_The Art of Painting had in the Primitive years looked with the light_,
_not towards it_. _Before Tintoretto's date_, _however_, _many painters
practised shadows and lights_, _and turned more or less sunwards_; _but
he set the figure between himself and a full sun_. _His work is to be
known in Venice by the splendid trick of an occluded sun and a shadow
thrown straight at the spectator_.
_Tintoretto's thronged_ "_Procession to Calvary_" _and his_
"_Crucifixion_," _incidentally named_, _are two of the greatest of his
multitude of works in Venice_.
Master, thy enterprise,
Magnificent, magnanimous, was well done,
Which seized, the head of Art, and turned her eyes--
The simpleton--and made her front the sun.
Long had she sat content,
Her young unlessoned back to a morning gay,
To a solemn noon, to a cloudy firmament,
And looked upon a world in gentle day.
But thy imperial call
Bade her to stand with thee and breast the light,
And therefore face the shadows, mystical,
Sombre, translucent, vestiges of night,
Yet glories of the day.
Eagle! we know thee by thy undaunted eyes
Sky-ward, and by thy glooms; we blow thy way
Ambiguous, and those halo-misted dyes.
Thou Cloud, the bridegroom's friend
(The bridegroom sun)! Master, we know thy sign:
A mystery of hues world-without-end;
And hide-and-seek of gamesome and divine;
Shade of the noble head
Cast hitherward upon the noble breast;
Human solemnities thrice hallowed;
The haste to Calvary, the Cross at rest.
Look sunward, Angel, then!
Carry the fortress-heavens by that hand;
Still be the interpreter of suns to men;
And shadow us, O thou Tower! for thou shalt stand.