S. ROCCO AND TINTORETTO
The Scuola di S. Rocco--Defective lighting--A competition of
artists--The life of the Virgin--A dramatic Annunciation--Ruskin's
analysis--S. Mary of Egypt--The upper hall--"The Last Supper"--"Moses
striking the rock"--"The Crucifixion"--A masterpiece--Tintoretto's
career--Titian and Michel Angelo--A dramatist of the Bible--Realistic
carvings--The life of S. Rocco--A humorist in wood--A model council
chamber--A case of reliquaries--The church of S. Rocco--Giorgione or
Titian?
There are Tintorettos everywhere in Venice, in addition to the immense
canvases in the Doges' Palace, but I imagine that were we able to ask
the great man the question, Where would he choose to be judged? he would
reply, "At the Scuola di S. Rocco,"--with perhaps a reservation in
favour of "The Miracle of S. Mark" at the Accademia, and possibly the
"Presentation" (for I feel he must have loved that work) at the Madonna
dell'Orto, and "The Marriage in Cana," that fascinating scene, in the
Salute. In the superb building of the S. Rocco Scuola he reigns alone,
and there his "Crucifixion" is.
The Scuola and the church, in white stone, hide behind the lofty
red-brick apse of the Frari. The Scuola's façade has, in particular, the
confidence of a successful people. Within, it is magnificent too, while
to its architectural glories it adds no fewer than six-and-fifty
Tintorettos; many of which, however, can be only dimly seen, for the
great Bartolommeo Bon, who designed the Scuola, forgot that pictures
require light. Nor was he unique among Venice's builders in this matter;
they mostly either forgot it or allowed their jealousy of a sister art
to influence them. "Light, more light," is as much the cry of the
groping enthusiast for painting in this fair city, as it was of the
dying Goethe.
The story of Tintoretto's connexion with the Scuola illustrates his
decision and swiftness. The Scuola having been built, where, under the
banner of S. Rocco, a philanthropical confraternity might meet to confer
as to schemes of social amelioration, it was, in 1560, decided to invite
the more prominent artists to make proposals as to its decoration.
Tintoretto, then forty-two, Paul Veronese and Schiavone were among them.
They were to meet in the Refectory and display their sketches; and on a
given day all were there. Tintoretto stood aside while the others
unfolded their designs, which were examined and criticized. Then came
his turn, but instead of producing a roll he twitched a covering, which
none had noticed, and revealed in the middle of the ceiling the finished
painting of S. Rocco in glory. A scene of amazement and perplexity
ensued. The other artists, accepting defeat, retired from the field; the
authorities gazed in a fine state of confusion over the unconventional
foreshortening of the saint and his angel. They also pointed out that
Tintoretto had broken the condition of the competition in providing a
painting when only sketches were required. "Very well," he said, "I make
you a present of it." Since by the rules of the confraternity all gifts
offered to it had to be accepted, he thus won his footing; and the rest
was easy. Two or three years later he was made a brother of the Order,
at fifty pounds a year, in return for which he was each year to provide
three paintings; and this salary he drew for seventeen years, until the
great work was complete.
The task comprises the scenes in the life of the Virgin, in the lower
hall; the scenes in the life of Christ, on the walls of the upper hall;
the scenes from the Old Testament, on the ceiling of the upper hall; and
the last scenes in the life of Christ, in the Refectory. In short, the
Scuola di S. Rocco is Tintoretto's Sistine Chapel.
We enter to an "Annunciation"; and if we had not perceived before, we at
once perceive here, in this building, Tintoretto's innovating gift of
realism. He brought dailiness into art. Tremendous as was his method, he
never forgot the little things. His domestic details leaven the whole.
This "Annunciation" is the most dramatic version that exists. The Virgin
has been sitting quietly sewing in her little room, poorly enough
furnished, with a broken chair by the bed, when suddenly this celestial
irruption--this urgent flying angel attended by a horde of cherubim or
cupids and heralded by the Holy Spirit. At the first glance you think
that the angel has burst through the wall, but that is not so. But as it
is, even without that violence, how utterly different from the demure
treatment of the Tuscans! To think of Fra Angelico and Tintoretto
together is like placing a violet beside a tiger lily.
A little touch in the picture should be noticed: a carpenter at work
outside. Very characteristic of Tintoretto.
