In many ways, Tintoretto was an innovator, a forerunner of the art to come.

His tumultuous, rapid and imperfect painting, which hurls images from the darkness like flickers of light, framed by the eye of an ante litteram film director, inspired many artists after him: Caravaggio, El Greco, Goya, even the Impressionists. 

How can a contemporary artist, Michela Cattai, interested in experimenting with glass because of its special relationship with light and darkness, respond to the comparison with this Master's chiaroscuro painting? 

"In Chiaroscuro, oltre la luce e l’ombra. Cattai e Tintoretto" is an exhibition made up of a few intense works, in which Cattai's dense glass sculpture group of three unique pieces leans towards the magnificent sketch of Paradise, one of Tintoretto's masterpieces.

And there, right outside Tintoretto's scenic plane, in correspondence with the observer's point of view, leaning forward as if wishing to join the whirling of the figures in the clouds, are the three sculptures by Michela Cattai. Blown forms, whose material mass, originally a dense grey with hazelnut hues, gradually becomes more liquid and rarefied, becoming pure light, crystal, transparency. 

The encounter between the painterly gesture of chiaroscuro and the sculptural movement of the form, resting on its own weight, is enhanced by the surface of the cold-worked glass. The deep grindings, performed using small sandstone wheels, emulate the tormented and rapid brushstrokes inflicted on the canvas by Tintoretto, defining the volumetric aspect of the works and making the surface permeable to light, alive to the touch, as if it were a thin, vibrant and responsive membrane. 

One on canvas and the other with glass, both these artists work with shadow to give form to light beauty.