N

NANI-MOCENIGO, PALAZZO. (Now Hotel Danieli.) A glorious example of the

central Gothic, nearly contemporary with the finest part of the Ducal

Palace. Though less impressive in effect than the Casa Foscari or Casa

Bernardo, it is of purer architecture than either: and quite unique in

the delicacy of the form of the cusps in the central group of windows,

which are shaped like broad scimitars, the upper foil of the windows

being very small. If the traveller will compare these windows with

the neighboring traceries of the Ducal Palace, he will easily perceive

the peculiarity.

NICOLO DEL LIDO, CHURCH OF ST. Of no importance.

NOME DI GESU, CHURCH OF THE. Of no importance.

O

ORFANI, CHURCH OF THE. Of no importance.

ORTO, CHURCH OF STA. MARIA, DELL'. An interesting example of Renaissance

Gothic, the traceries of the windows being very rich and quaint.

It contains four most important Tintorets: "The Last Judgment," "The

Worship of the Golden Calf," "The Presentation of the Virgin," and

"Martyrdom of St. Agnes." The first two are among his largest and

mightiest works, but grievously injured by damp and neglect; and

unless the traveller is accustomed to decipher the thoughts in a

picture patiently, he need not hope to derive any pleasure from them.

But no pictures will better reward a resolute study. The following

account of the "Last Judgment," given in the second volume of "Modern

Painters," will be useful in enabling the traveller to enter into the

meaning of the picture, but its real power is only to be felt by

patient examination of it.

"By Tintoret only has this unimaginable event (the Last Judgment) been

grappled with in its Verity; not typically nor symbolically, but as

they may see it who shall not sleep, but be changed. Only one

traditional circumstance he has received, with Dante and Michael

Angelo, the Boat of the Condemned; but the impetuosity of his mind

bursts out even in the adoption of this image; he has not stopped at

the scowling ferryman of the one, nor at the sweeping blow and demon

dragging of the other, but, seized Hylas like by the limbs, and

tearing up the earth in his agony, the victim is dashed into his

destruction; nor is it the sluggish Lethe, nor the fiery lake, that

bears the cursed vessel, but the oceans of the earth and the waters of

the firmament gathered into one white, ghastly cataract; the river of

the wrath of God, roaring down into the gulf where the world has

melted with its fervent heat, choked with the ruins of nations, and

the limbs of its corpses tossed out of its whirling, like

water-wheels. Bat-like, out of the holes and caverns and shadows of

the earth, the bones gather, and the clay heaps heave, rattling and

adhering into half-kneaded anatomies, that crawl, and startle, and

struggle up among the putrid weeds, with the clay clinging to their

clotted hair, and their heavy eyes sealed by the earth darkness yet,

like his of old who went his way unseeing to the Siloam Pool; shaking

off one by one the dreams of the prison-house, hardly hearing the

clangor of the trumpets of the armies of God, blinded yet more, as

they awake, by the white light of the new Heaven, until the great

vortex of the four winds bears up their bodies to the judgment seat;

the Firmament is all full of them, a very dust of human souls, that

drifts, and floats, and falls into the interminable, inevitable light;

the bright clouds are darkened with them as with thick snow, currents

of atom life in the arteries of heaven, now soaring up slowly, and

higher and higher still, till the eye and the thought can follow no

farther, borne up, wingless, by their inward faith and by the angel

powers invisible, now hurled in countless drifts of horror before the

breath of their condemnation."

Note in the opposite picture the way the clouds are wrapped about in

the distant Sinai.

The figure of the little Madonna in the "Presentation" should be

compared with Titian's in his picture of the same subject in the

Academy. I prefer Tintoret's infinitely: and note how much finer is

the feeling with which Tintoret has relieved the glory round her head

against the pure sky, than that which influenced Titian in encumbering

his distance with architecture.

The "Martyrdom of St. Agnes" _was_ a lovely picture. It has been

"restored" since I saw it.

OSPEDALETTO, CHURCH OF THE. The most monstrous example of the

Grotesque Renaissance which there is in Venice; the sculptures on its

façade representing masses of diseased figures and swollen fruit.

It is almost worth devoting an hour to the successive examination of

five buildings, as illustrative of the last degradation of the

Renaissance. San Moisè is the most clumsy, Santa Maria Zobenigo the

most impious, St. Eustachio the most ridiculous, the Ospedaletto the

most monstrous, and the head at Santa Maria Formosa the most foul.

OTHELLO, HOUSE OF, at the Carmini. The researches of Mr. Brown into

the origin of the play of "Othello" have, I think, determined that

Shakspeare wrote on definite historical grounds; and that Othello may

be in many points identified with Christopher Moro, the lieutenant of

the republic at Cyprus, in 1508. See "Ragguagli su Maria Sanuto," i.

252.

His palace was standing till very lately, a Gothic building of the

fourteenth century, of which Mr. Brown possesses a drawing. It is now

destroyed, and a modern square-windowed house built on its site. A

statue, said to be a portrait of Moro, but a most paltry work, is set

in a niche in the modern wall.

P

PANTALEONE, CHURCH OF ST. Said to contain a Paul Veronese; otherwise of

no importance.

PATERNIAN, CHURCH OF ST. Its little leaning tower forms an interesting

object as the traveller sees it from the narrow canal which passes

beneath the Porte San Paternian. The two arched lights of the belfry

appear of very early workmanship, probably of the beginning of the

thirteenth century.

PESARO PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal. The most powerful and impressive

in effect of all the palaces of the Grotesque Renaissance. The heads

upon its foundation are very characteristic of the period, but there

is more genius in them than usual. Some of the mingled expressions of

faces and grinning casques are very clever.

PIAZZETTA, pillars of, see Final Appendix under head "Capital." The

two magnificent blocks of marble brought from St. Jean d'Acre, which

form one of the principal ornaments of the Piazzetta, are Greek

sculpture of the sixth century, and will be described in my folio

work.

PIETA, CHURCH OF THE. Of no importance.

PIETRO, CHURCH OF ST., at Murano. Its pictures, once valuable, are now

hardly worth examination, having been spoiled by neglect.

PIETRO, DI CASTELLO, CHURCH OF ST., I. 7, 361. It is said to contain

a Paul Veronese, and I suppose the so-called "Chair of St. Peter" must

be worth examining.

PISANI, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal. The latest Venetian Gothic, just

passing into Renaissance. The capitals of the first floor windows are,

however, singularly spirited and graceful, very daringly under-cut,

and worth careful examination. The Paul Veronese, once the glory of

this palace, is, I believe, not likely to remain in Venice. The other

picture in the same room, the "Death of Darius," is of no value.

PISANI, PALAZZO, at St. Stefano. Late Renaissance, and of no merit,

but grand in its colossal proportions, especially when seen from the

narrow canal at its side, which terminated by the apse of the Church

of San Stefano, is one of the most picturesque and impressive little

pieces of water scenery in Venice.

POLO, CHURCH OF ST. Of no importance, except as an example of the

advantages accruing from restoration. M. Lazari says of it, "Before

this church was modernized, its principal chapel was adorned with

Mosaics, and possessed a pala of silver gilt, of Byzantine

workmanship, which is now lost."

POLO, SQUARE OF ST. (Campo San Polo.) A large and important square,

rendered interesting chiefly by three palaces on the side of it

opposite the church, of central Gothic (1360), and fine of their time,

though small. One of their capitals has been given in Plate II. of

this volume, fig. 12. They are remarkable as being decorated with

sculptures of the Gothic time, in imitation of Byzantine ones; the

period being marked by the dog-tooth and cable being used instead of

the dentil round the circles.

POLO, PALAZZO, at San G. Grisostomo (the house of Marco Polo), II. 139.

Its interior court is full of interest, showing fragments of the old

building in every direction, cornices, windows, and doors, of almost

every period, mingled among modern rebuilding and restoration of all

degrees of dignity.

PORTA DELLA CARTA, II. 302.

PRIULI, PALAZZO. A most important and beautiful early Gothic Palace,

at San Severo; the main entrance is from the Fundamento San Severo,

but the principal façade is on the other side, towards the canal. The

entrance has been grievously defaced, having had winged lions filling

the spandrils of its pointed arch, of which only feeble traces are now

left, the façade has very early fourth order windows in the lower

story, and above, the beautiful range of fifth order windows drawn at

the bottom of Plate XVIII. Vol. II., where the heads of the fourth

order range are also seen (note their inequality, the larger one at

the flank). This Palace has two most interesting traceried angle

windows also, which, however, I believe are later than those on the

façade; and finally, a rich and bold interior staircase.

PROCURATIE NUOVE, see "LIBRERIA" VECCHIA: A graceful series buildings,

of late fifteenth century design, forming the northern side of St.

Mark's Place, but of no particular interest.

Q

QUERINI, PALAZZO, now the Beccherie, II. 255, III. 234.

R

RAFFAELLE, CHIESA DELL'ANGELO. Said to contain a Bonifazio, otherwise of

no importance.

REDENTORE, CHURCH OF THE, II. 378. It contains three interesting John

Bellinis, and also, in the sacristy, a most beautiful Paul Veronese.

REMER, CORTE DEL, house in. II. 251.

REZZONICO, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal. Of the Grotesque Renaissance

time, but less extravagant than usual.

RIALTO, BRIDGE OF THE. The best building raised in the time of the

Grotesque Renaissance; very noble in its simplicity, in its

proportions, and in its masonry. Note especially the grand way in

which the oblique archstones rest on the butments of the bridge, safe,

palpably both to the sense and eye: note also the sculpture of the

Annunciation on the southern side of it; how beautifully arranged, so

as to give more lightness and a grace to the arch--_the dove, flying

towards the Madonna, forming the keystone_,--and thus the whole action

of the figures being parallel to the curve of the arch, while all the

masonry is at right angles to it. Note, finally, one circumstance

which gives peculiar firmness to the figure of the angel, and

associates itself with the general expression of strength in the

whole building; namely that the sole of the advanced foot is set

perfectly level, as if placed on the ground, instead of being thrown

back behind like a heron's, as in most modern figures of this kind.

The sculptures themselves are not good; but these pieces of feeling in

them are very admirable. The two figures on the other side, St. Mark

and St. Theodore, are inferior, though all by the same sculptor,

Girolamo Campagna.

The bridge was built by Antonio da Ponte, in 1588. It was anciently of

wood, with a drawbridge in the centre, a representation of which may

be seen in one of Carpaccio's pictures at the Accademia delle Belle

Arti: and the traveller should observe that the interesting effect,

both of this and the Bridge of Sighs, depends in great part on their

both being _more_ than bridges; the one a covered passage, the other a

row of shops, sustained on an arch. No such effect can be produced

merely by the masonry of the roadway itself.

RIO DEL PALAZZO, II. 282.

ROCCO, CAMPIELLO DI SAN, windows in, II. 258.

ROCCO, CHURCH OF ST. Notable only for the most interesting pictures by

Tintoret which it contains, namely:

1. _San Rocco before the Pope._ (On the left of the door as we enter.)

A delightful picture in his best manner, but not much labored; and,

like several other pictures in this church, it seems to me to have

been executed at some period of the painter's life when he was either

in ill health, or else had got into a mechanical way of painting, from

having made too little reference to nature for a long time. There is

something stiff and forced in the white draperies on both sides, and a

general character about the whole which I can feel better than I can

describe; but which, if I had been the painter's physician, would have

immediately caused me to order him to shut up his painting-room, and

take a voyage to the Levant, and back again. The figure of the Pope

is, however, extremely beautiful, and is not unworthy, in its jewelled

magnificence, here dark against the sky, of comparison with the figure

of the high priest in the "Presentation," in the Scuola di San Rocco.

2. _Annunciation._ (On the other side of the door, on entering.) A

most disagreeable and dead picture, having all the faults of the age,

and none of the merits of the painter. It must be a matter of future

investigation to me, what could cause the fall of his mind from a

conception so great and so fiery as that of the "Annunciation" in the

Scuola di San Rocco, to this miserable reprint of an idea worn out

centuries before. One of the most inconceivable things in it,

considered as the work of Tintoret, is that where the angel's robe

drifts away behind his limb, one cannot tell by the character of the

outline, or by the tones of the color, whether the cloud comes in

before the robe, or whether the robe cuts upon the cloud. The Virgin

is uglier than that of the Scuola, and not half so real; and the

draperies are crumpled in the most commonplace and ignoble folds. It

is a picture well worth study, as an example of the extent to which

the greatest mind may be betrayed by the abuse of its powers, and the

neglect of its proper food in the study of nature.

