, recommending paintings that must be seen, making that distinctive Italian circle with their forefinger and thumb that encompasses an attractive girl, a delicious dish, or a beautiful canvas. Tintoretto would also have recognised the Rialto Bridge, which was built during his lifetime, though he would have been surprised that so few gondolas sail under it today: in the 16th century, there were 10,000 of them. Today, just 500 (and for tourists only), though lots of transport motor boats, loaded with goods, dart about.

Tintoretto was born in Venice in 1518. As a child, he used to draw on walls with some of his father's dyes. Later, he was apprenticed to Titian - but not for long. According to a contemporary account, such was Titian's raging jealousy of the young talent that, within days, he 'ordered . . . Jacopo from the house as soon as possible'. Pusillanimously, Titian got one of his apprentices to do his dirty work. Titian never concealed his dislike of Tintoretto; ironically, in several of the churches or galleries where there's a Titian, a Tintoretto is watching him, never far away.

Yet despite the rejection, Tintoretto continued to revere Titian. His guiding principle was the pursuit of 'Michelangelo's design and Titian's colour'. On the Rialto, I remembered that near there, Tintoretto first exhibited one of his narrative paintings: Titian apparently hurried to see it and was unable to hold back his praises though the old rancour towards his former pupil still remained.

Titian had reason to worry. Until Tintoretto's appearance, the master always topped the list for important commissions. But Tintoretto was ambitious - no job was too lowly for him. He painted a fresco for a house on the Angelo bridge for the cost of the paints alone. Inevitably, he started getting better paid work. Near the Rialto, I found some of it, in an exhibition of Tintoretto's sacred commissions, at the Church of San Bartolomeo. There was one of his many images of The Last Supper, exuding movement and theatricality, which I later compared with another, highly naturalistic painting of that subject in the Church of San Stefano.

Although Tintoretto was eventually admired by Europe's princes, he had to use every trick in the book to beat off competition from masters such as Titian or Veronese. To get commissions, he often even waived his fee. But cut-throat price-cutting always upsets the opposition and he was hated for it. Tintoretto seems to have ignored this, driven on by some inner force.

Considering that this man lived and breathed art, it is perhaps not surprising that he was so prolific. He did little else: even when not painting, Tintoretto was usually found in his studio. A house, along a narrow canal - right next to the Ponte dei Mori - was Tintoretto's home for 20 years: it still stands, still beautiful, despite the badly peeling, earth-coloured walls. Today it is a private house which cannot be visited; still, for those who like to exercise a little romantic imagination, it's worth seeing the outside, to visualise Tintoretto standing on the first-floor balcony or working behind one of its shuttered windows.

The house is near the Church of the Madonna Dell'Orto, which boasts one of the city's finest Gothic facades and was one of the many beneficiaries of Tintoretto's 'generosity'. When discussing the possibility of two pictures for the chancel, 50ft high, the prior told Tintoretto that a year's revenue would not pay for such an ambitious commission: Tintoretto asked only for expenses and the prior quickly took him up on the offer.

Today, these pictures - which include his famous Adoration of the Golden Calf - are so poorly lit that at times you can barely see them: when you drop a coin in an automat, the spotlight which should light up the painting for you (no sooner on, it seems, than off) actually dazzles you. But near the side chapel in which Tintoretto is buried is The Presentation of the Virgin at the Temple, which perfectly reflects Tintoretto's masterly play with perspective and light. It was in this church, with its restful, pinkish-brick interior, that Tintoretto spent much time in pious meditation, often talking to the fathers about moral subjects.

That evening, I had an excellent meal in the atmospheric Ristorante da Raffaelo, on the Ponte de le Ostreghe - with an obligatory liqueur-drenched tiramisu. Restaurants must be chosen carefully: some, especially near San Marco, are tourist traps, and I sought out those with fixed three-course prices, the ones where Venetians seemed to eat and which did not have tatty menus in broken English.

I also discovered the Venetian sandwich (tramezzini), bulging, like the hump-backed bridges, with ham, egg, artichokes, mushrooms and other goodies. Cheaper than British Rail, every bar has its own selection. After living on sandwiches, on my last night I treated myself to The Caravella, a wood-panelled room in the Hotel Saturnia, set in a 14th-century palazzo. I had superb calves' liver, a Venetian speciality.

No one can visit Venice without disembarking at the Gallerie dell'Accademia, the world's most extensive collection of Venetian paintings, started in the 19th century as a depot for artworks from churches, monasteries and palaces that had closed. What a depot] Among many Tintorettos is his Miracle of St Mark, the narrative of the two merchants who rescued Mark's body from its Alexandrian tomb and presented it to the Doge (Piazza San Marco can be seen in the background). Also there is one of the most enigmatic of all paintings, The Tempest by Giorgione, a tenderly serene madonna and child by Bellini, and paintings by Pordenone, another Titian rival who was so terrified of Titian he always carried a knife to protect himself from the master.

