23/08/2026
Between Heaven and Earth: Feintuch, Tiziano and Mantegna 🪶
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In “Assumption” (2013), Robert Feintuch isolates and monumentalizes an anatomical detail laden with historical resonance, establishing an intimate and inverted dialogue with the Renaissance tradition. The direct reference is to Tiziano’s “Assumption”, where the Virgin’s feet, captured from below in a dynamic foreshortening, emphasize the upward, ascensional thrust. However, this perspective vertigo cannot overlook the great precedent of Andrea Mantegna’s “Lamentation over the Dead Christ”, whose radical foreground foreshortening Feintuch evokes.
Feintuch performs an extraordinary conceptual operation, fusing Mantegna’s tragic gravity with Tiziano’s spiritual levity. To achieve this, the artist adopts a deeply intimate and performative methodology: he uses his own feet as a model, an autobiographical practice recurring throughout his work to explore human fallibility and bodily vulnerability. Furthermore, Feintuch’s painting process is distinguished by the use of polymer emulsions that bestow a luminous color upon the surface, capable of recreating the seductive beauty and ethereal effect typical of Italian frescoes.
In this way, the feet emerge from vaporous clouds—suspended between a fleshly, almost clumsy materiality and an evanescent finish. Within this parallelism, the anatomical detail ceases to be a mere citation, becoming a formal synthesis between high and low, drama and irony.
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Tiziano Vecellio, “Assunta”, 1516-1518, oil on canvas, 690×360 cm, Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venezia.
Robert Feintuch, “Assumption”, 2013, polymer emulsion on honeycomb panel, 48.3 x 60.3 cm.
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