3. _Pool of Bethesda._ (On the right side of the church, in its

centre, the lowest of the two pictures which occupy the wall.) A noble

work, but eminently disagreeable, as must be all pictures of this

subject; and with the same character in it of undefinable want, which

I have noticed in the two preceding works. The main figure in it is

the cripple, who has taken up his bed; but the whole effect of this

action is lost by his not turning to Christ, but flinging it on his

shoulder like a triumphant porter with a huge load; and the corrupt

Renaissance architecture, among which the figures are crowded, is both

ugly in itself, and much too small for them. It is worth noticing, for

the benefit of persons who find fault with the perspective of the

Pre-Raphaelites, that the perspective of the brackets beneath these

pillars is utterly absurd; and that, in fine, the presence or absence

of perspective has nothing to do with the merits of a great picture:

not that the perspective of the Pre-Raphaelites _is_ false in any case

that I have examined, the objection being just as untenable as it is

ridiculous.

4. _San Rocco in the Desert._ (Above the last-named picture.) A single

recumbent figure in a not very interesting landscape, deserving less

attention than a picture of St. Martin just opposite to it,--a noble

and knightly figure on horseback by Pordenone, to which I cannot pay a

greater compliment than by saying that I was a considerable time in

doubt whether or not it was another Tintoret.

5. _San Rocco in the Hospital._ (On the right-hand side of the altar.)

There are four vast pictures by Tintoret in the dark choir of this

church, not only important by their size (each being some twenty-five

feet long by ten feet high), but also elaborate compositions; and

remarkable, one for its extraordinary landscape, and the other as the

most studied picture in which the painter has introduced horses in

violent action. In order to show what waste of human mind there is in

these dark churches of Venice, it is worth recording that, as I was

examining these pictures, there came in a party of eighteen German

tourists, not hurried, nor jesting among themselves as large parties

often do, but patiently submitting to their cicerone, and evidently

desirous of doing their duty as intelligent travellers. They sat down

for a long time on the benches of the nave, looked a little at the

"Pool of Bethesda," walked up into the choir and there heard a lecture

of considerable length from their _valet-de-place_ upon some subject

connected with the altar itself, which, being in German, I did not

understand; they then turned and went slowly out of the church, not

one of the whole eighteen ever giving a single glance to any of the

four Tintorets, and only one of them, as far as I saw, even raising

his eyes to the walls on which they hung, and immediately withdrawing

them, with a jaded and _nonchalant_ expression easily interpretable

into "Nothing but old black pictures." The two Tintorets above

noticed, at the end of the church, were passed also without a glance;

and this neglect is not because the pictures have nothing in them

capable of arresting the popular mind, but simply because they are

totally in the dark, or confused among easier and more prominent

objects of attention. This picture, which I have called "St. Rocco in

the Hospital," shows him, I suppose, in his general ministrations at

such places, and is one of the usual representations of a disgusting

subject from which neither Orcagna nor Tintoret seems ever to have

shrunk. It is a very noble picture, carefully composed and highly

wrought; but to me gives no pleasure, first, on account of its

subject, secondly, on account of its dull brown tone all over,--it

being impossible, or nearly so, in such a scene, and at all events

inconsistent with its feeling, to introduce vivid color of any kind.

So it is a brown study of diseased limbs in a close room.

6. _Cattle Piece._ (Above the picture last described.) I can give no

other name to this picture, whose subject I can neither guess nor

discover, the picture being in the dark, and the guide-books leaving

me in the same position. All I can make out of it is, that there is a

noble landscape with cattle and figures. It seems to me the best

landscape of Tintoret's in Venice, except the "Flight into Egypt;" and

is even still more interesting from its savage character, the

principal trees being pines, something like Titian's in his "St.

Francis receiving the Stigmata," and chestnuts on the slopes and in

the hollows of the hills; the animals also seem first-rate. But it is

too high, too much faded, and too much in the dark to be made out. It

seems never to have been rich in color, rather cool and grey, and very

full of light.

7. _Finding of Body of San Rocco._ (On the left-hand side of the

altar.) An elaborate, but somewhat confused picture, with a flying

angel in a blue drapery; but it seemed to me altogether uninteresting,

or perhaps requiring more study than I was able to give it.

8. _San Rocco in Campo d' Armata._ So this picture is called by the

sacristan. I could see no San Rocco in it; nothing but a wild group of

horses and warriors in the most magnificent confusion of fall and

flight ever painted by man. They seem all dashed different ways as if

by a whirlwind; and a whirlwind there must be, or a thunderbolt,

behind them, for a huge tree is torn up and hurled into the air beyond

the central figure, as if it were a shivered lance. Two of the horses

meet in the midst, as if in a tournament; but in madness of fear, not

in hostility; on the horse to the right is a standard-bearer, who

stoops as from some foe behind him, with the lance laid across his

saddle-bow, level, and the flag stretched out behind him as he flies,

like the sail of a ship drifting from its mast; the central horseman,

who meets the shock, of storm, or enemy, whatever it be, is hurled

backwards from his seat, like a stone from a sling; and this figure

with the shattered tree trunk behind it, is the most noble part of the

picture. There is another grand horse on the right, however, also in

full action. Two gigantic figures on foot, on the left, meant to be

nearer than the others, would, it seems to me, have injured the

picture, had they been clearly visible; but time has reduced them to

perfect subordination.

ROCCO, SCUOLA DI SAN, bases of, I. 291, 431; soffit ornaments of, I.

337. An interesting building of the early Renaissance (1517), passing

into Roman Renaissance. The wreaths of leafage about its shafts are

wonderfully delicate and fine, though misplaced.

As regards the pictures which it contains, it is one of the three most

precious buildings in Italy; buildings, I mean, consistently decorated

with a series of paintings at the time of their erection, and still

exhibiting that series in its original order. I suppose there can be

little question, but that the three most important edifices of this

kind in Italy are the Sistine Chapel, the Campo Santo of Pisa, and the

Scuola di San Rocco at Venice: the first is painted by Michael Angelo;

the second by Orcagna, Benozzo Gozzoli, Pietro Laurati, and several

other men whose works are as rare as they are precious; and the third

by Tintoret.

Whatever the traveller may miss in Venice, he should therefore give

unembarrassed attention and unbroken time to the Scuola di San Rocco;

and I shall, accordingly, number the pictures, and note in them, one

by one, what seemed to me most worthy of observation.

There are sixty-two in all, but eight of these are merely of children

or children's heads, and two of unimportant figures. The number of

valuable pictures is fifty-two; arranged on the walls and ceilings of

three rooms, so badly lighted, in consequence of the admirable

arrangements of the Renaissance architect, that it is only in the

early morning that some of the pictures can be seen at all, nor can

they ever be seen but imperfectly. They were all painted, however, for

their places in the dark, and, as compared with Tintoret's other

works, are therefore, for the most part, nothing more than vast

sketches, made to produce, under a certain degree of shadow, the

effect of finished pictures. Their treatment is thus to be considered

as a kind of scene-painting; differing from ordinary scene-painting

only in this, that the effect aimed at is not _that of a natural

scene_ but _a perfect picture_. They differ in this respect from all

other existing works; for there is not, as far as I know, any other

instance in which a great master has consented to work for a room

plunged into almost total obscurity. It is probable that none but

Tintoret would have undertaken the task, and most fortunate that he

was forced to it. For in this magnificent scene-painting we have, of

course, more wonderful examples, both of his handling, and knowledge

of effect, than could ever have been exhibited in finished pictures;

while the necessity of doing much with few strokes keeps his mind so

completely on the stretch throughout the work (while yet the velocity

of production prevented his being wearied), that no other series of

his works exhibits powers so exalted. On the other hand, owing to the

velocity and coarseness of the painting, it is more liable to injury

through drought or damp; and, as the walls have been for years

continually running down with rain, and what little sun gets into the

place contrives to fall all day right on one or other of the pictures,

they are nothing but wrecks of what they were; and the ruins of

paintings originally coarse are not likely ever to be attractive to

the public mind. Twenty or thirty years ago they were taken down to be

retouched; but the man to whom the task was committed providentially

died, and only one of them was spoiled. I have found traces of his

work upon another, but not to an extent very seriously destructive.

The rest of the sixty-two, or, at any rate, all that are in the upper

room, appear entirely intact.

Although, as compared with his other works, they are all very scenic

in execution, there are great differences in their degrees of finish;

and, curiously enough, some on the ceilings and others in the darkest

places in the lower room are very nearly finished pictures, while the

"Agony in the Garden," which is in one of the best lights in the upper

room, appears to have been painted in a couple of hours with a broom

for a brush.

For the traveller's greater convenience, I shall give a rude plan of

the arrangement, and list of the subjects, of each group of pictures

before examining them in detail.

First Group. On the walls of the room on the ground floor.

[Illustration:

1. Annunciation. 5. The Magdalen.

2. Adoration of Magi. 6. St. Mary of Egypt.

3. Flight into Egypt. 7. Circumcision.

4. Massacre of Innocents. 8. Assumption of Virgin.

At the turn of the stairs leading to the upper room:

9. Visitation.]

1. _The Annunciation._ This, which first strikes the eye, is a very

just representative of the whole group, the execution being carried to

the utmost limits of boldness consistent with completion. It is a

well-known picture, and need not therefore be specially described, but

one or two points in it require notice. The face of the Virgin is very

disagreeable to the spectator from below, giving the idea of a woman

about thirty, who had never been handsome. If the face is untouched,

it is the only instance I have ever seen of Tintoret's failing in an

intended effect, for, when seen near, the face is comely and youthful,

and expresses only surprise, instead of the pain and fear of which it

bears the aspect in the distance. I could not get near enough to see

whether it had been retouched. It looks like Tintoret's work, though

rather hard; but, as there are unquestionable marks in the retouching

of this picture, it is possible that some slight restoration of lines

supposed to be faded, entirely alter the distant expression of the

face. One of the evident pieces of repainting is the scarlet of the

Madonna's lap, which is heavy and lifeless. A far more injurious one

is the strip of sky seen through the doorway by which the angel

enters, which has originally been of the deep golden color of the

distance on the left, and which the blundering restorer has daubed

over with whitish blue, so that it looks like a bit of the wall;

luckily he has not touched the outlines of the angel's black wings, on

which the whole expression of the picture depends. This angel and the

group of small cherubs above form a great swinging chain, of which the

dove representing the Holy Spirit forms the bend. The angels in their

flight seem to be attached to this as the train of fire is to a

rocket; all of them appearing to have swooped down with the swiftness

of a falling star.

2. _Adoration of the Magi._ The most finished picture in the Scuola,

except the "Crucifixion," and perhaps the most delightful of the

whole. It unites every source of pleasure that a picture can possess:

the highest elevation of principal subject, mixed with the lowest

detail of picturesque incident; the dignity of the highest ranks of

men, opposed to the simplicity of the lowest; the quietness and

serenity of an incident in cottage life, contrasted with the

turbulence of troops of horsemen and the spiritual power of angels.

The placing of the two doves as principal points of light in the front

of the picture, in order to remind the spectator of the poverty of the

mother whose child is receiving the offerings and adoration of three

monarchs, is one of Tintoret's master touches; the whole scene,

indeed, is conceived in his happiest manner. Nothing can be at once

more humble or more dignified than the bearing of the kings; and there

is a sweet reality given to the whole incident by the Madonna's

stooping forward and lifting her hand in admiration of the vase of

gold which has been set before the Christ, though she does so with

such gentleness and quietness that her dignity is not in the least

injured by the simplicity of the action. As if to illustrate the means

by which the Wise men were brought from the East, the whole picture is

nothing but a large star, of which Christ is the centre; all the

figures, even the timbers of the roof, radiate from the small bright

figure on which the countenances of the flying angels are bent, the

star itself, gleaming through the timbers above, being quite

subordinate. The composition would almost be too artificial were it

not broken by the luminous distance where the troop of horsemen are

waiting for the kings. These, with a dog running at full speed, at

once interrupt the symmetry of the lines, and form a point of relief

from the over concentration of all the rest of the action.

