[147] See Ridolfi. The original went to Dresden; but Italy abounds in copies of it. Lanzi mentions one which he saw at S. Saverio in Rimini, with Tiziano's name written on the fillet of the Pharisee, a performance of great beauty, and by many considered less a copy than a duplicate. The most celebrated copy, that of Flaminio Torre, is preserved at Dresden with the original.
[148] "Si può quasi dire, che il vizio sia la virtù della Scuola Veneziana, poichè fa pompa della sollecitudine nel dipingere; e perciò fa stima di Tintoretto, che non avea altro merito." Mengs, Opere, t. i. p. 175. ed. Parm.
[149] It has supplanted, was probably perpetuated in allusion to his rapidity of execution, and remains familiar to ears that never heard of Robusti.
[150] See Varie Pitture a fresco de' principali Maestri Veneziani, &c. Venez. fol. 1760. Tab. 8, 9, p. viii. No one who has seen the original figures of the Aurora and Creposcolo in S. Lorenzo, can mistake their imitation, or rather transcripts, in these.
[151] The frequent want of equilibration found in Tintoretto's figures, even where no violence of action can palliate or account for it, has not without probability been ascribed to his method of studying foreshortening from models loosely suspended and playing in the air; to which he at last became so used that he sometimes employed it even for figures resting on firm ground, and fondly sacrificed solidity and firmness to the affected graces of undulation.
[152] It would be mere waste of time to recapitulate what has been said on the efficient beauties of this astonishing work in the lectures on colour and chiaroscuro, and in the article of Tintoretto, in the last edition of Pilkington's Dictionary. It has been engraved on a large scale by Agostino Carracci, if that can be called engraving which contents itself with the mere enumeration of the parts, totally neglecting the medium of that tremendous twilight which hovers over the whole and transposes us to Golgotha. If what Ridolfi says be true, that Tintoretto embraced the engraver when he presented the drawing to him, he must have had still more deplorable moments of dereliction as a man than as an Artist, or the drawing of Agostino, must have differed totally from the print.
[153] It is engraved by Pietro Monaco, as that of Tiziano, by Le Fevre, but in a manner which makes us lament the lot of those who have no means to see the original.
THE SCHOOL OF MANTOUA.