for the good of mankind. This we certainly owe to the Renaissance--the
desire to benefit mankind, and not only men individually.
Tintoretto felt this strongly. One sees not only the effect of this
new era of thought in his work: one sees also human life at the base
of it. Tintoretto worked for the good of mankind, and his work throbs
with humanity. There was atmosphere, reality, in it. He was, it is
true, a pupil of Titian; but it was Michael Angelo whose works had the
greatest attraction for him. He loved Angelo's overwhelming power and
gigantic force. Tintoretto's pictures seem to possess much of the
glowing colour of Titian; but he paid greater attention to
chiaroscuro. He seems to have had the power of lowering the tone of a
sky to suit his composition of light and shade. His conception of the
human form was colossal. His work showed a wide sweep and power. He
turned to religion, not because it was a duty, but because it answered
the needs of the human heart--because it helped him to forget the mean
and sordid side of life, braced him to his work, and consoled him in
his days of despair. The Bible was not to him a cut-and-dried document
concerning the Christian religion, but a series of beautiful parables
pointing to a finer life. Then, Tintoretto asked himself, Why keep to
the old forms and the old ideals? Why should the saints and biblical
people be represented as Romans, walking in a Roman background? He
himself thought of them as people of his own kind, and painted them as
such. Thus, he argued, people became more familiar with the Bible,
more readily understood it.
Tintoretto painted portraits not only of Venetians, but also of
foreign princes. Although he painted with tremendous rapidity, the
demand was greater than the supply. His paintings were popular. They
gave pleasure to the eye, and stimulated the emotions. He painted
people at their best, in glowing health and full of life. Under his
marvellous brush old men became vigorous and full-blooded. His
pictures give the same sort of pleasure as one finds in looking upon a
casket of jewels--they are just as deathless in their brilliancy. The
portrait that the popular taste called forth in Titian's day was just
about as unlike the typical modern portrait as you could possibly
imagine,--the colourless, cold, unsympathetic portrait of the
fish-eyed mayor in his robes.
[Illustration: THE HOUSE WITH THE BLUE DOOR]
At the age of fifteen, Jacopo Robusti--tintoretto, the little
dyer--was brought by his father, Battista Robusti, to the studio of
the great painter Titian. There he stayed for a little while, until
one day Titian came across, in his bottega, some drawings that
showed promise. On discovering that they were from the hand of Jacopo,
he sent the boy away. Young as he was, Tintoretto had all the
arrogance of the well-to-do citizen. He would brook no man's No, and
would not yield his own pretensions for the greatest genius in
Christendom. He did not need money: he was independent: and he started
boldly to teach himself. Boiling with rage at the affront Titian had
put upon him, he was determined to make a career for himself. He
studied the works of Michael Angelo and of Titian, and inscribed upon
his studio wall, so that his ambition might always be before his eyes,
"Il desegno di Michael Angelo, e' il colorito di Titiano." He studied
casts of ancient marbles, and made designs of them by the light of a
lamp, in order to gain a strong effect of shadow. Also, he copied the
pictures of Titian. Seeking, by every means in his power, to educate
himself, he modelled figures of wax and plaster, upon which he hung
his drapery. And always, whether painting by night or by day, he
arranged his lights so as to have everything in high relief.
Tintoretto's inventions for teaching himself were endless. Often he
visited the painters' benches in the piazza of St. Mark's, where the
poor men of the profession worked at painting chests and furniture of
all kinds. In those days there were too many painters. The profession
was overdone. Many young men who had real genius worked at the
benches. Titian was the great man at the moment, and Palma Vecchio.
But Tintoretto did not care. He forced his work down men's
throats--gave it to them for nothing if they would not pay for it. He
was always ready with his brush, and would paint anything from an
organ to an altar-piece. He worked like a giant, with tremendous sweep
and power; no subject was too great or too laborious; and always he
had a desire to do his best.
Tintoretto would not be trifled with or condescended to. He would not
have his work under-valued, and would allow no patrician, not even a
prince, to play the patron to him. He was determined not to be set
aside. He flung his pictures at people's heads, and insisted on
undertaking any great piece of work there was to do. Thus,
Tintoretto's pictures are to be seen everywhere in Venice--in almost
every church, every council-hall, every humble chapel, every parish
church, every sacristy. He neglected no opportunity to make his work
known. He worked with extraordinary rapidity. Whenever Tintoretto came
across a fine fair wall he prevailed upon the master-mason to
allow him to paint it. A fifty-foot space he would cover with avidity,
asking nothing for his work but the cost of the material, giving his
time and labour as a gift.