3. _Flight into Egypt._ One of the principal figures here is the

donkey. I have never seen any of the nobler animals--lion, or leopard,

or horse, or dragon--made so sublime as this quiet head of the

domestic ass, chiefly owing to the grand motion in the nostril and

writhing in the ears. The space of the picture is chiefly occupied by

lovely landscape, and the Madonna and St. Joseph are pacing their way

along a shady path upon the banks of a river at the side of the

picture. I had not any conception, until I got near, how much pains

had been taken with the Virgin's head; its expression is as sweet and

as intense as that of any of Raffaelle's, its reality far greater. The

painter seems to have intended that everything should be subordinate

to the beauty of this single head; and the work is a wonderful proof

of the way in which a vast field of canvas may be made conducive to

the interest of a single figure. This is partly accomplished by

slightness of painting, so that on close examination, while there is

everything to astonish in the masterly handling and purpose, there is

not much perfect or very delightful painting; in fact, the two figures

are treated like the living figures in a scene at the theatre, and

finished to perfection, while the landscape is painted as hastily as

the scenes, and with the same kind of opaque size color. It has,

however, suffered as much as any of the series, and it is hardly fair

to judge of its tones and colors in its present state.

4. _Massacre of the Innocents._ The following account of this picture,

given in "Modern Painters," may be useful to the traveller, and is

therefore here repeated. "I have before alluded to the painfulness of

Raffaelle's treatment of the Massacre of the Innocents. Fuseli affirms

of it, that, 'in dramatic gradation he disclosed all the mother

through every image of pity and terror.' If this be so, I think the

philosophical spirit has prevailed over the imaginative. The

imagination never errs; it sees all that is, and all the relations

and bearings of it; but it would not have confused the mortal frenzy

of maternal terror, with various development of maternal character.

Fear, rage, and agony, at their utmost pitch, sweep away all

character: humanity itself would be lost in maternity, the woman would

become the mere personification of animal fury or fear. For this

reason all the ordinary representations of this subject are, I think,

false and cold: the artist has not heard the shrieks, nor mingled with

the fugitives; he has sat down in his study to convulse features

methodically, and philosophize over insanity. Not so Tintoret.

Knowing, or feeling, that the expression of the human face was, in

such circumstances, not to be rendered, and that the effort could only

end in an ugly falsehood, he denies himself all aid from the features,

he feels that if he is to place himself or us in the midst of that

maddened multitude, there can be no time allowed for watching

expression. Still less does he depend on details of murder or

ghastliness of death; there is no blood, no stabbing or cutting, but

there is an awful substitute for these in the chiaroscuro. The scene

is the outer vestibule of a palace, the slippery marble floor is

fearfully barred across by sanguine shadows, so that our eyes seem to

become bloodshot and strained with strange horror and deadly vision; a

lake of life before them, like the burning seen of the doomed Moabite

on the water that came by the way of Edom: a huge flight of stairs,

without parapet, descends on the left; down this rush a crowd of women

mixed with the murderers; the child in the arms of one has been seized

by the limbs, _she hurls herself over the edge, and falls head

downmost, dragging the child out of the grasp by her weight_;--she

will be dashed dead in a second:--close to us is the great struggle; a

heap of the mothers, entangled in one mortal writhe with each other

and the swords; one of the murderers dashed down and crushed beneath

them, the sword of another caught by the blade and dragged at by a

woman's naked hand; the youngest and fairest of the women, her child

just torn away from a death grasp, and clasped to her breast with the

grip of a steel vice, falls backwards, helpless over the heap, right

on the sword points; all knit together and hurled down in one

hopeless, frenzied, furious abandonment of body and soul in the

effort to save. Far back, at the bottom of the stairs, there is

something in the shadow like a heap of clothes. It is a woman, sitting

quiet,--quite quiet,--still as any stone; she looks down steadfastly

on her dead child, laid along on the floor before her, and her hand is

pressed softly upon her brow."

I have nothing to add to the above description of this picture, except

that I believe there may have been some change in the color of the

shadow that crosses the pavement. The chequers of the pavements are,

in the light, golden white and pale grey; in the shadow, red and dark

grey, the white in the sunshine becoming red in the shadow. I formerly

supposed that this was meant to give greater horror to the scene, and

it is very like Tintoret if it be so; but there is a strangeness and

discordance in it which makes me suspect the colors may have changed.

5. _The Magdalen._ This and the picture opposite to it, "St. Mary of

Egypt," have been painted to fill up narrow spaces between the windows

which were not large enough to receive compositions, and yet in which

single figures would have looked awkwardly thrust into the corner.

Tintoret has made these spaces as large as possible by filling them

with landscapes, which are rendered interesting by the introduction of

single figures of very small size. He has not, however, considered his

task, of making a small piece of wainscot look like a large one, worth

the stretch of his powers, and has painted these two landscapes just

as carelessly and as fast as an upholsterer's journeyman finishing a

room at a railroad hotel. The color is for the most part opaque, and

dashed or scrawled on in the manner of a scene-painter; and as during

the whole morning the sun shines upon the one picture, and during the

afternoon upon the other, hues, which were originally thin and

imperfect, are now dried in many places into mere dirt upon the

canvas. With all these drawbacks the pictures are of very high

interest, for although, as I said, hastily and carelessly, they are

not languidly painted; on the contrary, he has been in his hottest and

grandest temper; and in this first one ("Magdalen") the laurel tree,

with its leaves driven hither and thither among flakes of fiery cloud,

has been probably one of the greatest achievements that his hand

performed in landscape: its roots are entangled in underwood; of which

every leaf seems to be articulated, yet all is as wild as if it had

grown there instead of having been painted; there has been a mountain

distance, too, and a sky of stormy light, of which I infinitely regret

the loss, for though its masses of light are still discernible, its

variety of hue is all sunk into a withered brown. There is a curious

piece of execution in the striking of the light upon a brook which

runs under the roots of the laurel in the foreground: these roots are

traced in shadow against the bright surface of the water; another

painter would have drawn the light first, and drawn the dark roots

over it. Tintoret has laid in a brown ground which he has left for the

roots, and painted the water through their interstices with a few

mighty rolls of his brush laden with white.

6. _St. Mary of Egypt._ This picture differs but little in the plan,

from the one opposite, except that St. Mary has her back towards us,

and the Magdalen her face, and that the tree on the other side of the

brook is a palm instead of a laurel. The brook (Jordan?) is, however,

here much more important; and the water painting is exceedingly fine.

Of all painters that I know, in old times, Tintoret is the fondest of

running water; there was a sort of sympathy between it and his own

impetuous spirit. The rest of the landscape is not of much interest,

except so far as it is pleasant to see trunks of trees drawn by single

strokes of the brush.

7. _The Circumcision of Christ._ The custode has some story about this

picture having been painted in imitation of Paul Veronese. I much

doubt if Tintoret ever imitated any body; but this picture is the

expression of his perception of what Veronese delighted in, the

nobility that there may be in mere golden tissue and colored drapery.

It is, in fact, a picture of the moral power of gold and color; and

the chief use of the attendant priest is to support upon his shoulders

the crimson robe, with its square tablets of black and gold; and yet

nothing is withdrawn from the interest or dignity of the scene.

Tintoret has taken immense pains with the head of the high-priest. I

know not any existing old man's head so exquisitely tender, or so

noble in its lines. He receives the Infant Christ in his arms

kneeling, and looking down upon the Child with infinite veneration and

love; and the flashing of golden rays from its head is made the centre

of light, and all interest. The whole picture is like a golden charger

to receive the Child; the priest's dress is held up behind him, that

it may occupy larger space; the tables and floor are covered with

chequer-work; the shadows of the temple are filled with brazen lamps;

and above all are hung masses of curtains, whose crimson folds are

strewn over with golden flakes. Next to the "Adoration of the Magi"

this picture is the most laboriously finished of the Scuola di San

Rocco, and it is unquestionably the highest existing type of the

sublimity which may be thrown into the treatment of accessaries of

dress and decoration.

8. _Assumption of the Virgin._ On the tablet or panel of stone which

forms the side of the tomb out of which the Madonna rises, is this

inscription, in large letters, REST. ANTONIUS FLORIAN, 1834. Exactly

in proportion to a man's idiocy, is always the size of the letters in

which he writes his name on the picture that he spoils. The old

mosaicists in St. Mark's have not, in a single instance, as far as I

know, signed their names; but the spectator who wishes to know who

destroyed the effect of the nave, may see his name inscribed, twice

over, in letters half a foot high, BARTOLOMEO BOZZA. I have never seen

Tintoret's name signed, except in the great "Crucifixion;" but this

Antony Florian, I have no doubt, repainted the whole side of the tomb

that he might put his name on it. The picture is, of course, ruined

wherever he touched it; that is to say, half over; the circle of

cherubs in the sky is still pure; and the design of the great painter

is palpable enough yet in the grand flight of the horizontal angel, on

whom the Madonna half leans as she ascends. It has been a noble

picture, and is a grievous loss; but, happily, there are so many pure

ones, that we need not spend time in gleaning treasures out of the

ruins of this.

9. _Visitation._ A small picture, painted in his very best manner;

exquisite in its simplicity, unrivalled in vigor, well preserved, and,

as a piece of painting, certainly one of the most precious in Venice.

Of course it does not show any of his high inventive powers; nor can a

picture of four middle-sized figures be made a proper subject of

comparison with large canvases containing forty or fifty; but it is,

for this very reason, painted with such perfect ease, and yet with no

slackness either of affection or power, that there is no picture that

I covet so much. It is, besides, altogether free from the Renaissance

taint of dramatic effect. The gestures are as simple and natural as

Giotto's, only expressed by grander lines, such as none but Tintoret

ever reached. The draperies are dark, relieved against a light sky,

the horizon being excessively low, and the outlines of the drapery so

severe, that the intervals between the figures look like ravines

between great rocks, and have all the sublimity of an Alpine valley at

twilight. This precious picture is hung about thirty feet above the

eye, but by looking at it in a strong light, it is discoverable that

the Saint Elizabeth is dressed in green and crimson, the Virgin in the

peculiar red which all great colorists delight in--a sort of glowing

brick-color or brownish scarlet, opposed to rich golden brownish

black; and both have white kerchiefs, or drapery, thrown over their

shoulders. Zacharias leans on his staff behind them in a black dress

with white sleeves. The stroke of brilliant white light, which

outlines the knee of Saint Elizabeth, is a curious instance of the

habit of the painter to relieve his dark forms by a sort of halo of

more vivid light, which, until lately, one would have been apt to

suppose a somewhat artificial and unjustifiable means of effect. The

daguerreotype has shown, what the naked eye never could, that the

instinct of the great painter was true, and that there is actually

such a sudden and sharp line of light round the edges of dark objects

relieved by luminous space.

Opposite this picture is a most precious Titian, the "Annunciation,"

full of grace and beauty. I think the Madonna one of the sweetest

figures he ever painted. But if the traveller has entered at all into

the spirit of Tintoret, he will immediately feel the comparative

feebleness and conventionality of the Titian. Note especially the mean

and petty folds of the angel's drapery, and compare them with the

draperies of the opposite picture. The larger pictures at the sides of

the stairs by Zanchi and Negri, are utterly worthless.

[Illustration: Second Group. On the walls of the upper room.

