4. Coronation of the Virgin. (Fourth altar in the same aisle.) Painted more for the sake of the portraits at the bottom, than of the Virgin at the top. A good picture, but somewhat tame for Tintoret, and much injured. The principal figure, in black, is still, however, very fine.
5. Resurrection of Christ. (At the end of the north aisle, in the chapel beside the choir.) Another picture painted chiefly for the sake of the included portraits, and remarkably cold in general conception; its color has, however, been gay and delicate, lilac, yellow, and blue being largely used in it. The flag which our Saviour bears in his hand, has been once as bright as the sail of a Venetian fishing-boat, but the colors are now all chilled, and the picture is rather crude than brilliant; a mere wreck of what it was, and all covered with droppings of wax at the bottom.
6. Martyrdom of St. Stephen. (Altar piece in the north transept.) The Saint is in a rich prelate’s dress, looking as if he had just been saying mass, kneeling in the foreground, and perfectly serene. The stones are flying about him like hail, and the ground is covered with them as thickly as if it were a river bed. But in the midst of them, at the saint’s right hand, there is a book lying, crushed but open, two or three stones which have torn one of its leaves lying upon it. The freedom and ease with which the leaf is crumpled is just as characteristic of the master as any of the grander features; no one but Tintoret could have so crushed a leaf; but the idea is still more characteristic of him, for the book is evidently meant for the Mosaic History which Stephen had just been expounding, and its being crushed by the stones shows how the blind rage of the Jews was violating their own law in the murder of Stephen. In the upper part of the picture are three figures,—Christ, the Father, and St. Michael. Christ of course at the right hand of the Father, as Stephen saw him standing; but there is little dignity in this part of the conception. In the middle of the picture, which is also the middle distance, are three or four men throwing stones, with Tintoret’s usual vigor of gesture, and behind them an immense and confused crowd; so that, at first, we wonder where St. Paul is; but presently we observe that, in the front of this crowd, and almost exactly in the centre of the picture, there is a figure seated on the ground, very noble and quiet, and with some loose garments thrown across its knees. It is dressed in vigorous black and red. The figure of the Father in the sky above is dressed in black and red also, and these two figures are the centres of color to the whole design. It is almost impossible to praise too highly the refinement of conception which withdrew the unconverted St. Paul into the distance, so as entirely to separate him from the immediate interest of the scene, and yet marked the dignity to which he was afterward to be raised, by investing him with the colors which occurred nowhere else in the picture except in the dress which veils the form of the Godhead. It is also to be noted as an interesting example of the value which the painter put upon color only; another composer would have thought it necessary to exalt the future apostle by some peculiar dignity of action or expression. The posture of the figure is indeed grand, but inconspicuous; Tintoret does not depend upon it, and thinks that the figure is quite ennobled enough by being made a key-note of color.
It is also worth observing how boldly imaginative is the treatment which covers the ground with piles of stones, and yet leaves the martyr apparently unwounded. Another painter would have covered him with blood, and elaborated the expression of pain upon his countenance. Tintoret leaves us under no doubt as to what manner of death he is dying; he makes the air hurtle with the stones, but he does not choose to make his picture disgusting, or even painful. The face of the martyr is serene, and exulting; and we leave the picture, remembering only how “he fell asleep.”
Giovanelli, Palazzo, at the Ponte di Noale. A fine example of fifteenth century Gothic, founded on the Ducal Palace.
