This study offers an explanation for Sartre’s ambivalent attitude towards his favorite painter, Tintoretto. In his La Reine Albemarle ou Le dernier touriste, an incomplete work written in 1951-1952, and published posthumously in 1991, Sartre admits that he had wanted to write a major work on the painter, but then changed his mind: “[…] je ne l’aime plus”. Yet despite this change of heart, he published several lengthy, generally positive and insightful studies of Tintoretto’s art (“Le Séquestré de Venise” in Situations IV in 1964 and “Saint Georges et le dragon” in Situations IX in 1976 and 1981). A closer look at these works allows us to make some interesting observations about Sartre’s struggles with his subject matter: art and beauty. This philosopher who was in the habit of writing six hours a day found himself a stranger in a foreign land, unable to speak its language. And his admiration for Tintoretto was rooted, not so much in his art, but in the man himself, this “artiste maudit”, this rebellious, ambitious and hardworking “escroc” who defied the Venetian establishment. Sartre’s was a narcissistic love; Tintoretto was his alter ego.