10. Adoration of Shepherds. 17. Resurrection of Lazarus.

11. Baptism. 18. Ascension.

12. Resurrection. 19. Pool of Bethesda.

13. Agony in Garden. 20. Temptation.

14. Last Supper. 21. St. Rocco.

15. Altar Piece: St. Rocco. 22. St. Sebastian.

16. Miracle of Loaves.]

10. _The Adoration of the Shepherds._ This picture commences the

series of the upper room, which, as already noticed, is painted with

far less care than that of the lower. It is one of the painter's

inconceivable caprices that the only canvases that are in good light

should be covered in this hasty manner, while those in the dungeon

below, and on the ceiling above, are all highly labored. It is,

however, just possible that the covering of these walls may have been

an after-thought, when he had got tired of his work. They are also,

for the most part, illustrative of a principle of which I am more and

more convinced every day, that historical and figure pieces ought not

to be made vehicles for effects of light. The light which is fit for a

historical picture is that tempered semi-sunshine of which, in

general, the works of Titian are the best examples, and of which the

picture we have just passed, "The Visitation," is a perfect example

from the hand of one greater than Titian; so also the three

"Crucifixions" of San Rocco, San Cassano, and St. John and Paul; the

"Adoration of the Magi" here; and, in general, the finest works of

the master; but Tintoret was not a man to work in any formal or

systematic manner; and, exactly like Turner, we find him recording

every effect which Nature herself displays. Still he seems to regard

the pictures which deviate from the great general principle of

colorists rather as "tours de force" than as sources of pleasure; and

I do not think there is any instance of his having worked out one of

these tricky pictures with thorough affection, except only in the case

of the "Marriage of Cana." By tricky pictures, I mean those which

display light entering in different directions, and attract the eye to

the effects rather than to the figure which displays them. Of this

treatment, we have already had a marvellous instance in the

candle-light picture of the "Last Supper" in San Giorgio Maggiore.

This "Adoration of the Shepherds" has probably been nearly as

wonderful when first painted: the Madonna is seated on a kind of

hammock floor made of rope netting, covered with straw; it divides the

picture into two stories, of which the uppermost contains the Virgin,

with two women who are adoring Christ, and shows light entering from

above through the loose timbers of the roof of the stable, as well as

through the bars of a square window; the lower division shows this

light falling behind the netting upon the stable floor, occupied by a

cock and a cow, and against this light are relieved the figures of the

shepherds, for the most part in demi-tint, but with flakes of more

vigorous sunshine falling here and there upon them from above. The

optical illusion has originally been as perfect as one of Hunt's best

interiors; but it is most curious that no part of the work seems to

have been taken any pleasure in by the painter; it is all by his hand,

but it looks as if he had been bent only on getting over the ground.

It is literally a piece of scene-painting, and is exactly what we

might fancy Tintoret to have done, had he been forced to paint scenes

at a small theatre at a shilling a day. I cannot think that the whole

canvas, though fourteen feet high and ten wide, or thereabouts, could

have taken him more than a couple of days to finish: and it is very

noticeable that exactly in proportion to the brilliant effects of

light is the coarseness of the execution, for the figures of the

Madonna and of the women above, which are not in any strong effect,

are painted with some care, while the shepherds and the cow are alike

slovenly; and the latter, which is in full sunshine, is recognizable

for a cow more by its size and that of its horns, than by any care

given to its form. It is interesting to contrast this slovenly and

mean sketch with the ass's head in the "Flight into Egypt," on which

the painter exerted his full power; as an effect of light, however,

the work is, of course, most interesting. One point in the treatment

is especially noticeable: there is a peacock in the rack beyond the

cow; and under other circumstances, one cannot doubt that Tintoret

would have liked a peacock in full color, and would have painted it

green and blue with great satisfaction. It is sacrificed to the light,

however, and is painted in warm grey, with a dim eye or two in the

tail: this process is exactly analogous to Turner's taking the colors

out of the flags of his ships in the "Gosport." Another striking point

is the litter with which the whole picture is filled in order more to

confuse the eye: there is straw sticking from the roof, straw all over

the hammock floor, and straw struggling hither and thither all over

the floor itself; and, to add to the confusion, the glory around the

head of the infant, instead of being united and serene, is broken into

little bits, and is like a glory of chopped straw. But the most

curious thing, after all, is the want of delight in any of the

principal figures, and the comparative meanness and commonplaceness of

even the folds of the drapery. It seems as if Tintoret had determined

to make the shepherds as uninteresting as possible; but one does not

see why their very clothes should be ill painted, and their

disposition unpicturesque. I believe, however, though it never struck

me until I had examined this picture, that this is one of the

painter's fixed principles: he does not, with German sentimentality,

make shepherds and peasants graceful or sublime, but he purposely

vulgarizes them, not by making their actions or their faces boorish or

disagreeable, but rather by painting them ill, and composing their

draperies tamely. As far as I recollect at present, the principle is

universal with him; exactly in proportion to the dignity of character

is the beauty of the painting. He will not put out his strength upon

any man belonging to the lower classes; and, in order to know what the

painter is, one must see him at work on a king, a senator, or a

saint. The curious connexion of this with the aristocratic tendencies

of the Venetian nation, when we remember that Tintoret was the

greatest man whom that nation produced, may become very interesting,

if followed out. I forgot to note that, though the peacock is painted

with great regardlessness of color, there is a feature in it which no

common painter would have observed,--the peculiar flatness of the

back, and undulation of the shoulders: the bird's body is all there,

though its feathers are a good deal neglected; and the same thing is

noticeable in a cock who is pecking among the straw near the

spectator, though in other respects a shabby cock enough. The fact is,

I believe, he had made his shepherds so commonplace that he dare not

paint his animals well, otherwise one would have looked at nothing in

the picture but the peacock, cock, and cow. I cannot tell what the

shepherds are offering; they look like milk bowls, but they are

awkwardly held up, with such twistings of body as would have certainly

spilt the milk. A woman in front has a basket of eggs; but this I

imagine to be merely to keep up the rustic character of the scene, and

not part of the shepherd's offerings.

11. _Baptism._ There is more of the true picture quality in this work

than in the former one, but still very little appearance of enjoyment

or care. The color is for the most part grey and uninteresting, and

the figures are thin and meagre in form, and slightly painted; so much

so, that of the nineteen figures in the distance, about a dozen are

hardly worth calling figures, and the rest are so sketched and

flourished in that one can hardly tell which is which. There is one

point about it very interesting to a landscape painter: the river is

seen far into the distance, with a piece of copse bordering it; the

sky beyond is dark, but the water nevertheless receives a brilliant

reflection from some unseen rent in the clouds, so brilliant, that

when I was first at Venice, not being accustomed to Tintoret's slight

execution, or to see pictures so much injured, I took this piece of

water for a piece of sky. The effect as Tintoret has arranged it, is

indeed somewhat unnatural, but it is valuable as showing his

recognition of a principle unknown to half the historical painters of

the present day,--that the reflection seen in the water is totally

different from the object seen above it, and that it is very possible

to have a bright light in reflection where there appears nothing but

darkness to be reflected. The clouds in the sky itself are round,

heavy, and lightless, and in a great degree spoil what would otherwise

be a fine landscape distance. Behind the rocks on the right, a single

head is seen, with a collar on the shoulders: it seems to be intended

for a portrait of some person connected with the picture.

12. _Resurrection._ Another of the "effect of light" pictures, and not

a very striking one, the best part of it being the two distant figures

of the Maries seen in the dawn of the morning. The conception of the

Resurrection itself is characteristic of the worst points of Tintoret.

His impetuosity is here in the wrong place; Christ bursts out of the

rock like a thunderbolt, and the angels themselves seem likely to be

crushed under the rent stones of the tomb. Had the figure of Christ

been sublime, this conception might have been accepted; but, on the

contrary, it is weak, mean, and painful; and the whole picture is

languidly or roughly painted, except only the fig-tree at the top of

the rock, which, by a curious caprice, is not only drawn in the

painter's best manner, but has golden ribs to all its leaves, making

it look like one of the beautiful crossed or chequered patterns, of

which he is so fond in his dresses; the leaves themselves being a dark

olive brown.

13. _The Agony in the Garden._ I cannot at present understand the

order of these subjects; but they may have been misplaced. This, of

all the San Rocco pictures, is the most hastily painted, but it is

not, like those we have been passing, _clodly_ painted; it seems to

have been executed altogether with a hearth-broom, and in a few hours.

It is another of the "effects," and a very curious one; the Angel who

bears the cup to Christ is surrounded by a red halo; yet the light

which falls upon the shoulders of the sleeping disciples, and upon the

leaves of the olive-trees, is cool and silvery, while the troop coming

up to seize Christ are seen by torch-light. Judas, who is the second

figure, points to Christ, but turns his head away as he does so, as

unable to look at him. This is a noble touch; the foliage is also

exceedingly fine, though what kind of olive-tree bears such leaves I

know not, each of them being about the size of a man's hand. If there

be any which bear such foliage, their olives must be the size of

cocoa-nuts. This, however, is true only of the underwood, which is,

perhaps, not meant for olive. There are some taller trees at the top

of the picture, whose leaves are of a more natural size. On closely

examining the figures of the troops on the left, I find that the

distant ones are concealed, all but the limbs, by a sort of arch of

dark color, which is now so injured, that I cannot tell whether it was

foliage or ground: I suppose it to have been a mass of close foliage,

through which the troop is breaking its way; Judas rather showing them

the path, than actually pointing to Christ, as it is written, "Judas,

who betrayed him, knew the place." St. Peter, as the most zealous of

the three disciples, the only one who was to endeavor to defend his

Master, is represented as awakening and turning his head toward the

troop, while James and John are buried in profound slumber, laid in

magnificent languor among the leaves. The picture is singularly

impressive, when seen far enough off, as an image of thick forest

gloom amidst the rich and tender foliage of the South; the leaves,

however, tossing as in disturbed night air, and the flickering of the

torches, and of the branches, contrasted with the steady flame which

from the Angel's presence is spread over the robes of the disciples.

The strangest feature in the whole is that the Christ also is

represented as sleeping. The angel seems to appear to him in a dream.

14. _The Last Supper._ A most unsatisfactory picture; I think about

the worst I know of Tintoret's, where there is no appearance of

retouching. He always makes the disciples in this scene too vulgar;

they are here not only vulgar, but diminutive, and Christ is at the

end of the table, the smallest figure of them all. The principal

figures are two mendicants sitting on steps in front; a kind of

supporters, but I suppose intended to be waiting for the fragments; a

dog, in still more earnest expectation, is watching the movements of

the disciples, who are talking together, Judas having just gone out.

Christ is represented as giving what one at first supposes is the sop

to Judas, but as the disciple who received it has a glory, and there

are only eleven at table, it is evidently the Sacramental bread. The

room in which they are assembled is a sort of large kitchen, and the

host is seen employed at a dresser in the background. This picture has

not only been originally poor, but is one of those exposed all day to

the sun, and is dried into mere dusty canvas: where there was once

blue, there is now nothing.

15. _Saint Rocco in Glory._ One of the worst order of Tintorets, with

apparent smoothness and finish, yet languidly painted, as if in

illness or fatigue; very dark and heavy in tone also; its figures, for

the most part, of an awkward middle size, about five feet high, and

very uninteresting. St. Rocco ascends to heaven, looking down upon a

crowd of poor and sick persons who are blessing and adoring him. One

of these, kneeling at the bottom, is very nearly a repetition, though

a careless and indolent one, of that of St. Stephen, in St. Giorgio

Maggiore, and of the central figure in the "Paradise" of the Ducal

Palace. It is a kind of lay figure, of which he seems to have been

fond; its clasped hands are here shockingly painted--I should think

unfinished. It forms the only important light at the bottom, relieved

on a dark ground; at the top of the picture, the figure of St. Rocco

is seen in shadow against the light of the sky, and all the rest is in

confused shadow. The commonplaceness of this composition is curiously

connected with the languor of thought and touch throughout the work.

16. _Miracle of the Loaves._ Hardly anything but a fine piece of

landscape is here left; it is more exposed to the sun than any other

picture in the room, and its draperies having been, in great part,

painted in blue, are now mere patches of the color of starch; the

scene is also very imperfectly conceived. The twenty-one figures,

including Christ and his Disciples, very ill represent a crowd of

seven thousand; still less is the marvel of the miracle expressed by

perfect ease and rest of the reclining figures in the foreground, who

do not so much as look surprised; considered merely as reclining

figures, and as pieces of effect in half light, they have once been

fine. The landscape, which represents the slope of a woody hill, has a

very grand and far-away look. Behind it is a great space of streaky

sky, almost prismatic in color, rosy and golden clouds covering up its

blue, and some fine vigorous trees thrown against it; painted in about

ten minutes each, however, by curly touches of the brush, and looking

rather more like seaweed than foliage.

