_Tintoretto_ (Venetian: 1518-1594).
Jacopo Robusti, called Tintoretto (the little dyer), from the
trade of his father, is the last great master of the Venetian
School and "the most imaginative of all painters." His artistic
ambition was expressed in the line which he wrote on the wall
of his studio: "The design of Michelangelo and the colouring of
Titian." He engrafted (says Symonds) on the calm and natural
Venetian manner "something of the Michelangelesque sublimity,
and sought to sway by dramatic movement the romantic motives
of the school." He conquers Michelangelo (says Ruskin) in
his own field; "out-flies him in motion, outnumbers him in
multitude, outwits him in fancy and out-flames him in rage."
The imagination of Tintoret dwelt among the tragic and
dramatic scenes in sacred history. While he conceived of these
in the largest and most audacious spirit, his "imagination
penetrative" extended to the minutest details, and his great
works abound in those minor episodes which lend so much reality
to a poet's conceptions. In his classical pictures, Tintoret
combined with the sumptuous colour of Titian something of the
mythopoeic faculty which enabled him to inspire the tales of
ancient Greece with an intense vitality of beauty. In other of
his pictures, effects of light and shade are the vehicle of
his imagination. It was Tintoret (says Symonds) "who brought
to its perfection the poetry of _chiaroscuro_, expressing
moods of passion and emotion by brusque lights, luminous
half-shadows, by semi-opaque darkness, no less unmistakably
than Beethoven by symphonic modulations" (_Renaissance_, iii.
270). The intense vitality which characterises Tintoret's
subject-pictures is conspicuous also in his portraits. They
"render the man at his best, full of health and determination,
and make us look back with amazement to a state where the human
plant was in such vigour" (Berenson's _Venetian Painters_,
p. 59). The picture now before us (16) may give some idea of
Tintoret's power of imagination; and the decorative piece
lately added to the Gallery (1313) is exemplary of another
side of his genius. The Galleries at Hampton Court should also
be visited by all admirers of Tintoretto. But it is only in
Venice that this great master can properly be studied, and
only in the works of Ruskin that any full appreciation of
his powers is to be found.[58] One or two points, however,
may profitably be mentioned which visitors who come across
pictures by Tintoret in foreign galleries should bear in mind.
First, he is the most unequal in execution of all painters.
The Venetians used to say he had three pencils--one of gold,
one of silver, and a third of iron. Annibale Carracci said of
him that "if he was sometimes equal to Titian, he was often
inferior to Tintoretto." Secondly, "when no one would pay for
his colours (and sometimes nobody would even give him space of
wall to paint on), he used cheap blue for ultramarine;" and he
worked so rapidly, "and on such large spaces of canvas, that,
between damp and dry, his colours must go, for the most part."
Tintoret, from the rapidity of his execution, received the
nickname of _il Furioso_; and Sebastiano del Piombo used to say
that Tintoret could paint as much in two days as would occupy
him for two years. Thirdly, Tintoret "is entirely unconcerned
respecting the satisfaction of the public. He neither cares to
display his strength to them, nor convey his ideas to them;
when he finishes his work, it is, because he is in the humour
to do so; and the sketch which a meaner painter would have
left incomplete to show how cleverly it was begun, Tintoret
simply leaves because he has done as much of it as he likes"
(_Relation between Michael Angelo and Tintoret, passim_).
The well-founded pride which is thus stamped on Tintoret's art
is conspicuous in his life. From the first he stood alone. His
father had sent him as a boy to Titian's studio; but after
ten days the master dismissed him. From this time forward
the two men remained upon distant terms,--Tintoretto being
indeed an ardent admirer of Titian, but never a friend, and
Titian and his set turning the cold shoulder upon Tintoret.