[Illustration: CANAL IN GIUDECCA ISLAND]
Portraiture was the outcome of realism, and one of the most important
discoveries of the Renaissance. People began to feel that they wanted
not only their affluence in possessions, but also their own individual
faces and features, handed down to posterity. Thus portraiture began
to creep in. At first it appeared in the churches under cover of
saints and Madonnas; gradually it became possible to distinguish one
from another--it was not always the same face. Painters took models
from life as their saints. But portraiture in painting was very slow
in reaching perfection. Sculpture had accomplished that long before;
now that the latest craze was for portraiture, it was the sculptors
who were the most prepared to take it up, and stepped forward to
execute commissions. They had plenty of material in the way of old
Roman coins and busts. Donatello and Vittore Pisano were the two men
who first offered to satisfy the new want. Donatello executed
marvellous studies of character, and Pisano medals such as have never
been seen before or since. But even these men, fine as their work
undoubtedly was, felt that the public could not long remain satisfied
merely with the sculptured portrait. They must have colour. Donatello,
therefore, began to stain and colour his busts, showing that painting,
not sculpture, was to be the portrait art of the Renaissance. Vittore
Pisano also gave up his sculpture, and turned his attention to
portrait-painting; but he was only an amateur in this direction, and
did not meet with much success. No portrait-painter of any merit was
produced in that generation. The idea was entirely new. Men had not
had sufficient time in which to study the human face. The next
generation ushered in Mantegna, who painted a marvellous portrait of
Cardinal Sciramo; but he went too far in the other direction. He
painted his man as he was--as he saw him, line for line. He painted
the soul and heart of him--and the soul and the heart were black.
Venice was revolted with such a portrait. It seemed indeed indecent
that a man's character should be laid bare in such a way. It was a
picture they did not care to hang in the Council Chamber, a picture
that was unpleasant to live with. The Cardinal belonged to the State.
His honour was their honour, and it must not be defiled. The
Venetians came to the conclusion that portraits must be painted not in
full-face but in profile. Thus the characteristics of a man, if they
be not pleasant, do not come out clearly. This accounts for the number
of profile portraits. The age wanted an agreeable portrait. This
Giorgione provided. He realised that the treatment must always be
bright, joyous, romantic. His followers trod in his footsteps: the
master's style was too strong and pronounced to be much deviated from.
Giorgione seems to have reached the topmost height of art at that
period. Even Titian, for a generation after his death, followed in
Giorgione's lines; only, Titian's work was a little more sober, a
little less sunny. He had the sense to see that Giorgione had expanded
the old rule and done something worth adopting, and for a time he
simply followed this joyful outburst. His early years fell at a time
when life was glowing, radiant, almost intoxicating in its vigour. But
youth and joy cannot last; nor could the Renaissance spirit. Gradually
the trouble and the strife from which the whole of Italy was suffering
filtered into Venice, and cast a serious aspect over art and social
life. Venice, of all the states in Italy, was the last to feel this
sobering influence. She had been defeated both in battle and in
commerce; and, although she was not totally crushed under the heel of
Spain, life was not the endless holiday it promised to be. Men took
themselves more seriously, and the quieter pleasures of friendship and
affection began to be more sought after. Religion revived in
importance. Men clung to it, as they always do in time of trouble, for
comfort and support. It was no longer a political sentiment, but a
personal one. Art declined as the sunshine and the gaiety that had fed
and nourished it ebbed away. When men began to feel that individually
they were of no avail, that they were subject to the powers round
about and above them, the death-blow of great art fell. Titian was
influenced by his environment, and his painting changed completely. He
produced pictures that would have been looked upon with scorn in his
earlier days. The faces of his men are no longer smooth and free from
care. One saw there struggle and suffering, and all that life had done
for them. But Titian was not a pessimist at heart. The joy and gaiety
in which he had been brought up formed part of his character. Whatever
changes may have happened to his country politically, nothing could
alter that entirely. And it was no doubt this early training and
the atmosphere in which he was brought up that made his pictures the
masterpieces they were. You notice the men who came after Titian--how
they began to decline. For example, Lorenzo Lotto had been brought up
in the heyday of the Renaissance; but the new order of things, the
change from national virility to national decadence, enfeebled him.
Then, again, the coming in touch with poets and men of letters,
victims flying from the fury of Spain, was a new stimulant to art. It
did not exactly improve it; but it certainly changed it.