17. _Resurrection of Lazarus._ Very strangely, and not impressively

conceived. Christ is half reclining, half sitting, at the bottom of

the picture, while Lazarus is disencumbered of his grave-clothes at

the top of it; the scene being the side of a rocky hill, and the mouth

of the tomb probably once visible in the shadow on the left; but all

that is now discernible is a man having his limbs unbound, as if

Christ were merely ordering a prisoner to be loosed. There appears

neither awe nor agitation, nor even much astonishment, in any of the

figures of the group; but the picture is more vigorous than any of the

three last mentioned, and the upper part of it is quite worthy of the

master, especially its noble fig-tree and laurel, which he has

painted, in one of his usual fits of caprice, as carefully as that in

the "Resurrection of Christ," opposite. Perhaps he has some meaning in

this; he may have been thinking of the verse, "Behold the fig-tree,

and all the trees; when they now shoot forth," &c. In the present

instance, the leaves are dark only, and have no golden veins. The

uppermost figures also come dark against the sky, and would form a

precipitous mass, like a piece of the rock itself, but that they are

broken in upon by one of the limbs of Lazarus, bandaged and in full

light, which, to my feeling, sadly injures the picture, both as a

disagreeable object, and a light in the wrong place. The grass and

weeds are, throughout, carefully painted, but the lower figures are of

little interest, and the face of the Christ a grievous failure.

18. _The Ascension._ I have always admired this picture, though it is

very slight and thin in execution, and cold in color; but it is

remarkable for its thorough effect of open air, and for the sense of

motion and clashing in the wings of the Angels which sustain the

Christ: they owe this effect a good deal to the manner in which they

are set, edge on; all seem like sword-blades cutting the air. It is

the most curious in conception of all the pictures in the Scuola, for

it represents, beneath the Ascension, a kind of epitome of what took

place before the Ascension. In the distance are two Apostles walking,

meant, I suppose, for the two going to Emmaus; nearer are a group

round a table, to remind us of Christ appearing to them as they sat at

meat; and in the foreground is a single reclining figure of, I

suppose, St. Peter, because we are told that "he was seen of Cephas,

then of the twelve:" but this interpretation is doubtful; for why

should not the vision by the Lake of Tiberias be expressed also? And

the strange thing of all is the scene, for Christ ascended from the

Mount of Olives; but the Disciples are walking, and the table is set,

in a little marshy and grassy valley, like some of the bits near

Maison Neuve on the Jura, with a brook running through it, so

capitally expressed, that I believe it is this which makes me so fond

of the picture. The reflections are as scientific in the diminution,

in the image, of large masses of bank above, as any of Turner's, and

the marshy and reedy ground looks as if one would sink into it; but

what all this has to do with the Ascension I cannot see. The figure of

Christ is not undignified, but by no means either interesting or

sublime.

19. _Pool of Bethesda._ I have no doubt the principal figures have

been repainted; but as the colors are faded, and the subject

disgusting, I have not paid this picture sufficient attention to say

how far the injury extends; nor need any one spend time upon it,

unless after having first examined all the other Tintorets in Venice.

All the great Italian painters appear insensible to the feeling of

disgust at disease; but this study of the population of an hospital is

without any points of contrast, and I wish Tintoret had not

condescended to paint it. This and the six preceding paintings have

all been uninteresting,--I believe chiefly owing to the observance in

them of Sir Joshua's rule for the heroic, "that drapery is to be mere

drapery, and not silk, nor satin, nor brocade." However wise such a

rule may be when applied to works of the purest religious art, it is

anything but wise as respects works of color. Tintoret is never quite

himself unless he has fur or velvet, or rich stuff of one sort or the

other, or jewels, or armor, or something that he can put play of color

into, among his figures, and not dead folds of linsey-woolsey; and I

believe that even the best pictures of Raffaelle and Angelico are not

a little helped by their hems of robes, jewelled crowns, priests'

copes, and so on; and the pictures that have nothing of this kind in

them, as for instance the "Transfiguration," are to my mind not a

little dull.

20. _Temptation._ This picture singularly illustrates what has just

been observed; it owes great part of its effect to the lustre of the

jewels in the armlet of the evil angel, and to the beautiful colors of

his wings. These are slight accessaries apparently, but they enhance

the value of all the rest, and they have evidently been enjoyed by the

painter. The armlet is seen by reflected light, its stones shining by

inward lustre; this occult fire being the only hint given of the real

character of the Tempter, who is otherways represented in the form of

a beautiful angel, though the face is sensual: we can hardly tell how

far it was intended to be therefore expressive of evil; for Tintoret's

good angels have not always the purest features; but there is a

peculiar subtlety in this telling of the story by so slight a

circumstance as the glare of the jewels in the darkness. It is curious

to compare this imagination with that of the mosaics in St. Mark's, in

which Satan is a black monster, with horns, and head, and tail,

complete. The whole of the picture is powerfully and carefully

painted, though very broadly; it is a strong effect of light, and

therefore, as usual, subdued in color. The painting of the stones in

the foreground I have always thought, and still think, the best piece

of rock drawing before Turner, and the most amazing instance of

Tintoret's perceptiveness afforded by any of his pictures.

21. _St. Rocco._ Three figures occupy the spandrils of the window

above this and the following picture, painted merely in light and

shade, two larger than life, one rather smaller. I believe these to be

by Tintoret; but as they are quite in the dark, so that the execution

cannot be seen, and very good designs of the kind have been furnished

by other masters, I cannot answer for them. The figure of St. Rocco,

as well as its companion, St. Sebastian, is colored; they occupy the

narrow intervals between the windows, and are of course invisible

under ordinary circumstances. By a great deal of straining of the

eyes, and sheltering them with the hand from the light, some little

idea of the design may be obtained. The "St. Rocco" is a fine figure,

though rather coarse, but, at all events, worth as much light as would

enable us to see it.

22. _St. Sebastian._ This, the companion figure, is one of the finest

things in the whole room, and assuredly the most majestic Saint

Sebastian in existence; as far as mere humanity can be majestic, for

there is no effort at any expression of angelic or saintly

resignation; the effort is simply to realize the fact of the

martyrdom, and it seems to me that this is done to an extent not even

attempted by any other painter. I never saw a man die a violent death,

and therefore cannot say whether this figure be true or not, but it

gives the grandest and most intense impression of truth. The figure is

dead, and well it may be, for there is one arrow through the forehead

and another through the heart; but the eyes are open, though glazed,

and the body is rigid in the position in which it last stood, the left

arm raised and the left limb advanced, something in the attitude of a

soldier sustaining an attack under his shield, while the dead eyes are

still turned in the direction from which the arrows came: but the most

characteristic feature is the way these arrows are fixed. In the

common martyrdoms of St. Sebastian they are stuck into him here and

there like pins, as if they had been shot from a great distance and

had come faltering down, entering the flesh but a little way, and

rather bleeding the saint to death than mortally wounding him; but

Tintoret had no such ideas about archery. He must have seen bows drawn

in battle, like that of Jehu when he smote Jehoram between the

harness: all the arrows in the saint's body lie straight in the same

direction, broad-feathered and strong-shafted, and sent apparently

with the force of thunderbolts; every one of them has gone through him

like a lance, two through the limbs, one through the arm, one through

the heart, and the last has crashed through the forehead, nailing the

head to the tree behind as if it had been dashed in by a

sledge-hammer. The face, in spite of its ghastliness, is beautiful,

and has been serene; and the light which enters first and glistens on

the plumes of the arrows, dies softly away upon the curling hair, and

mixes with the glory upon the forehead. There is not a more remarkable

picture in Venice, and yet I do not suppose that one in a thousand of

the travellers who pass through the Scuola so much as perceives there

is a picture in the place which it occupies.

[Illustration: Third Group. On the roof of the upper room.

23. Moses striking the Rock. 29. Elijah.

24. Plague of Serpents. 30. Jonah.

25. Fall of Manna. 31. Joshua.

26. Jacob's Dream. 32. Sacrifice of Isaac.

27. Ezekiel's Vision. 33. Elijah at the Brook.

28. Fall of Man. 34. Paschal Feast.

35. Elisha feeding the People.]

23. _Moses striking the Rock._ We now come to the series of pictures

upon which the painter concentrated the strength he had reserved for

the upper room; and in some sort wisely, for, though it is not

pleasant to examine pictures on a ceiling, they are at least

distinctly visible without straining the eyes against the light. They

are carefully conceived and thoroughly well painted in proportion to

their distance from the eye. This carefulness of thought is apparent

at a glance: the "Moses striking the Rock" embraces the whole of the

seventeenth chapter of Exodus, and even something more, for it is not

from that chapter, but from parallel passages that we gather the facts

of the impatience of Moses and the wrath of God at the waters of

Meribah; both which facts are shown by the leaping of the stream out

of the rock half-a-dozen ways at once, forming a great arch over the

head of Moses, and by the partial veiling of the countenance of the

Supreme Being. This latter is the most painful part of the whole

picture, at least as it is seen from below; and I believe that in some

repairs of the roof this head must have been destroyed and repainted.

It is one of Tintoret's usual fine thoughts that the lower part of the

figure is veiled, not merely by clouds, but in a kind of watery

sphere, showing the Deity coming to the Israelites at that particular

moment as the Lord of the Rivers and of the Fountain of the Waters.

The whole figure, as well as that of Moses and the greater number of

those in the foreground, is at once dark and warm, black and red being

the prevailing colors, while the distance is bright gold touched with

blue, and seems to open into the picture like a break of blue sky

after rain. How exquisite is this expression, by mere color, of the

main force of the fact represented! that is to say, joy and

refreshment after sorrow and scorching heat. But, when we examine of

what this distance consists, we shall find still more cause for

admiration. The blue in it is not the blue of sky, it is obtained by

blue stripes upon white tents glowing in the sunshine; and in front of

these tents is seen that great battle with Amalek of which the account

is given in the remainder of the chapter, and for which the Israelites

received strength in the streams which ran out of the rock in Horeb.

Considered merely as a picture, the opposition of cool light to warm

shadow is one of the most remarkable pieces of color in the Scuola,

and the great mass of foliage which waves over the rocks on the left

appears to have been elaborated with his highest power and his most

sublime invention. But this noble passage is much injured, and now

hardly visible.

24. _Plague of Serpents._ The figures in the distance are remarkably

important in this picture, Moses himself being among them; in fact,

the whole scene is filled chiefly with middle-sized figures, in order

to increase the impression of space. It is interesting to observe the

difference in the treatment of this subject by the three great

painters, Michael Angelo, Rubens, and Tintoret. The first two, equal

to the latter in energy, had less love of liberty: they were fond of

binding their compositions into knots, Tintoret of scattering his far

and wide: they all alike preserve the unity of composition, but the

unity in the first two is obtained by binding, and that of the last by

springing from one source; and, together with this feeling, comes his

love of space, which makes him less regard the rounding and form of

objects themselves, than their relations of light and shade and

distance. Therefore Rubens and Michael Angelo made the fiery serpents

huge boa constrictors, and knotted the sufferers together with them.

Tintoret does not like to be so bound; so he makes the serpents little

flying and fluttering monsters like lampreys with wings; and the

children of Israel, instead of being thrown into convulsed and

writhing groups, are scattered, fainting in the fields, far away in

the distance. As usual, Tintoret's conception, while thoroughly

characteristic of himself, is also truer to the words of Scripture. We

are told that "the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they

_bit_ the people;" we are not told that they crushed the people to

death. And while thus the truest, it is also the most terrific

conception. M. Angelo's would be terrific if one could believe in it:

but our instinct tells us that boa constrictors do not come in armies;

and we look upon the picture with as little emotion as upon the handle

of a vase, or any other form worked out of serpents, where there is no

probability of serpents actually occurring. But there is a probability

in Tintoret's conception. We feel that it is not impossible that there

should come up a swarm of these small winged reptiles: and their

horror is not diminished by their smallness: not that they have any of

the grotesque terribleness of German invention; they might have been

made infinitely uglier with small pains, but it is their

_veritableness_ which makes them awful. They have triangular heads

with sharp beaks or muzzle; and short, rather thick bodies, with bony

processes down the back like those of sturgeons; and small wings

spotted with orange and black; and round glaring eyes, not very large,

but very ghastly, with an intense delight in biting expressed in them.