Next--but here let me remind or inform the reader that the Venetian
Index at the end of the later editions of _The Stones of Venice_
contains an analysis of these works, by Ruskin, which is as
characteristic of that writer as the pictures are of their artist. In
particular is Ruskin delighted by "The Annunciation," by "The Murder of
the Innocents," and, upstairs, by the ceiling paintings and the
Refectory series.
Next is "The Adoration of the Magi," with all the ingredients that one
can ask, except possibly any spiritual rapture; and then the flight into
a country less like the Egypt to which the little family were bound, or
the Palestine from which they were driven, than one can imagine, but a
dashing work. Then "The Slaughter of the Innocents," a confused scene of
fine and daring drawing, in which, owing to gloom and grime, no
innocents can be discerned. Then a slender nocturnal pastoral which is
even more difficult to see, representing Mary Magdalen in a rocky
landscape, and opposite it a similar work representing S. Mary of Egypt,
which one knows to be austere and beautiful but again cannot see.
Since the story of S. Mary of Egypt is little known, I may perhaps be
permitted to tell it here. This Mary, before her conversion, lived in
Alexandria at the end of the fourth century and was famous for her
licentiousness. Then one day, by a caprice, joining a company of
pilgrims to Jerusalem, she embraced Christianity, and in answer to her
prayers for peace of mind was bidden by a supernatural voice to pass
beyond Jordan, where rest and comfort were to be found. There, in the
desert, she roamed for forty-seven years, when she was found, naked and
grey, by a holy man named Zosimus who was travelling in search of a
hermit more pious than himself with whom he might have profitable
converse. Zosimus, having given her his mantle for covering, left her,
but he returned in two years, bringing with him the Sacrament and some
food.
When they caught sight of each other, Mary was on the other side of the
Jordan, but she at once walked to him calmly over the water, and after
receiving the Sacrament returned in the same manner; while Zosimus
hastened to Jerusalem with the wonderful story.
The next year Zosimus again went in search of her, but found only her
corpse, which, with the assistance of a lion, he buried. She was
subsequently canonized.
The other two and hardly distinguishable paintings are "The Presentation
of Christ in the Temple" and "The Assumption of the Virgin."
Now we ascend the staircase, on which is a beautiful "Annunciation" by
Titian, strangely unlike Tintoretto's version below. Here the Virgin
kneels before her desk, expectant, and the angel sails quietly in with a
lily. The picture is less dramatic and more sympathetic; but personally
I should never go to Venice for an "Annunciation" at all. Here also is
Tintoretto's "Visitation," but it is not easily seen.
The upper hall is magnificent, but before we examine it let us proceed
with the Tintorettos. In "The Adoration of the Shepherds," in the far
left-hand corner as one enters, there is an excellent example of the
painter's homeliness. It is really two pictures, the Holy Family being
on an upper floor, or rather shelf, of the manger and making the
prettiest of groups, while below, among the animals, are the shepherds,
real peasants, looking up in worship and rapture. This is one of the
most attractive of the series, not only as a painting but as a Biblical
illustration.
In the corresponding corner at the other end of this wall is another of
the many "Last Suppers" which Tintoretto devised. It does not compare in
brilliance with that in S. Giorgio Maggiore, but it must greatly have
interested the painter as a composition, and nothing could be more
unlike the formality of the Leonardo da Vinci convention, with the
table set square to the spectators, than this curious disordered
scramble in which several of the disciples have no chairs at all. The
attitudes are, however, convincing, Christ is a gracious figure, and the
whole scene is very memorable and real.
The Tintorettos on the walls of the upper hall I find less interesting
than those on the ceiling, which, however, present the usual physical
difficulties to the student. How Ruskin with his petulant impatience
brought himself to analyse so minutely works the examination of which
leads to such bodily discomfort, I cannot imagine. But he did so, and
his pages should be consulted. He is particularly interesting on "The
Plague of Serpents." My own favourite is that of Moses striking the
rock, from which, it is said, an early critic fled for his life for fear
of the torrent. The manna scene may be compared with another and more
vivid version of the same incident in S. Giorgio Maggiore.
[Illustration: THE CRUCIFIXION (CENTRAL DETAIL)
FROM THE PAINTING BY TINTORETTO
_In the Scuola di S. Rocco_]
The scenes from the Life of Christ around the walls culminate in the
wonderful "Crucifixion," in the Refectory leading from this room. This
sublime work, which was painted in 1565, when the artist was
forty-seven, he considered his masterpiece. It is the greatest single
work in Venice, and all Tintoretto is in it, except the sensuous
colourist of the "Origin of the Milky Way": all his power, all his
thought, all his drama. One should make this room a constant retreat.
