For Vasari, Tintoretto 's work was hasty and lacking in 'disegno' (see Vasari, Le Vite, Testo V.468 and Vasari on Tintoretto). Reynolds accepted and extended this view, in part because of the effects of the Venetian painters on the rest of European painting ( Discourse Four, 1771 - passim but see particularly Reynolds, Discourses, p. 63). He drew attention to the fact that there are few preliminary drawings by Tintoretto, and those there are slight ( Discourse Two, 1769 - Reynolds, Discourses, p. 35). Tintoretto and Veronese seem 'to have painted with no other purpose than to be admired for their skill and expertise', and they have turned off the attention 'from those higher excellencies of which art is capable' ( Discourse Four, 1771 - Reynolds, Discourses, p. 63) Tintoretto is capricious in composition ( Discourse Six, 1774 - Reynolds, Discourses, p. 108). He is guilty of entire inattention to what is justly thought the most essential part of our art, the expression of the passions' ( Discourse Seven, 1776 - Reynolds, Discourses, p. 131).
Kugler's account of Tintoretto argues essentially the same case, and that case is extended in Kugler, revised Burckhardt, ed. Eastlake, on Tintoretto in the second and third editions of Murray's Handbook of Painting in Italy. The writing of Ruskin on Tintoretto challenges all such views.