(It is observable, that the Venetian painter has got his main idea of

them from the sea-horses and small reptiles of the Lagoons.) These

monsters are fluttering and writhing about everywhere, fixing on

whatever they come near with their sharp venomous heads; and they are

coiling about on the ground, and all the shadows and thickets are full

of them, so that there is no escape anywhere: and, in order to give

the idea of greater extent to the plague, Tintoret has not been

content with one horizon; I have before mentioned the excessive

strangeness of this composition, in having a cavern open in the right

of the foreground, through which is seen another sky and another

horizon. At the top of the picture, the Divine Being is seen borne by

angels, apparently passing over the congregation in wrath, involved in

masses of dark clouds; while, behind, an Angel of mercy is descending

toward Moses, surrounded by a globe of white light. This globe is

hardly seen from below; it is not a common glory, but a transparent

sphere, like a bubble, which not only envelopes the angel, but crosses

the figure of Moses, throwing the upper part of it into a subdued pale

color, as if it were crossed by a sunbeam. Tintoret is the only

painter who plays these tricks with transparent light, the only man

who seems to have perceived the effects of sunbeams, mists, and

clouds, in the far away atmosphere; and to have used what he saw on

towers, clouds, or mountains, to enhance the sublimity of his figures.

The whole upper part of this picture is magnificent, less with respect

to individual figures, than for the drift of its clouds, and

originality and complication of its light and shade; it is something

like Raffaelle's "Vision of Ezekiel," but far finer. It is difficult

to understand how any painter, who could represent floating clouds so

nobly as he has done here, could ever paint the odd, round, pillowy

masses which so often occur in his more carelessly designed sacred

subjects. The lower figures are not so interesting, and the whole is

painted with a view to effect from below, and gains little by close

examination.

25. _Fall of Manna._ In none of these three large compositions has the

painter made the slightest effort at expression in the human

countenance; everything is done by gesture, and the faces of the

people who are drinking from the rock, dying from the serpent-bites,

and eating the manna, are all alike as calm as if nothing was

happening; in addition to this, as they are painted for distant

effect, the heads are unsatisfactory and coarse when seen near, and

perhaps in this last picture the more so, and yet the story is

exquisitely told. We have seen in the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore

another example of his treatment of it, where, however, the gathering

of manna is a subordinate employment, but here it is principal. Now,

observe, we are told of the manna, that it was found in the morning;

that then there lay round about the camp a small round thing like the

hoar-frost, and that "when the sun waxed hot it melted." Tintoret has

endeavored, therefore, first of all, to give the idea of coolness; the

congregation are reposing in a soft green meadow, surrounded by blue

hills, and there are rich trees above them, to the branches of one of

which is attached a great grey drapery to catch the manna as it comes

down. In any other picture such a mass of drapery would assuredly have

had some vivid color, but here it is grey; the fields are cool frosty

green, the mountains cold blue, and, to complete the expression and

meaning of all this, there is a most important point to be noted in

the form of the Deity, seen above, through an opening in the clouds.

There are at least ten or twelve other pictures in which the form of

the Supreme Being occurs, to be found in the Scuola di San Rocco

alone; and in every one of these instances it is richly colored, the

garments being generally red and blue, but in this picture of the

manna the figure is _snow white_. Thus the painter endeavors to show

the Deity as the giver of bread, just as in the "Striking of the Rock"

we saw that he represented Him as the Lord of the rivers, the

fountains, and the waters. There is one other very sweet incident at

the bottom of the picture; four or five sheep, instead of pasturing,

turn their heads aside to catch the manna as it comes down, or seem to

be licking it off each other's fleeces. The tree above, to which the

drapery is tied, is the most delicate and delightful piece of leafage

in all the Scuola; it has a large sharp leaf, something like that of a

willow, but five times the size.

26. _Jacob's Dream._ A picture which has good effect from below, but

gains little when seen near. It is an embarrassing one for any

painter, because angels always look awkward going up and down stairs;

one does not see the use of their wings. Tintoret has thrown them into

buoyant and various attitudes, but has evidently not treated the

subject with delight; and it is seen to all the more disadvantage

because just above the painting of the "Ascension," in which the full

fresh power of the painter is developed. One would think this latter

picture had been done just after a walk among hills, for it is full of

the most delicate effects of transparent cloud, more or less veiling

the faces and forms of the angels, and covering with white light the

silvery sprays of the palms, while the clouds in the "Jacob's Dream"

are the ordinary rotundities of the studio.

27. _Ezekiel's Vision._ I suspect this has been repainted, it is so

heavy and dead in color; a fault, however, observable in many of the

small pictures on the ceiling, and perhaps the natural result of the

fatigue of such a mind as Tintoret's. A painter who threw such intense

energy into some of his works can hardly but have been languid in

others in a degree never experienced by the more tranquil minds of

less powerful workmen; and when this languor overtook him whilst he

was at work on pictures where a certain space had to be covered by

mere force of arm, this heaviness of color could hardly but have been

the consequence: it shows itself chiefly in reds and other hot hues,

many of the pictures in the Ducal Palace also displaying it in a

painful degree. This "Ezekiel's Vision" is, however, in some measure

worthy of the master, in the wild and horrible energy with which the

skeletons are leaping up about the prophet; but it might have been

less horrible and more sublime, no attempt being made to represent the

space of the Valley of Dry Bones, and the whole canvas being occupied

only by eight figures, of which five are half skeletons. It it is

strange that, in such a subject, the prevailing hues should be red and

brown.

28. _Fall of Man._ The two canvases last named are the most

considerable in size upon the roof, after the centre pieces. We now

come to the smaller subjects which surround the "Striking the Rock;"

of these this "Fall of Man" is the best, and I should think it very

fine anywhere but in the Scuola di San Rocco; there is a grand light

on the body of Eve, and the vegetation is remarkably rich, but the

faces are coarse, and the composition uninteresting. I could not get

near enough to see what the grey object is upon which Eve appears to

be sitting, nor could I see any serpent. It is made prominent in the

picture of the Academy of this same subject, so that I suppose it is

hidden in the darkness, together with much detail which it would be

necessary to discover in order to judge the work justly.

29. _Elijah (?)._ A prophet holding down his face, which is covered

with his hand. God is talking with him, apparently in rebuke. The

clothes on his breast are rent, and the action of the figures might

suggest the idea of the scene between the Deity and Elijah at Horeb:

but there is no suggestion of the past magnificent scenery,--of the

wind, the earthquake, or the fire; so that the conjecture is good for

very little. The painting is of small interest; the faces are vulgar,

and the draperies have too much vapid historical dignity to be

delightful.

30. _Jonah._ The whale here occupies fully one-half of the canvas;

being correspondent in value with a landscape background. His mouth is

as large as a cavern, and yet, unless the mass of red color in the

foreground be a piece of drapery, his tongue is too large for it. He

seems to have lifted Jonah out upon it, and not yet drawn it back, so

that it forms a kind of crimson cushion for him to kneel upon in his

submission to the Deity. The head to which this vast tongue belongs is

sketched in somewhat loosely, and there is little remarkable about it

except its size, nor much in the figures, though the submissiveness of

Jonah is well given. The great thought of Michael Angelo renders one

little charitable to any less imaginative treatment of this subject.

31. _Joshua (?)._ This is a most interesting picture, and it is a

shame that its subject is not made out, for it is not a common one.

The figure has a sword in its hand, and looks up to a sky full of

fire, out of which the form of the Deity is stooping, represented as

white and colorless. On the other side of the picture there is seen

among the clouds a pillar apparently falling, and there is a crowd at

the feet of the principal figure, carrying spears. Unless this be

Joshua at the fall of Jericho, I cannot tell what it means; it is

painted with great vigor, and worthy of a better place.

32. _Sacrifice of Isaac._ In conception, it is one of the least worthy

of the master in the whole room, the three figures being thrown into

violent attitudes, as inexpressive as they are strained and

artificial. It appears to have been vigorously painted, but vulgarly;

that is to say, the light is concentrated upon the white beard and

upturned countenance of Abraham, as it would have been in one of the

dramatic effects of the French school, the result being that the head

is very bright and very conspicuous, and perhaps, in some of the late

operations upon the roof, recently washed and touched. In consequence,

every one who comes into the room, is first invited to observe the

"bella testa di Abramo." The only thing characteristic of Tintoret is

the way in which the pieces of ragged wood are tossed hither and

thither in the pile upon which Isaac is bound, although this

scattering of the wood is inconsistent with the Scriptural account of

Abraham's deliberate procedure, for we are told of him that "he set

the wood in order." But Tintoret had probably not noticed this, and

thought the tossing of the timber into the disordered heap more like

the act of the father in his agony.

33. _Elijah at the Brook Cherith (?)._ I cannot tell if I have rightly

interpreted the meaning of this picture, which merely represents a

noble figure couched upon the ground, and an angel appearing to him;

but I think that between the dark tree on the left, and the recumbent

figure, there is some appearance of a running stream, at all events

there is of a mountainous and stony place. The longer I study this

master, the more I feel the strange likeness between him and Turner,

in our never knowing what subject it is that will stir him to

exertion. We have lately had him treating Jacob's Dream, Ezekiel's

Vision, Abraham's Sacrifice, and Jonah's Prayer, (all of them subjects

on which the greatest painters have delighted to expend their

strength,) with coldness, carelessness, and evident absence of

delight; and here, on a sudden, in a subject so indistinct that one

cannot be sure of its meaning, and embracing only two figures, a man

and an angel, forth he starts in his full strength. I believe he must

somewhere or another, the day before, have seen a kingfisher; for this

picture seems entirely painted for the sake of the glorious downy

wings of the angel,--white clouded with blue, as the bird's head and

wings are with green,--the softest and most elaborate in plumage that

I have seen in any of his works: but observe also the general

sublimity obtained by the mountainous lines of the drapery of the

recumbent figure, dependent for its dignity upon these forms alone, as

the face is more than half hidden, and what is seen of it

expressionless.

34. _The Paschal Feast._ I name this picture by the title given in the

guide-books; it represents merely five persons watching the increase

of a small fire lighted on a table or altar in the midst of them. It

is only because they have all staves in their hands that one may

conjecture this fire to be that kindled to consume the Paschal

offering. The effect is of course a fire light; and, like all mere

fire lights that I have ever seen, totally devoid of interest.

35. _Elisha feeding the People._ I again guess at the subject: the

picture only represents a figure casting down a number of loaves

before a multitude; but, as Elisha has not elsewhere occurred, I

suppose that these must be the barley loaves brought from

Baalshalisha. In conception and manner of painting, this picture and

the last, together with the others above-mentioned, in comparison with

the "Elijah at Cherith," may be generally described as "dregs of

Tintoret:" they are tired, dead, dragged out upon the canvas

apparently in the heavy-hearted state which a man falls into when he

is both jaded with toil and sick of the work he is employed upon. They

are not hastily painted; on the contrary, finished with considerably

more care than several of the works upon the walls; but those, as, for

instance, the "Agony in the Garden," are hurried sketches with the

man's whole heart in them, while these pictures are exhausted

fulfilments of an appointed task. Whether they were really amongst the

last painted, or whether the painter had fallen ill at some

intermediate time, I cannot say; but we shall find him again in his

utmost strength in the room which we last enter.

[Illustration: Fourth Group. Inner room on the upper floor.

On the Roof.

36 to 39. Children's Heads. 41 to 44. Children.

40. St. Rocco in Heaven. 45 to 56. Allegorical Figures.

On the Walls.

57. Figure in Niche. 60. Ecce Homo.

58. Figure in Niche. 61. Christ bearing his Cross.

59. Christ before Pilate. 62. CRUCIFIXION.]

36 to 39. _Four Children's Heads_, which it is much to be regretted

should be thus lost in filling small vacuities of the ceiling.

