The Venetian School of Painting

by Evelyn March Phillipps

Tintoretto. Scuola di San Rocco.
S. MARY OF EGYPT.
(Photo, Anderson.)

Leonardo, by one supreme example, Tintoretto, by many renderings, have made the “Last Supper” peculiarly their own in the domain of art. It shows how strongly the mystic strain entered into the man’s character, that often as Tintoretto treated the subject, it never lost its interest for him, and he never failed to find a fresh point of view. In that in S. Polo, Christ offers the sacred food with a gesture of vehement generosity. Placed as the picture is, to appeal to all comers to the Mass, to afford them a welcome as they pass to the High Altar, it tells of the Bread of Life given to all mankind. Tintoretto himself, painted in the character of S. Paul, stands at one side, absorbed in meditation. We need not insist again on the emotional value of the deep colours, the rich creams and crimsons and the chiaroscuro. In his latest rendering, in S. Giorgio Maggiore, he touches his highest point in symbolical treatment. Some people are only able to see a theatrical, artificial spirit in this picture, but at least, when we consider what deep meditation Tintoretto had bestowed on his subjects, we may believe that he himself was sincere and that he let himself go over what commended itself as an entirely new rendering. “The Light shined in the Darkness, and the Darkness comprehended it not.” The supernatural is entering on every side, but the feast goes on; the serving men and maids busy themselves with the dishes; the disciples are inquiring, but not agitated; none see that throng of heavenly visitants, pouring in through the blue moonlight, called to their Master’s side by the supreme significance of His words. The painter has taken full advantage of the opportunity of combining the light of the cresset lamp, pouring out smoky clouds, with the struggling moonlight and the unearthly radiance, in divers, yet mingling streams which fight against the surrounding gloom. In the scene in the Scuola di S. Rocco the betrayal is the dominating incident, and in San Stefano all is peace, and the Saviour is alone with the faithful disciples.

Tintoretto. BACCHUS AND ARIADNE. Ducal Palace, Venice.
(Photo, Anderson.)

Though several of the large compositions ascribed to Tintoretto in the Ducal Palace are only partly by him, or entirely by followers and imitators, its halls are still a storehouse of his genius. There is much that is fine about the great state pieces. In the “Marriage of St. Catherine,” the saint, in silken gown and long transparent veil, is an exquisite figure. Tintoretto bathes all his pageantry in golden light and air, and yet we feel that these huge official subjects, with the prosaic old Doges introduced in incongruous company, neither stimulated his imagination nor satisfied his taste. It is on the smaller canvases that he finds inspiration. He never painted anything more lovely, more perfect in design, or more gay and tender in idea, than the cycle in the Ante-Collegio. The glowing light and exquisitely graded shadows upon ivory limbs have a sensuous perfection and a refined, unselfconscious joy such as is felt in hardly any other work, except the painter’s own “Milky Way” in the National Gallery. In all these four pictures the feeling for design, a branch of art in which Tintoretto was past master, is fully displayed. In the Bacchus and Ariadne all the principal lines, the eyes and gestures, converge upon the tiny ring which is the symbol of union between the goddess and her lover, between the queenly city and the Adriatic sea. Or take “Pallas driving away Mars”: see how the mass into which the figures are gathered on the left adds strength to the thrust of the goddess’s arm, and what steadiness is given by that short straight lance of hers, coming in among all the yielding curves. The whole four are linked together in meaning: the call to Venice to reign over the seas, her triumphant peace, with Wisdom guiding her council, and her warriors forging arms in case of need. In conjunction with these pictures are two small ones in the chapel, hardly less beautiful—St. George with St. Margaret, and SS. Andrew and Jerome. It is difficult to say whether the exultant St. George, the dignified young bishop, or the two older saints are the more sympathetic creations, or the more admirable, both in drawing and colour. The sense of space in both settings is an added charm, and every scrap of detail, the leafy boughs, the cross and crozier, is important to the composition.

There are many other striking examples, ranging all through Tintoretto’s life, of his untiring imagination. In the Salute is that “Marriage of Cana,” in which all the actors seem to swim in golden light. The sharp silhouettes bring out an effect of radiant sunshine with which the hall is flooded, and all the architectural lines lead our eyes towards the central figure, placed at a distance. On that long canvas in the Academy, kneel the three treasurers, pouring out their gold and bending in homage before the Madonna and Child, who sit enthroned upon a broad piazza, through the marble pillars of which a blue and distant landscape shines. Grave senators in mulberry velvet and ermine kneel before the Child, or hold counsel on Paduan affairs under the patronage of S. Giustina. The “Crucifixion” (in S. Cassiano) is another triumph of the painter’s imaginative conception. The bold lines of the crosses, the ladder, and the figures detach against a glorious sky, and the presence of the moving, murmuring throng, of which, by the placing of the line of sight, the spectator is made to form a part, is conveyed by the swaying and crossing of the lances borne by the armed men who keep the ground. There is a series, too, which deals with the Magdalen. She mourns her dead in that solemn, restrained “Entombment,” where the enfolding shadows frame the cross against the sad dawn, which adorns the mortuary chapel of S. Giorgio Maggiore; and the Pietà in the Brera, the long lines of which add to the impression of tender repose, has its peace broken by the passionate cry of the woman who loved much. Tintoretto’s ideas are exhaustless; he can paint the same scene in a dozen different ways, and, in fact, the book of sketches lately acquired by the British Museum shows as many as thirty trials dashed off for one subject, and after all he uses one composed for something quite different. It is this habit of throwing off red-hot essays, fresh from his brain, that has led to the common but superficial judgment that Tintoretto was merely a great improvisatore, whose successes came more or less by good luck. He could, indeed, paint pictures at a pace at which many great masters could only sketch, but he had already designed and considered and rejected, doing with oil, ink, and paper what many of his contemporaries did mentally. Such achievements as the Ante-Collegio cycle, the “House of Martha and Mary,” the “Marriage of Cana,” the “Temptation of S. Anthony,” to name only a few, show a finish and perfection and a balance of design which preclude the idea of their being lightly painted pictures. When he was actually engaged, Tintoretto let himself go with impetuous ardour, but we may feel assured he left nothing to chance, though he had his own way of making sure of the result.

It is strange to hear people, as one does now and then, talking of the “Paradiso” as “a splendid failure.” It may be granted that the subject is an impossible one for human art to realise, yet when all allowance has been made for a lamentable amount of drying and blackening, it is difficult to agree that Ruskin was all wrong in his admiration of that thronging multitude, ordered and disciplined by the tides of light and shadow, which roll in and out of the masses, resolving them into groups and single figures of almost matchless beauty and melting away into a sea of radiant ether, which tells us of the boundless space which surrounds the serried ranks of the Blessed.