'Grace Revealed and Erased': Sartre on Tintoretto's Modest Plenitude
in Sartre Studies International
This paper looks at Sartre's 1957 papers on Jacopo Tintoretto to examine his reading of action and space in Tintoretto's St George and the Dragon. I suggest that Sartre offers an idea of grace which, far from shoring up a sense of decisive resolution to the action depicted in the painting, speaks instead of an abandonment in the subjective situation. This notion of abandonment appears through the erasure of a conclusive causal point, the disappearance of which lies at the heart of Sartre's reading. Once freed from causal moorings existence is not loosened but rather becomes weighed down in its very situation. Taking support from the work of Levinas this paper considers how Sartre follows the cursive lines of this burdened subjectivity within the deceptive play of Tintoretto's painting.