40. _St. Rocco in Heaven._ The central picture of the roof, in the

inner room. From the well-known anecdote respecting the production of

this picture, whether in all its details true or not, we may at least

gather that having been painted in competition with Paul Veronese and

other powerful painters of the day, it was probably Tintoret's

endeavor to make it as popular and showy as possible. It is quite

different from his common works; bright in all its tints and tones;

the faces carefully drawn, and of an agreeable type; the outlines

firm, and the shadows few; the whole resembling Correggio more than

any Venetian painter. It is, however, an example of the danger, even

to the greatest artist, of leaving his own style; for it lacks all the

great virtues of Tintoret, without obtaining the lusciousness of

Correggio. One thing, at all events, is remarkable in it,--that,

though painted while the competitors were making their sketches, it

shows no sign of haste or inattention.

41 to 44. _Figures of Children_, merely decorative.

45 to 56. _Allegorical Figures on the Roof._ If these were not in the

same room with the "Crucifixion," they would attract more public

attention than any works in the Scuola, as there are here no black

shadows, nor extravagances of invention, but very beautiful figures

richly and delicately colored, a good deal resembling some of the best

works of Andrea del Sarto. There is nothing in them, however,

requiring detailed examination. The two figures between the windows

are very slovenly, if they are his at all; and there are bits of

marbling and fruit filling the cornices, which may or may not be his:

if they are, they are tired work, and of small importance.

59. _Christ before Pilate._ A most interesting picture, but, which is

unusual, best seen on a dark day, when the white figure of Christ

alone draws the eye, looking almost like a spirit; the painting of the

rest of the picture being both somewhat thin and imperfect. There is a

certain meagreness about all the minor figures, less grandeur and

largeness in the limbs and draperies, and less solidity, it seems,

even in the color, although its arrangements are richer than in many

of the compositions above described. I hardly know whether it is owing

to this thinness of color, or on purpose, that the horizontal clouds

shine through the crimson flag in the distance; though I should think

the latter, for the effect is most beautiful. The passionate action of

the Scribe in lifting his hand to dip the pen into the ink-horn is,

however, affected and overstrained, and the Pilate is very mean;

perhaps intentionally, that no reverence might be withdrawn from the

person of Christ. In work of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,

the figures of Pilate and Herod are always intentionally made

contemptible.

_Ecce Homo._ As usual, Tintoret's own peculiar view of the subject.

Christ is laid fainting on the ground, with a soldier standing on one

side of him; while Pilate, on the other, withdraws the robe from the

scourged and wounded body, and points it out to the Jews. Both this

and the picture last mentioned resemble Titian more than Tintoret in

the style of their treatment.

61. _Christ bearing his Cross._ Tintoret is here recognizable again in

undiminished strength. He has represented the troops and attendants

climbing Calvary by a winding path, of which two turns are seen, the

figures on the uppermost ledge, and Christ in the centre of them,

being relieved against the sky; but, instead of the usual simple

expedient of the bright horizon to relieve the dark masses, there is

here introduced, on the left, the head of a white horse, which blends

itself with the sky in one broad mass of light. The power of the

picture is chiefly in effect, the figure of Christ being too far off

to be very interesting, and only the malefactors being seen on the

nearer path; but for this very reason it seems to me more impressive,

as if one had been truly present at the scene, though not exactly in

the right place for seeing it.

62. _The Crucifixion._ I must leave this picture to work its will on

the spectator; for it is beyond all analysis, and above all praise.

S

SAGREDO, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal, II. 256. Much defaced, but full

of interest. Its sea story is restored; its first floor has a most

interesting arcade of the early thirteenth century third order

windows; its upper windows are the finest fourth and fifth orders of

early fourteenth century; the group of fourth orders in the centre

being brought into some resemblance to the late Gothic traceries by

the subsequent introduction of the quatrefoils above them.

SALUTE, CHURCH OF STA. MARIA DELLA, on the Grand Canal, II. 378. One

of the earliest buildings of the Grotesque Renaissance, rendered

impressive by its position, size, and general proportions. These

latter are exceedingly good; the grace of the whole building being

chiefly dependent on the inequality of size in its cupolas, and pretty

grouping of the two campaniles behind them. It is to be generally

observed that the proportions of buildings have nothing whatever to

do with the style or general merits of their architecture. An

architect trained in the worst schools, and utterly devoid of all

meaning or purpose in his work, may yet have such a natural gift of

massing and grouping as will render all his structures effective when

seen from a distance: such a gift is very general with the late

Italian builders, so that many of the most contemptible edifices in

the country have good stage effect so long as we do not approach them.

The Church of the Salute is farther assisted by the beautiful flight

of steps in front of it down to the canal; and its façade is rich and

beautiful of its kind, and was chosen by Turner for the principal

object in his well-known view of the Grand Canal. The principal faults

of the building are the meagre windows in the sides of the cupola, and

the ridiculous disguise of the buttresses under the form of colossal

scrolls; the buttresses themselves being originally a hypocrisy, for

the cupola is stated by Lazari to be of timber, and therefore needs

none. The sacristy contains several precious pictures: the three on

its roof by Titian, much vaunted, are indeed as feeble as they are

monstrous; but the small Titian, "St. Mark, with Sts. Cosmo and

Damian," was, when I first saw it, to my judgment, by far the first

work of Titian's in Venice. It has since been restored by the Academy,

and it seemed to me entirely destroyed, but I had not time to examine

it carefully.

At the end of the larger sacristy is the lunette which once decorated

the tomb of the Doge Francesco Dandolo (see above, page 74); and, at

the side of it, one of the most highly finished Tintorets in Venice,

namely:

_The Marriage in Cana._ An immense picture, some twenty-five feet long

by fifteen high, and said by Lazari to be one of the few which

Tintoret signed with his name. I am not surprised at his having done

so in this case. Evidently the work has been a favorite with him, and

he has taken as much pains as it was ever necessary for his colossal

strength to take with anything. The subject is not one which admits of

much singularity or energy in composition. It was always a favorite

one with Veronese, because it gave dramatic interest to figures in gay

costumes and of cheerful countenances; but one is surprised to find

Tintoret, whose tone of mind was always grave, and who did not like to

make a picture out of brocades and diadems, throwing his whole

strength into the conception of a marriage feast; but so it is, and

there are assuredly no female heads in any of his pictures in Venice

elaborated so far as those which here form the central light. Neither

is it often that the works of this mighty master conform themselves to

any of the rules acted upon by ordinary painters; but in this instance

the popular laws have been observed, and an academy student would be

delighted to see with what severity the principal light is arranged in

a central mass, which is divided and made more brilliant by a vigorous

piece of shadow thrust into the midst of it, and which dies away in

lesser fragments and sparkling towards the extremities of the picture.

This mass of light is as interesting by its composition as by its

intensity. The cicerone who escorts the stranger round the sacristy in

the course of five minutes, and allows him some forty seconds for the

contemplation of a picture which the study of six months would not

entirely fathom, directs his attention very carefully to the "bell'

effetto di prospettivo," the whole merit of the picture being, in the

eyes of the intelligent public, that there is a long table in it, one

end of which looks farther off than the other; but there is more in

the "bell' effetto di prospettivo" than the observance of the common

laws of optics. The table is set in a spacious chamber, of which the

windows at the end let in the light from the horizon, and those in the

side wall the intense blue of an Eastern sky. The spectator looks all

along the table, at the farther end of which are seated Christ and the

Madonna, the marriage guests on each side of it,--on one side men, on

the other women; the men are set with their backs to the light, which

passing over their heads and glancing slightly on the tablecloth,

falls in full length along the line of young Venetian women, who thus

fill the whole centre of the picture with one broad sunbeam, made up

of fair faces and golden hair. Close to the spectator a woman has

risen in amazement, and stretches across the table to show the wine in

her cup to those opposite; her dark red dress intercepts and enhances

the mass of gathered light. It is rather curious, considering the

subject of the picture, that one cannot distinguish either the bride

or the bridegroom; but the fourth figure from the Madonna in the line

of women, who wears a white head-dress of lace and rich chains of

pearls in her hair, may well be accepted for the former, and I think

that between her and the woman on the Madonna's left hand the unity of

the line of women is intercepted by a male figure; be this as it may,

this fourth female face is the most beautiful, as far as I recollect,

that occurs in the works of the painter, with the exception only of

the Madonna in the "Flight into Egypt." It is an ideal which occurs

indeed elsewhere in many of his works, a face at once dark and

delicate, the Italian cast of feature moulded with the softness and

childishness of English beauty some half a century ago; but I have

never seen the ideal so completely worked out by the master. The face

may best be described as one of the purest and softest of Stothard's

conceptions, executed with all the strength of Tintoret. The other

women are all made inferior to this one, but there are beautiful

profiles and bendings of breasts and necks along the whole line. The

men are all subordinate, though there are interesting portraits among

them; perhaps the only fault of the picture being that the faces are a

little too conspicuous, seen like balls of light among the crowd of

minor figures which fill the background of the picture. The tone of

the whole is sober and majestic in the highest degree; the dresses are

all broad masses of color, and the only parts of the picture which lay

claim to the expression of wealth or splendor are the head-dresses of

the women. In this respect the conception of the scene differs widely

from that of Veronese, and approaches more nearly to the probable

truth. Still the marriage is not an unimportant one; an immense crowd,

filling the background, forming superbly rich mosaic of color against

the distant sky. Taken as a whole, the picture is perhaps the most

perfect example which human art has produced of the utmost possible

force and sharpness of shadow united with richness of local color. In

all the other works of Tintoret, and much more of other colorists,

either the light and shade or the local color is predominant; in the

one case the picture has a tendency to look as if painted by

candle-light, in the other it becomes daringly conventional, and

approaches the conditions of glass-painting. This picture unites

color as rich as Titian's with light and shade as forcible as

Rembrandt's, and far more decisive.

There are one or two other interesting pictures of the early Venetian

schools in this sacristy, and several important tombs in the adjoining

cloister; among which that of Francesco Dandolo, transported here from

the Church of the Frari, deserves especial attention. See above, p.

74.

SALVATORE, CHURCH OF ST. Base Renaissance, occupying the place of the

ancient church, under the porch of which the Pope Alexander III. is

said to have passed the night. M. Lazari states it to have been richly

decorated with mosaics; now all is gone.

In the interior of the church are some of the best examples of

Renaissance sculptural monuments in Venice. (See above, Chap. II. §

LXXX.) It is said to possess an important pala of silver, of the

thirteenth century, one of the objects in Venice which I much regret

having forgotten to examine; besides two Titians, a Bonifazio, and a

John Bellini. The latter ("The Supper at Emmaus") must, I think, have

been entirely repainted: it is not only unworthy of the master, but

unlike him; as far, at least, as I could see from below, for it is

hung high.

SANUDO PALAZZO. At the Miracoli. A noble Gothic palace of the fourteenth

century, with Byzantine fragments and cornices built into its walls,

especially round the interior court, in which the staircase is very

noble. Its door, opening on the quay, is the only one in Venice

entirely uninjured; retaining its wooden valve richly sculptured, its

wicket for examination of the stranger demanding admittance, and its

quaint knocker in the form of a fish.

SCALZI, CHURCH OF THE. It possesses a fine John Bellini, and is renowned

through Venice for its precious marbles. I omitted to notice above, in

speaking of the buildings of the Grotesque Renaissance, that many of

them are remarkable for a kind of dishonesty, even in the use of

_true_ marbles, resulting not from motives of economy, but from mere

love of juggling and falsehood for their own sake. I hardly know which

condition of mind is meanest, that which has pride in plaster made to

look like marble, or that which takes delight in marble made to look

like silk. Several of the later churches in Venice, more especially

those of the Jesuiti, of San Clemente, and this of the Scalzi, rest

their chief claims to admiration on their having curtains and cushions

cut out of rock. The most ridiculous example is in San Clemente, and

the most curious and costly are in the Scalzi; which latter church is

a perfect type of the vulgar abuse of marble in every possible way, by

men who had no eye for color, and no understanding of any merit in a

work of art but that which arises from costliness of material, and

such powers of imitation as are devoted in England to the manufacture

of peaches and eggs out of Derbyshire spar.

SEBASTIAN, CHURCH OF ST. The tomb, and of old the monument, of Paul

Veronese. It is full of his noblest pictures, or of what once were

such; but they seemed to me for the most part destroyed by repainting.

I had not time to examine them justly, but I would especially direct

the traveller's attention to the small Madonna over the second altar

on the right of the nave, still a perfect and priceless treasure.