[Illustration: THE ORANGE SAIL]
A fine period of painting does not come in a day, nor does it end in a
day; and, although the universal interest in the Venetian school dies
with Titian and Tintoretto, it does not die unnoticed. The torch of
art flickered up many times in Venice before it was finally
extinguished. The men who came immediately after Tintoretto had not
the strength to start off on any new lines. They simply fell back on
variations of the earlier masters, showing much of the masters'
weaknesses, but few of their great qualities. Some even were so
inartistic as to attempt to pass off their pictures, on ignorant
people, as Titians and Giorgiones. However, before the Republic
disappeared there were two or three men who took the first rank among
the painters of the period, provincial artists, men whose art was
sufficiently like her own to be readily understood, such as Paul
Veronese. The provinces were not declining so rapidly as Venice was.
They were less troubled by the approaching storm. Men there led
simple, healthy lives; Spanish manners were long in reaching the
provinces, and, when they did, the people were slow to succumb. Men in
the provinces had stamina, simplicity, and courage with which to meet
the new order of things. They combined ceremony and splendour with
childlike naturalness. Consequently, the works of Paul Veronese
delighted the Venetians. The more fashionable and ceremonious private
life in the city became, the more were the people charmed with his
simple rendering.
[Illustration: A QUIET RIO]
Gradually the taste of the Venetians turned towards pictures in humble
quarters--in the provincial towns and in the country. In the Middle
Ages the country was so upset that it was not safe for people to
venture out of the city; but with the advance of civilisation this
state of affairs was altered. People began to delight in country life.
The aristocracy took villas in the provinces, and the poorer
people wanted representations of them in their houses. The painters of
the period, Palma and Bonifacio, began to add pastoral backgrounds to
their works. But the first great landscape painter was Jacopo Bassano.
His treatment of light and atmosphere was masterly, and his colouring
was jewel-like and brilliant. It was Bassano who started that great
Spanish school which was to culminate in Velasquez. Venice did not
produce many great painters in the eighteenth century--only three or
four. The city itself remained unchanged: it was just as beautiful,
still the most beautiful and luxurious city in the world: it was the
people who changed. They became apathetic, placid, and drifting,
perfectly contented with one another and with their lots in life,
never trying to better themselves in any way. There were no
difficulties, no problems to be solved. People were just as gay as
they were serious, just as much interested in paintings as they were
in politics. This was a vegetable period.
It is strange that such a demoralising time should have seen the rise
of a great master; but it certainly saw him in Canaletto. That artist
differed from nearly all the Venetian painters in that he had complete
mastery of technique. His work is just as fine technically as that of
Velasquez or that of Rembrandt. It shows marvellous dexterity and
power. He understood his materials better than any other Venetian
painter--better even than Giorgione.
Guardi and Tiepolo followed Canaletto. In Tiepolo's work especially
you realise the character of these eighteenth-century people. At that
time Venice was sliding downhill rapidly. Her people were aping
dignity. They dressed extravagantly, not so much for the love of
colour and splendour as for swagger. They were degenerating rapidly.
Here and there lesser masters appeared; but Venetian art became poorer
and poorer, until it reached the condition of the present day, when in
Venice there is no art at all. The kind of work which the people
appreciate sickens and saddens you--those sunlit photographs glazed
with blue to counterfeit moonlight, and tricky, vicious
water-colours,--brutal pictures with metallic reflections and cobalt
skies,--all wonderfully alike, all with the same orange sail, and all
equally untrue.
[Illustration: HUMBLE QUARTERS]
Year by year painters continue to paint Venice without the public
showing signs of weariness. Perhaps the failure of the artists to
reproduce the undying charm of that dazzling jewel of cities is
both the excuse and the reason for the pertinacity of the tribe.
Womanlike, she eludes them; manlike, they pursue. Few have seen the
real Venice, the Venice of Ruskin and Turner and Whistler. Venice is
not for the cold-blooded spectator, for the amateur or the art
dabbler: she is for the enthusiastic colourist and painter, the man
who sees, and does not merely look.
Sir Edward Burne-Jones was wont to declare that to paint Venice as she
should be painted one must needs live for three thousand years: the
first thousand should be devoted to experiments in various media; the
second to producing works and destroying them; the third to completing
slowly the labour of centuries. He would never have dreamed of
spending a painting holiday beyond Italy--that is, unless he had been
permitted to live for over five thousand years; and even then, it was
his firm opinion, no man could paint St. Mark's, which was
unpaintable--mere pigment could not suggest it.
