Where Tintoretto Once stood: Luc Tuymans' New Works for San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice

Commissioned by the Benedictine Community of the Abbey in collaboration with the German Draiflessen Collection, the paintings are designed to temporarily replace Jacopo Tintoretto’s two large presbyteral canvases, The Last Supper and The People of Israel in the Desert currently under restoration.

Tuymans’ intervention is part of a path that for years has seen the Benedictine monks of San Giorgio Maggiore committed to re-establishing a relationship between the Church and contemporary art. Tuymans, who returns to Venice after a major retrospective at Palazzo Grassi in 2019, conceived the new paintings for the Basilica’s monastic presbytery.

In the center of the Main Choir, the badalone will house one more work by Tuymans: a contemporary illuminated manuscript, which will then become part of the collection launched in 2019 of contemporary illuminated manuscripts made for the Abbey of San Giorgio Maggiore by the artists with whom it has collaborated in recent years through Benedicti Claustra Onlus, its noprofit branch.

The exhibition is curated by Carmelo A. Grasso, Director and Institutional Curator of the Abbey, together with Corinna Otto, Director of the Draiflessen Collection, and independent curator OryDessau.

Main Image: San Giorgio Maggiore