The high-point of my Tintoretto pilgrimage was the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, which has more than 50 major paintings by him. For the ceiling panel in the Sala dell'Albergo on the first floor, the artist resorted to one of his most furtive ploys. When the city's best painters were invited to submit designs for it, Tintoretto obtained the wall measurements and, while his rivals were sketching out ideas, he painted the completed picture, St Rocco in Glory. When Veronese and other masters turned up with their designs to show the judges, Tintoretto brought out his finished work, ready to be slotted into place. But in ignoring their specific request, Tintoretto irritated the judges: they wanted the painting removed. Tintoretto told them that if they were not pleased with his work, he would make a gift of it to St Rocco. Finally, it was realised that the confraternity's own rules stipulated that they could not refuse anything donated to the saint: Tintoretto was not only paid, but was given commissions for the rest of his paintings.

Paintings here are beautifully lit, showing to good effect the radiance of Tintoretto's works - compositions in which you could isolate single sections or groups of figures and have a great painting with a cohesive whole. Nowhere is this more apparent than in The Crucifixion - a tragic drama on a massive scale in which an image of the cross and the figure of Christ cut the picture in two, towering above dozens of figures. Here are elongated, powerful figures, each playing a role in narrating the story. You can see at once the influence on El Greco.

Ambling back to the hotel, I felt that coffee was long overdue and slipped into the famous (and infamously expensive) Cafe Florian, beneath the arches in the Piazza San Marco. As I sipped my frothy cappuccino, and enjoyed the delicate paintings covering the 18th-century walls and ceilings, I remembered reading that the first Italian to write home about this weird concoction, coffee - a drink which had the ability to keep people awake - was the Doge's ambassador at Constantinople. Around that time Tintoretto was busy painting portraits of the Doges: did he become a coffee-freak, I wondered?

'Tintoretto at San Bartolomeo' is open until 1 May. The exhibition of Tintoretto portraits at Gallerie dell'Accademia is open until 10 July, and that of Tintoretto engravings is at the Palazzo Ducale until 30 June. Further information about these and other Tintoretto shows: Venice Information Office (010 3941 715016) or Italian Tourist Office in London (071-408 1254). Double-check opening times: every museum and church has different ones - none tallying with the times given in guidebooks.

TRAVEL NOTES

GETTING THERE

Rome: Sky Shuttle (081-748 1333) offers flights until the end of April, from pounds 144 for a supersaver from Gatwick. Trailfinders (071-938 3232) has Alitalia flights for pounds 166 from Heathrow (must include a Saturday night).

Venice: STA (071-937 9921) offers an Alitalia flight from Heathrow for pounds 176 return (plus pounds 7.60 Italian airport tax), departing on

Monday-Thursday. Campus Travel (071-730 3402) has flights to Venice for pounds 179 return, leaving from Heathrow (until 30 June).

STAYING THERE

Jolly Hotels (0800 282729) has four-star accommodation in Rome, approximately pounds 100 per person for two nights. The Italian State Tourist Office (number below) will provide a list of accommodation in Rome and Venice.

INCLUSIVE HOLIDAYS

Rome: Alitalia Tour (071-371 1114) has packages at pounds 307 for a three-night stay Mon- Thurs or pounds 272 for two nights. A extra charge of pounds 15 is added for departure on Friday and over the weekend. Magic of Italy (081-748 7575) provides a four-night package in a three-star hotel, until the end of April, for pounds 346 from Gatwick. Italian Escapades (081- 748 2661) provides three nights in a three-star hotel for pounds 288 per person.

Venice: Alitalia from pounds 286 for two nights, pounds 313 for three nights. Magic of Italy has a four-night package, pounds 337; and Italian Escapades from pounds 285, in a three-star hotel.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Italian State Tourist Office, 1 Princes Street, London W1R 8AY, tel: 071-408 1254.

Rome: EPT, Via Parigi, Rome, tel: (010 396) 488 991 is the Rome provincial tourist board and provides hotel booking and general enquiries. It is easier to drop in when you are there than to get through by phone. Enjoy Rome, Via Varese, Rome, tel: (010 396) 44 51 843 will provide hotel booking service and will arrange bus and walking tours.

Venice: the main information office is the APT, on the corner of Piazza San Marco and Calle Ascensione, tel: (010 3941) 522 6356. Hotel booking facilities are run by the Associazione Veneziano Albergatori (AVA) at the APT information office at the airport.

(Photograph omitted)