"How thoroughly exquisite! See those lovely angels tumbling over each other in their haste to tell the news to Mary! How brilliant! Surely Tintoretto did not paint this!"
"No. This is by Titian; and it is one of his most happy religious pictures too. I thought of it as we were coming, and am glad to have you see it. The whole expression is admirable; and the fulness of life and joy—the jubilation—is perfect. You can in no way more vividly feel the difference between fourteenth-century painting in Florence, and the sixteenth-century or High Renaissance work in Venice, than by recalling Fra Angelico's sweet, calm, staid Annunciations, and contrasting them with this one."
"But why do I feel that, after all, I love Fra Angelico's better, and should care to look at them oftener?" rather timidly asked Barbara.
"I think," replied Mr. Sumner, after a little pause, "that it is because, in them, the spiritual expression dominates the physical. We recognize the fact that the artist has not the power to picture all that he desires to express. His art language is weak; therefore there is something left unsaid, and this compels our attention. We wish to understand his full meaning, so come to his pictures again and again.
"It is this quality of the fourteenth-century painting that impelled the Pre-Raphaelites, German and English, to discard the chief motif of the High Renaissance, which was to picture everything in its outward perfection. They thought that this very perfection of artistic expression led to the elimination of spiritual feeling."
"But how can artists go back now and paint as those did five centuries ago?" queried Malcom. "Of course, if they study methods of the present day, they must know all the principles underlying a true and artistic representation—and it would be wrong not to practise them."
"You have at once found the weak point in the Pre-Raphaelites' principle of work, Malcom. It is forced and artificial to do that in the nineteenth century which was natural and charming in the fourteenth. That which our artists of to-day must do if they desire any reform is to so fill themselves with the comprehension of spiritual things—so strive to understand the hidden beauty and harmony and truth of nature—that their works may be revelations to those who do not see so clearly as do they. To do this perfectly they must ever, in my opinion, give more thought to the thing to be expressed than to the manner of its expression; yet they must render this expression as perfectly as the present conditions allow. But I think I have talked before of just this thing. And we must turn again to Tintoretto."
Not only this forenoon, but many others, were spent in the Scuola di San Rocco in the study of Tintoretto's paintings. At first they shuddered at his most vivid representations of poor, sick, wretched beings that cover these immense canvases dedicated to the memory of St. Roch, whose life was devoted to hospital work; then were fascinated by the power that had so ruthlessly portrayed reality. They studied his great Crucifixion,—as a whole, in detailed groups, and then its separate figures,—until they began to realize the magnitude of its conception and rendering. Mr. Sumner had said that nowhere save in Venice can Tintoretto be studied, and all were anxious to understand his work.
At the Academy, close by Titian's great Assumption of the Virgin, they found Tintoretto's Miracle of St. Mark, and saw how noble could be, at their best, his composition and drawing, and how marvellous his coloring of sky, architecture, costume, and flesh. They went to the various churches, notably, Santa Maria del Orto, to see good examples of his religious painting; and to the Ducal Palace for his many mythological pictures, and his immense Paradiso. Finally they were happy in feeling that they could comprehend, in some little degree, the spirit of this strange, powerful artist and his work.
One rainy evening, toward the close of their stay in Venice, all sat in the parlor, discussing a most popular novel recently published. It was written in an exceedingly clever manner; indeed, possessed an unusual degree of literary merit. But like many other books then being sent forth, the tale was very sad.