[Illustration: RIO DI SAN MARINA]
[Illustration: A SQUERO OR BOAT-BUILDING YARD]
STREETS, SHOPS, AND COURTYARDS
In the crooked and bewildering streets of Venice, which open out from
the great piazza and lead all over the city, one sees the true life of
the people. It is there that the poor congregate. The houses teem with
humanity. There the true Venetians are harboured. One comes to know
them well, and the manner of life they lead; and so gay and
light-hearted are they, it is strange if one does not like them in
spite of all their faults. Was there ever more irregularity than in
the streets of Venice? All the houses seem to be differently
constructed. Some are lofty; others are squat; some have balconies and
chimney-pieces thrust out into the street so as almost to touch the
houses opposite. Nearly every house has at one time been a palace, and
each is in a different stage of decay--houses that have once been the
homes of merchant princes, palaces in which perhaps even Petrarch may
have feasted,--inhabited now by the poorest of Venetians. The weekly
wash flutters from the balconies (the linen of Venice is famed for its
whiteness), and frowsy heads appear at Gothic windows. Worms have
eaten and rust has corrupted everything destructible. Yet now and then
one is astonished at the preservation of certain portions of the
buildings. In that labyrinth of streets one never knows what surprise
may be in store. You will come across beautiful early-Gothic gateways
covered with sculptured relief and inlaid designs of leaves; a
fourteenth-century palace with the faint remains of the paintings of
some artist with which at one time it must have been covered; lovely
remnants of crosses let into the walls; Renaissance wells of the
sixteenth century; delicately-carved parapets; a great stone angel
standing guardian at some calle head; irregularly twisted staircases
of the fifteenth century; a Gothic door with terra-cotta mouldings;
and churches without number. Some of the finest architectural gems in
Europe are here, and almost every house is invested with a strange
history. The place seems inexhaustible. As you walk in those old
streets the shadows of the mighty dead go with you--those great
men who lived glorious lives for Venice and for art. There is an
old-world atmosphere about the streets. They twist and turn, and
sometimes are so narrow that there is scarcely room for two people to
pass each other; at times they are so dark and still that the
scuttling of a rat into the water makes one start. Venice is full of
contrasts, full of the unexpected. It is as if Providence, seeing fit
that one's eyes should not become satiated with beauty unalloyed,
throws in little marring touches--shocks to your feelings, cold
douches of water, as it were--in order to give value to the marvellous
colouring and antiquity of the water city. For example, from the world
of Desdemona, where one can fancy one sees her lean from a traceried
window and catch a distant echo of a mellow voice out on the water
singing a serenade, it is rather a shock suddenly to find yourself in
the piazza of St. Mark. It is easy to lose oneself in the streets of
Venice. In a minute you can step from the past to the present, and
find yourself among the marbles of St. Mark's and the arcades of the
Ducal Palace--in the tourist's Venice, amid glittering shops full of
modern atrocities, mosaic jewellery, wood-carving, imitation glass,
and what not--Americans and other globe-trotters staring up at St.
Mark's, laughing and reading their guide-books.
[Illustration: THE WEEKLY WASH]
For all artists and lovers of the picturesque the side streets of
Venice--_calle_, as they are called--are fascinating beyond words.
Every house has a character peculiarly its own. Each is in a way
unique and totally dissimilar to its fellows; each is proud in the
possession of relics of architectural beauties. Every street is made
up of magnificent palaces and churches, fine examples of architecture
in such rich and varied wealth and diversity of styles that one is
almost overpowered. There are old Gothic palaces, venerable specimens
of Renaissance or Venetian period. Time indeed has laid heavy hands
upon them; but it seems to have augmented their charm. This homely
aspect of Venice interests. The old houses and the rickety archways
appeal to the observer, if he be not too keen of smell. Here are
marvellous and varied combinations of rich colouring--weather-worn
bricks, grated windows, and brilliant shutters picturesque and shabby
by the lapse of time, and shops half lost in gloom. Most of the houses
are of distempered rose-colour at the top and moss-green at the
bottom. The sun shines on the roof, and the water laps at the base.
There are land-gates and water-gates to most of the houses--one
opening upon a canal, the other upon a courtyard.
[Illustration: A BACK STREET]
I lived for six months in Venice, and have seen these streets under
every possible aspect. I have seen them in the early morning, at
mid-day, in the evening, at night, in the rain, in the sun; and I can
never decide at what time of the day they appear most fascinating.
Perhaps it is after a rain-shower, when every tone upon the old walls
is brought out and accentuated--greys and pale sea-greens and the old
Venetian red with which so many of the houses used to be distempered.
The shops in Venice are very thickly set. Most of them open right down
to the ground, and the wares, which are varied, appear to ooze out
into the street. Here is a corn-dealer's shop with open sacks of
polenta flour of every shade of yellow; there a green-grocer's shop
where vegetables are sold--such a wealth of colour in the piles of
tomatoes, vegetable marrows, and great pumpkins cut down the middle to
display their orange cores. The richer shops, however, are blocked up
several feet high, and have latticed windows.