SERVI, CHURCH OF THE. Only two of its gates and some ruined walls are

left, in one of the foulest districts of the city. It was one of the

most interesting monuments of the early fourteenth century Gothic; and

there is much beauty in the fragments yet remaining. How long they may

stand I know not, the whole building having been offered me for sale,

ground and all, or stone by stone, as I chose, by its present

proprietor, when I was last in Venice. More real good might at present

be effected by any wealthy person who would devote his resources to

the preservation of such monuments wherever they exist, by freehold

purchase of the entire ruin, and afterwards by taking proper charge of

it, and forming a garden round it, than by any other mode of

protecting or encouraging art. There is no school, no lecturer, like a

ruin of the early ages.

SEVERO, FONDAMENTA SAN, palace at, II. 264.

SILVESTRO, CHURCH OF ST. Of no importance in itself, but it contains

two very interesting pictures: the first, a "St. Thomas of Canterbury

with the Baptist and St. Francis," by Girolamo Santa Croce, a superb

example of the Venetian religious school; the second by Tintoret,

namely:

_The Baptism of Christ._ (Over the first altar on the right of the

nave.) An upright picture, some ten feet wide by fifteen high; the top

of it is arched, representing the Father supported by angels. It

requires little knowledge of Tintoret to see that these figures are

not by his hand. By returning to the opposite side of the nave, the

join in the canvas may be plainly seen, the upper part of the picture

having been entirely added on: whether it had this upper part before

it was repainted, or whether originally square, cannot now be told,

but I believe it had an upper part which has been destroyed. I am not

sure if even the dove and the two angels which are at the top of the

older part of the picture are quite genuine. The rest of it is

magnificent, though both the figures of the Saviour and the Baptist

show some concession on the part of the painter to the imperative

requirement of his age, that nothing should be done except in an

attitude; neither are there any of his usual fantastic imaginations.

There is simply the Christ in the water and the St. John on the shore,

without attendants, disciples, or witnesses of any kind; but the power

of the light and shade, and the splendor of the landscape, which on

the whole is well preserved, render it a most interesting example. The

Jordan is represented as a mountain brook, receiving a tributary

stream in a cascade from the rocks, in which St. John stands: there is

a rounded stone in the centre of the current; and the parting of the

water at this, as well as its rippling among the roots of some dark

trees on the left, are among the most accurate remembrances of nature

to be found in any of the works of the great masters. I hardly know

whether most to wonder at the power of the man who thus broke through

the neglect of nature which was universal at his time; or at the

evidences, visible throughout the whole of the conception, that he was

still content to paint from slight memories of what he had seen in

hill countries, instead of following out to its full depth the

fountain which he had opened. There is not a stream among the hills of

Priuli which in any quarter of a mile of its course would not have

suggested to him finer forms of cascade than those which he has idly

painted at Venice.

SIMEONE, PROFETA, CHURCH OF ST. Very important, though small, possessing

the precious statue of St. Simeon, above noticed, II. 309. The rare

early Gothic capitals of the nave are only interesting to the

architect; but in the little passage by the side of the church,

leading out of the Campo, there is a curious Gothic monument built

into the wall, very beautiful in the placing of the angels in the

spandrils, and rich in the vine-leaf moulding above.

SIMEONE, PICCOLO, CHURCH OF ST. One of the ugliest churches in Venice or

elsewhere. Its black dome, like an unusual species of gasometer, is

the admiration of modern Italian architects.

SOSPIRI, PONTE DE'. The well known "Bridge of Sighs," a work of no

merit, and of a late period (see Vol. II. p. 304), owing the interest

it possesses chiefly to its pretty name, and to the ignorant

sentimentalism of Byron.

SPIRITO SANTO, CHURCH OF THE. Of no importance.

STEFANO, CHURCH OF ST. An interesting building of central Gothic, the

best ecclesiastical example of it in Venice. The west entrance is much

later than any of the rest, and is of the richest Renaissance Gothic,

a little anterior to the Porta della Carta, and first-rate of its

kind. The manner of the introduction of the figure of the angel at the

top of the arch is full of beauty. Note the extravagant crockets and

cusp finials as signs of decline.

STEFANO, CHURCH OF ST., at Murano (pugnacity of its abbot), II. 33. The

church no longer exists.

STROPE, CAMPIELLO DELLA, house in, II. 266.

T

TANA, windows at the, II. 260.

TIEPOLO, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal. Of no importance.

TOLENTINI, CHURCH OF THE. One of the basest and coldest works of the

late Renaissance. It is said to contain two Bonifazios.

TOMA, CHURCH OF ST. Of no importance.

TOMA, PONTE SAN. There is an interesting ancient doorway opening on the

canal close to this bridge, probably of the twelfth century, and a

good early Gothic door, opening upon the bridge itself.

TORCELLO, general aspect of, II. 12; Santa Fosca at, I. 117, II. 13;

duomo, II. 14; mosaics of, II. 196; measures of, II. 378; date of, II.

380.

TREVISAN, PALAZZO, I. 369, III. 212.

TRON, PALAZZO. Of no importance.

TROVASO, CHURCH OF ST. Itself of no importance, but containing two

pictures by Tintoret, namely:

1. _The Temptation of St. Anthony._ (Altar piece in the chapel on the

left of the choir.) A small and very carefully finished picture, but

marvellously temperate and quiet in treatment, especially considering

the subject, which one would have imagined likely to inspire the

painter with one of his most fantastic visions. As if on purpose to

disappoint us, both the effect, and the conception of the figures, are

perfectly quiet, and appear the result much more of careful study than

of vigorous imagination. The effect is one of plain daylight; there

are a few clouds drifting in the distance, but with no wildness in

them, nor is there any energy or heat in the flames which mantle about

the waist of one of the figures. But for the noble workmanship, we

might almost fancy it the production of a modern academy; yet as we

begin to read the picture, the painter's mind becomes felt. St.

Anthony is surrounded by four figures, one of which only has the form

of a demon, and he is in the background, engaged in no more terrific

act of violence toward St. Anthony, than endeavoring to pull off his

mantle; he has, however, a scourge over his shoulder, but this is

probably intended for St. Anthony's weapon of self-discipline, which

the fiend, with a very Protestant turn of mind, is carrying off. A

broken staff, with a bell hanging to it, at the saint's feet, also

expresses his interrupted devotion. The three other figures beside him

are bent on more cunning mischief: the woman on the left is one of

Tintoret's best portraits of a young and bright-eyed Venetian beauty.

It is curious that he has given so attractive a countenance to a type

apparently of the temptation to violate the power of poverty, for this

woman places one hand in a vase full of coins, and shakes golden

chains with the other. On the opposite side of the saint, another

woman, admirably painted, but of a far less attractive countenance, is

a type of the lusts of the flesh, yet there is nothing gross or

immodest in her dress or gesture. She appears to have been baffled,

and for the present to have given up addressing the saint: she lays

one hand upon her breast, and might be taken for a very respectable

person, but that there are flames playing about her loins. A recumbent

figure on the ground is of less intelligible character, but may

perhaps be meant for Indolence; at all events, he has torn the saint's

book to pieces. I forgot to note, that under the figure representing

Avarice, there is a creature like a pig; whether actual pig or not is

unascertainable, for the church is dark, the little light that comes

on the picture falls on it the wrong way, and one third of the lower

part of it is hidden by a white case, containing a modern daub, lately

painted by way of an altar piece; the meaning, as well as the merit,

of the grand old picture being now far beyond the comprehension both

of priests and people.

2. _The Last Supper._ (On the left-hand side of the Chapel of the

Sacrament.) A picture which has been through the hands of the Academy,

and is therefore now hardly worth notice. Its conception seems always

to have been vulgar, and far below Tintoret's usual standard; there is

singular baseness in the circumstance, that one of the near Apostles,

while all the others are, as usual, intent upon Christ's words, "One

of you shall betray me," is going to help himself to wine out of a

bottle which stands behind him. In so doing he stoops towards the

table, the flask being on the floor. If intended for the action of

Judas at this moment, there is the painter's usual originality in the

thought; but it seems to me rather done to obtain variation of

posture, in bringing the red dress into strong contrast with the

tablecloth. The color has once been fine, and there are fragments of

good painting still left; but the light does not permit these to be

seen, and there is too much perfect work of the master's in Venice, to

permit us to spend time on retouched remnants. The picture is only

worth mentioning, because it is ignorantly and ridiculously referred

to by Kugler as characteristic of Tintoret.

V

VITALI, CHURCH OF ST. Said to contain a picture by Vittor Carpaccio,

over the high altar: otherwise of no importance.

VOLTO SANTO, CHURCH OF THE. An interesting but desecrated ruin of the

fourteenth century; fine in style. Its roof retains some fresco

coloring, but, as far as I recollect, of later date than the

architecture.

Z

ZACCARIA, CHURCH OF ST. Early Renaissance, and fine of its kind; a

Gothic chapel attached to it is of great beauty. It contains the best

John Bellini in Venice, after that of San G. Grisostomo, "The Virgin,

with Four Saints;" and is said to contain another John Bellini and a

Tintoret, neither of which I have seen.

ZITELLE, CHURCH OF THE. Of no importance.

ZOBENIGO, CHURCH OF SANTA MARIA, III. 124. It contains one valuable

Tintoret, namely:

_Christ with Sta. Justina and St. Augustin._ (Over the third altar on

the south side of the nave.) A picture of small size, and upright,

about ten feet by eight. Christ appears to be descending out of the

clouds between the two saints, who are both kneeling on the sea shore.

It is a Venetian sea, breaking on a flat beach, like the Lido, with a

scarlet galley in the middle distance, of which the chief use is to

unite the two figures by a point of color. Both the saints are

respectable Venetians of the lower class, in homely dresses and with

homely faces. The whole picture is quietly painted, and somewhat

slightly; free from all extravagance, and displaying little power

except in the general truth or harmony of colors so easily laid on. It

is better preserved than usual, and worth dwelling upon as an instance

of the style of the master when _at rest_.

FOOTNOTES:

[71] "Am I in Italy? Is this the Mincius?

Are those the distant turrets of Verona?

And shall I sup where Juliet at the Masque

Saw her loved Montague, and now sleeps by him?

Such questions hourly do I ask myself;

And not a stone in a crossway inscribed

'To Mantua,' 'To Ferrara,' but excites

Surprise, and doubt, and self-congratulation."

Alas, after a few short months, spent even in the scenes dearest to

history, we can feel thus no more.

[72] I have always called this church, in the text, simply "St. John

and Paul," not Sts. John and Paul, just as the Venetians say San

Giovanni e Paolo, and not Santi G., &c.

* * * * *

CORRECTIONS MADE TO THE ORIGINAL TEXT.

Page 69: 'Italian sarcophagi are kept massive, smoth and gloomy' smoth

corrected to smooth.

Page 74: 'fallen back peacefully uppon his pillow' uppon corrected to

upon.

Page 100: 'men's modes of life, and tones of throught' throught changed

to thought.

Page 121: 'breathed upon her beaaty, until it melted away' beaaty

corrected to beauty.

Page 157: 'morbid action by terror, accompained by the belief'

accompained changed to accompanied.

Page 207: 'finds him by a fountaiu side' fountaiu corrected to fountain.

Page 222: 'Pietro di Castello, for the feast of St. Mary' Mary changed

to Mark.

Page 233: Number 2. misplaced. Moved to 'a. Lower arcade, Fondaco de'

Turchi.'

Page 233: Missing 4. added before 'a. Fondaco de' Turchi, central shaft,

upper arcade.'

Page 237: 'fourth order windows in Campo Sta. Ma Mater Domini' Ma

changed to M^a.

Page 293: 'the usual inportant purposes of the modern Italians.'

inportant changed to important.

Page 294: 'not the slightest touch os it but is delicious.' os corrected

to of.

Page 318: 'examine the two large tintorets' tintorets changed to

Tintorets.

Page 319: 'Mlaipiero, Palazzo, on the Campo St. M. Formosa.' Mlaipiero

corrected to Malipiero.

Page 358: 'drift of its clouds, and originalty and complication.'

originalty corrected to originality.