Giovanni e Paolo, Church of St.[72] Foundation of, [III. 69]. An impressive church, though none of its Gothic is comparable with that of the North, or with that of Verona. The Western door is interesting as one of the last conditions of Gothic design passing into Renaissance, very rich and beautiful of its kind, especially the wreath of fruit and flowers which forms its principal molding. The statue of Bartolomeo Colleone, in the little square beside the church, is certainly one of the noblest works in Italy. I have never seen anything approaching it in animation, in vigor of portraiture, or nobleness of line. The reader will need Lazari’s Guide in making the circuit of the church, which is full of interesting monuments: but I wish especially to direct his attention to two pictures, besides the celebrated Peter Martyr: namely,
1. The Crucifixion, by Tintoret; on the wall of the left-hand aisle, just before turning into the transept. A picture fifteen feet long by eleven or twelve high. I do not believe that either the “Miracle of St. Mark,” or the great “Crucifixion” in the Scuola di San Rocco, cost Tintoret more pains than this comparatively small work, which is now utterly neglected, covered with filth and cobwebs, and fearfully injured. As a piece of color, and light and shade, it is altogether marvellous. Of all the fifty figures which the picture contains, there is not one which in any way injures or contends with another; nay, there is not a single fold of garment or touch of the pencil which could be spared; every virtue of Tintoret, as a painter, is there in its highest degree,—color at once the most intense and the most delicate, the utmost decision in the arrangement of masses of light, and yet half tones and modulations of endless variety; and all executed with a magnificence of handling which no words are energetic enough to describe. I have hardly ever seen a picture in which there was so much decision, and so little impetuosity, and in which so little was conceded to haste, to accident, or to weakness. It is too infinite a work to be describable; but among its minor passages of extreme beauty, should especially be noticed the manner in which the accumulated forms of the human body, which fill the picture from end to end, are prevented from being felt heavy, by the grace and elasticity of two or three sprays of leafage which spring from a broken root in the foreground, and rise conspicuous in shadow against an interstice filled by the pale blue, grey, and golden light in which the distant crowd is invested, the office of this foliage being, in an artistical point of view, correspondent to that of the trees set by the sculptors of the Ducal Palace on its angles. But they have a far more important meaning in the picture than any artistical one. If the spectator will look carefully at the root which I have called broken, he will find that in reality, it is not broken, but cut; the other branches of the young tree having lately been cut away. When we remember that one of the principal incidents in great San Rocco Crucifixion is the ass feeding on withered palm leaves, we shall be at no loss to understand the great painter’s purpose in lifting the branch of this mutilated olive against the dim light of the distant sky; while, close beside it, St. Joseph of Arimathea drags along the dust a white garment—observe, the principal light of the picture,—stained with the blood of that King before whom, five days before, his crucifiers had strewn their own garments in the way.
2. Our Lady with the Camerlenghi. (In the centre chapel of the three on the right of the choir.) A remarkable instance of the theoretical manner of representing Scriptural facts, which, at this time, as noted in the second chapter of this volume, was undermining the belief of the facts themselves. Three Venetian chamberlains desired to have their portraits painted, and at the same time to express their devotion to the Madonna; to that end they are painted kneeling before her, and in order to account for their all three being together, and to give a thread or clue to the story of the picture, they are represented as the Three Magi; but lest the spectator should think it strange that the Magi should be in the dress of Venetian chamberlains, the scene is marked as a mere ideality, by surrounding the person of the Virgin with saints who lived five hundred years after her. She has for attendants St. Theodore, St. Sebastian, and St. Carlo (query St. Joseph). One hardly knows whether most to regret the spirit which was losing sight of the verities of religious history in imaginative abstractions, or to praise the modesty and piety which desired rather to be represented as kneeling before the Virgin than in the discharge or among the insignia of important offices of state.
As an “Adoration of the Magi,” the picture is, of course, sufficiently absurd: the St. Sebastian leans back in the corner to be out of the way; the three Magi kneel, without the slightest appearance of emotion, to a Madonna seated in a Venetian loggia of the fifteenth century, and three Venetian servants behind bear their offerings in a very homely sack, tied up at the mouth. As a piece of portraiture and artistical composition, the work is altogether perfect, perhaps the best piece of Tintoret’s portrait-painting in existence. It is very carefully and steadily wrought, and arranged with consummate skill on a difficult plan. The canvas is a long oblong, I think about eighteen or twenty feet long, by about seven high; one might almost fancy the painter had been puzzled to bring the piece into use, the figures being all thrown into positions which a little diminish their height. The nearest chamberlain is kneeling, the two behind him bowing themselves slightly, the attendants behind bowing lower, the Madonna sitting, the St. Theodore sitting still lower on the steps at her feet, and the St. Sebastian leaning back, so that all the lines of the picture incline more or less from right to left as they ascend. This slope, which gives unity to the detached groups, is carefully exhibited by what a mathematician would call coordinates,—the upright pillars of the loggia and the horizontal clouds of the beautiful sky. The color is very quiet, but rich and deep, the local tones being brought out with intense force, and the cast shadows subdued, the manner being much more that of Titian than of Tintoret. The sky appears full of light, though it is as dark as the flesh of the faces; and the forms of its floating clouds, as well as of the hills over which they rise, are drawn with a deep remembrance of reality. There are hundreds of pictures of Tintoret’s more amazing than this, but I hardly know one that I more love.