The more one studies the picture the more real is the scene and the more
amazing the achievement. I do not say that one is ever moved as one can
be in the presence of great simplicity; one is aware in all Tintoretto's
work of a hint of the self-conscious entrepreneur; but never, one feels,
was the great man so single-minded as here; never was his desire to
impress so deep and genuine. In the mass the picture is overpowering;
in detail, to which one comes later, its interest is inexhaustible. As
an example of the painter's minute thought, one writer has pointed out
that the donkey in the background is eating withered palm leaves--a
touch of ironical genius, if you like. Ruskin calls this work the most
exquisite instance of the "imaginative penetrative." I reproduce a
detail showing the soldiers with the ropes and the group of women at the
foot of the cross.
The same room has Tintoretto's noble picture of Christ before Pilate and
the fine tragic composition "The Road to Calvary," and on the ceiling is
the S. Rocco of which I have already spoken--the germ from which sprang
the whole wonderful series.
The story of this, the most Venetian of the Venetian painters and the
truest to his native city (for all his life was spent here), may more
fittingly be told in this place, near his masterpiece and his portrait
(which is just by the door), than elsewhere. He was born in 1518, in the
ninth year of our Henry VIII's reign, the son of a dyer, or tintore,
named Battista Robusti, and since the young Jacopo Robusti helped his
father in his trade he was called the little dyer, or il tintoretto. His
father was well to do, and the boy had enough leisure to enable him to
copy and to frequent the arcades of S. Mark's Square, under which such
artists as were too poor to afford studios were allowed to work.
The greatest name in Venetian art at that time, and indeed still, was
that of Titian, and Tintoretto was naturally anxious to become his
pupil. Titian was by many years Tintoretto's senior when, at the age of
seventeen, the little dyer obtained leave to study under him. The story
has it that so masterly were Tintoretto's early drawings that Titian,
fearing rivalry, refused to teach him any longer. Whether this be true
or not, and one dislikes to think of Titian in this way, Tintoretto left
the studio and was thrown upon his own resources and ambition.
Fortunately he did not need money: he was able even to form a collection
of casts from the antique and also from Michael Angelo, the boy's other
idol, who when Tintoretto was seventeen was sixty-one. Thus supplied,
Tintoretto practised drawing and painting, day and night, his motto
being "Titian's colour and Michael Angelo's form"; and he expressed
himself as willing to paint anything anywhere, inside a house or
outside, and if necessary for nothing, rather than be idle. Practice was
what he believed in: practice and study; and he never tired. All
painting worth anything, he held, must be based on sound drawing. "You
can buy colours on the Rialto," he would remark, "but drawing can come
only by labour." Some say that he was stung by a sarcasm of his Tuscan
hero that the Venetians could not draw; be that as it may, he made
accurate drawing his corner-stone; and so thorough was he in his study
of chiaroscuro that he devised little toy houses in which to manufacture
effects of light and shade. One of his first pictures to attract
attention was a portrait of himself and his brother illuminated by a
lamp.
So passed, in miscellaneous work, even to painting furniture, at least
ten years, towards the close of which he painted for the Madonna
dell'Orto his earliest important work, "The Last Judgment," which though
derived from Michael Angelo yet indicates much personal force. It was in
1548, when he was thirty, that Tintoretto's real chance came, for he was
then invited to contribute to the decoration of the Scuola of S. Marco,
and for it he produced one of his greatest works, "The Miracle of S.
Mark," now in the Accademia. The novelty of its vivid force and drama,
together with its power and assurance, although, as I have said, at
first disconcerting to the unprepared critics, soon made an impression;
spectators were carried off their feet; and Tintoretto's fame was
assured. See opposite page 170.
I have not counted the Venetian churches with examples of Tintoretto's
genius in them (it would be simpler to count those that have none); but
they are many and his industry was enormous. One likes to think of his
studio being visited continually by church patrons and prelates anxious
to see how their particular commission was getting on.