The slight passed by Titian upon the young Tintoret threw him
back upon his own resources, and henceforth he pursued his
own ideals, self-taught. He bought casts from the antique
and from the works of Michelangelo; he devoted the day to
painting, and in the night he made drawings from his casts. His
persevering labour won for him in time a high position among
the painters of Venice, and before he was forty he had become
the acknowledged rival of Titian himself. For some years,
however, he worked in poverty, often accepting commissions
without pay, and when he became famous he often worked "for
nothing." For years he painted in the Scuola di San Rocco--"a
shrine reared by Tintoret to his own genius"--at the rate of
100 ducats a year. For his "Paradise" in the Ducal Palace, "the
greatest picture in the world," he was asked to name his own
price, but he left it to the State, and abated something from
what they tendered. While the commission was still pending,
Tintoret used to tell the senators that he prayed to God for
it, so that paradise itself might perchance be his recompense
after death. His exquisite "Three Graces" in the Ducal Palace
was painted for fifty ducats. He lived aloof from the world,
seldom leaving Venice. His house, on the Fondamenta de' Mori,
is still standing, and there are stories told of the way in
which his wife, the daughter of a Venetian nobleman, tried to
guard against his unworldliness. When he left the house she
would wrap up money for him in a handkerchief, and expected
an account of it on his return. Tintoretto, it is said, had
always to confess that he had spent it upon alms. He loved all
the arts, and played the lute and various instruments, some of
them of his own invention. He designed theatrical costumes,
and was well versed in mechanics. He abounded in witty sayings,
but no smile, we are told, ever hovered on his lips. He died at
the age of seventy-six, leaving as the record of a long life,
devoted with rare single-mindedness to his art, the remark that
the art of painting was one which became ever increasingly
difficult.
A picture of particular interest in the National Gallery, being a
representation by one of the greatest of artists of the patron saint of
England. The fight of St. George with the dragon is familiar to every
one, being on the reverse of our gold sovereigns, and in the "Jubilee"
coinage on that of our silver crowns. "As a piece of mere die-cutting,
that St. George is one of the best bits of work we have on our money,"
but a reference to its absurdities in design will serve admirably to
bring out some of the imaginative merits of this picture. On our coins
St. George's horse looks abstractedly in the air, instead of where it
would have looked, at the beast between its legs. Here Tintoret has
admirably brought out the chivalry of the horse. Knight and charger
are alike intent upon their foe, and note that St. George wears no
spurs: the noble animal nature is attuned to his rider. But, though
un-spurred, St. George is every inch a knight. His whole strength is
given in the spear-thrust which is to kill the dragon: compare this
with St. George on our coins, "with nothing but his helmet on (being
the last piece of armour he is likely to want), putting his naked
feet, at least his feet showing their toes through the buskins, well
forward, that the dragon may with the greatest convenience get a bite
at them; and about to deliver a mortal blow at him with a sword which
cannot reach him by a couple of yards." To understand the other touches
of true imagination in Tintoret's picture, it is necessary to recall
the meaning of the legend of St. George and the Dragon (identical with
that of Perseus and Andromeda).[59] The dragon represents the evil of
sinful, fleshly passion, the element in our nature which is of the
earth, earthy. Notice with what savage tenacity, therefore, the beast
is made to clutch at the earth. From his mouth he is spitting fire--the
red fire of consuming passion. St. George is the champion of purity;
he rides therefore on a white horse, white being the typical colour of
a blameless life. He wears no helmet--for that might obscure his sight,
and the difficulty in this warfare is not so much to kill your dragon
as to see him. In front of him is the dead body of another man:
He gazes on the silent dead
"They perished in their daring deeds."
This proverb flashes through his head,
"The many fail, the one succeeds."
Behind him is a long castle wall, the towers and battlements perhaps
of some great city. In many pictures of this subject (see _e.g._ 75)
there are crowds of spectators on the walls, who will cheer the knight
in his struggle and applaud him in his victory. But here the walls
are deserted, and but for the princess in the foreground, there are
no spectators of the struggle: it is one which has to be fought alone
and in secret places. The princess had been given, in the story, as a
sacrifice to the dragon, and St. George, who comes to rescue her, is
thus the type of noble chivalry. "She turns away for flight; and if her
hands are raised to heaven, and her knees fall to earth, it is more
that she stumbles in a woman's weakness, than that she abides in faith
or sweet surrender. Tintoret sees the scene as in the first place a
matter of fact, and paints accordingly, following his judgment of girl
nature." But in another sense the princess of the allegory represents
the soul of man, which has to be freed from subjection to the dragon
of the flesh. And so perhaps Tintoret makes her fly, "from a certain
ascetic feeling, a sense growing with the growing license of Venice,
that the soul must rather escape from this monster by flight than hope
to see it subdued and made serviceable" (_St. Mark's Rest_, Second
Supplement, pp. 14, 21, 33; _Fors Clavigera_, 1873, xxv. and xxvi.)