Tintoretto married in 1558, two years after Shakespeare's birth, his
wife being something of an heiress, and in 1562 his eldest son,
Domenico, who also became an artist, was born. We have seen how in 1560
Tintoretto competed for the S. Rocco decorations; in 1565 he painted
"The Crucifixion"; and he was working on the walls of the Scuola until
1588. In the meantime he worked also for the Doges' Palace, his first
picture, that of the Battle of Lepanto, being destroyed with many others
in the fire of 1576, first obtaining him as a reward a sinecure post in
the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, that central office of German merchants and
brokers on the façade of which Giorgione and Titian painted their famous
(now obliterated) frescoes. Small posts here with no obligations were
given to public servants, much as we give Civil List pensions.
Tintoretto's life was very methodical, and was divided strictly between
painting and domestic affairs, with few outside diversions. He had
settled down in the house which now bears his name and a tablet, close
to the church of the Madonna dell'Orto. His children were eight in
number, among whom his favourite was Marietta, his eldest daughter. He
and she were in fact inseparable, Marietta even donning boy's attire in
order to be with him at his work on occasions when as a girl it would
have been difficult. Perhaps it is she who so often appears in his
pictures as a beautiful sympathetic human girl among so much that is
somewhat frigidly Biblical and detached. Among his closer friends were
some of the best Venetian intellects, and, among the artists, Andrea
Schiavone, who hovers like a ghost about so many painters and their
work, Paolo Caliari, known as Veronese, Jacopo da Ponte, or Bassano, and
Alessandro Vittoria, the sculptor. He had musician friends, too; for
Tintoretto, like Giorgione before him, was devoted to music, and himself
played many instruments. He was a man of simple tastes and a quiet and
somewhat dry humour; liked home best; chaffed his wife, who was a bit of
a manager and had to check his indiscriminate generosity by limiting him
to one coin a day; and, there is no doubt whatever, studied his Bible
with minuteness. His collected works make the most copious illustrated
edition of scripture that exists.
[Illustration: THE COLLEONI STATUE AND S.S. GIOVANNI E PAOLO]
Certain of Tintoretto's sayings prove his humour to have had a caustic
turn. Being once much harassed by a crowd of spectators, including men
of civic eminence, he was asked why he painted so quickly when Bellini
and Titian had been so deliberate. "They had not so many onlookers to
drive them to distraction," he replied. Of Titian, in spite of his
admiration for his colour, he was always a little jealous and could not
bear to hear him much praised; and colour without drawing eternally
vexed him. His own colour is always subservient. The saying of his which
one remembers best bears upon the difficulties that beset the
conscientious artist: "The farther you go in, the deeper is the sea."
Late in life Tintoretto spent much time with the brothers of S. Rocco.
In 1594, at the age of seventy-six, he died, after a short illness. All
Venice attended his funeral.
He was one of the greatest of painters, and, like Michael Angelo, he did
nothing little. All was on the grand scale. He had not Michael Angelo's
towering superiority, but he too was a giant. His chief lack was
tenderness. There is something a little remote, a little unsympathetic,
in all his work: one admires and wonders, and awaits in vain the
softening moment. To me he is as much a dramatist of the Bible as a
painter of it.
One is rarely satisfied with the whole of a Tintoretto; but a part of
most of his works is superb. Of all his pictures in Venice my favourite
secular one is the "Bacchus and Ariadne" in the Doges' Palace, which has
in it a loveliness not excelled in any painting that I know. Excluding
"The Crucifixion" I should name "The Marriage in Cana" at the Salute as
his most ingratiating Biblical scene. See opposite pages 48 and 96.
The official programme of the Scuola pictures, printed on screens in
various languages, badly needs an English revisor. Here are two titles:
"Moise who makes the water spring"; "The three children in the oven of
Babylony." It also states "worthy of attention are as well the
woodcarvings round the wall sides by an anonymous." To these we come
later. Let me say first that everything about the upper hall, which you
will note has no pillars, is splendid and thorough--proportions,
ceiling, walls, carvings, floor.
The carvings on each side of the high altar (not those "by an anonymous"
but others) tell very admirably the life of the patron saint of the
school whose "S.R.," nobly devised in brass, will be found so often both
here and in the church across the way. S. Rocco, or Saint Rocke, as
Caxton calls him, was born at Montpelier in France of noble parentage.
His father was lord of Montpelier. The child, who came in answer to
prayer, bore at birth on his left shoulder a cross and was even as a
babe so holy that when his mother fasted he fasted too, on two days in
the week deriving nourishment from her once only, and being all the
gladder, sweeter, and merrier for this denial. The lord of Montpelier
when dying impressed upon his exemplary son four duties: namely, to
continue to be vigilant in doing good, to be kind to the poor, to
distribute all the family wealth in alms, and to haunt and frequent the
hospitals.
Both his parents being dead, Rocco travelled to Italy. At Acquapendente
he healed many persons of the pestilence, and also at Cesena and at
Rome, including a cardinal, whom he rendered immune to plague for ever
more by drawing a cross on his forehead. The cardinal took him to see
the pope, in whose presence Rocco's own forehead shone with a
supernatural light which greatly impressed the pontiff. After much
further wandering and healing, Rocco himself took the disease under both
his arms and was so racked with pain that he kept the other patients in
the hospital awake. This distressing him, he crept away where his groans
were out of hearing, and there he lay till the populace, finding him,
and fearing infection, drove him from the city. At Piacenza, where he
took refuge, a spring of fair water, which is there to this day, gushed
out of the earth for his liquid refreshment and as mark of heaven's
approval; while the hound of a neighbouring sportsman brought him bread
from the lord Golard's table: hence the presence of a dog in all
representations of the saint. In the church of S. Rocco across the way
Tintoretto has a picture of this scene in which we discern the dog to
have been a liver-and-white spaniel.
Golard, discovering the dog's fidelity to Rocco, himself passed into the
saint's service and was so thoroughly converted by him that he became a
humble mendicant in the Piacenza streets. Rocco meanwhile continued to
heal, although he could not heal himself, and he even cured the wild
animals of their complaints, as Tintoretto also shows us. Being at last
healed by heaven, he travelled to Lombardy, where he was taken as a spy
and imprisoned for five years, and in prison he died, after being
revealed as a saint to his gaoler. His dying prayer was that all
Christians who prayed to him in the name of Jesus might be delivered
from pestilence. Shortly after Rocco's death an angel descended to earth
with a table written in letters of gold stating that this wish had been
granted. In the carvings in the chancel, the bronzes on the gate and in
Tintoretto's pictures in the neighbouring church, much of this story may
be traced.
The most noteworthy carvings round the room represent types and
attributes. Here is the musician, the conspirator (a very Guy Fawkes,
with dark lantern and all), the scholar, and so forth, all done with
humorous detail by one Pianta. When he came to the artist he had a
little quiet fun with the master himself, this figure being a caricature
of no less a performer than the great Tintoretto.
The little room leading from the upper hall is that rare thing in
Venice, a council chamber which presents a tight fit for the council.
Just inside is a wax model of the head of one of the four Doges named
Alvise Mocenigo, I know not which. Upstairs is a Treasury filled with
valuable ecclesiastical vessels, missals and vestments, and two fine
religious pictures from the masterly worldly hand of Tiepolo. Among the
sacred objects enshrined in gold and silver reliquaries are a piece of
the jawbone of S. Barbara, a piece of the cranium of S. Martin, a tiny
portion of the veil of the Madonna, and a tooth of S. Apollonius held in
triumph in a pair of forceps by a little golden cherub. And now,
descending again, let us look once more at the great picture of Him
whose Life and Crucifixion put into motion all this curious
ecclesiastical machinery--so strangely far from the original idea.
The church of S. Rocco is opposite, and one must enter it for
Tintoretto's scenes in the life of the saint, and for a possible
Giorgione over the altar to the right of the choir in a beautiful old
frame. The subject is Christ carrying the cross, with a few urging Him
on. The theory that Giorgione painted this picture is gaining ground,
and we know that only about a century after Giorgione's death Van Dyck,
when sketching in Venice, made some notes of the work under the
impression that it was the divine Castel Francan's. The light is poor
and the picture is in a bad state, but one is conscious of being in the
presence of a work of very delicate beauty and a profound soft richness.
The picture, Vasari says, once worked miracles, and years ago it brought
in, in votive money, great sums. One grateful admirer has set up a
version of it in marble, on the left wall of the choir. Standing before
this Giorgione, as before the Tintorettos here and over the way, one
again wishes, as so often in Venice, that some American millionaire, in
love with this lovely city and in doubt as to how to apply his
superfluity of cash, would offer to clean the pictures in the churches.
What glorious hues would then come to light!