5. San Rocco in the Hospital. (On the right-hand side of the altar.) There are four vast pictures by Tintoret in the dark choir of this church, not only important by their size (each being some twenty-five feet long by ten feet high), but also elaborate compositions; and remarkable, one for its extraordinary landscape, and the other as the most studied picture in which the painter has introduced horses in violent action. In order to show what waste of human mind there is in these dark churches of Venice, it is worth recording that, as I was examining these pictures, there came in a party of eighteen German tourists, not hurried, nor jesting among themselves as large parties often do, but patiently submitting to their cicerone, and evidently desirous of doing their duty as intelligent travellers. They sat down for a long time on the benches of the nave, looked a little at the “Pool of Bethesda,” walked up into the choir and there heard a lecture of considerable length from their valet-de-place upon some subject connected with the altar itself, which, being in German, I did not understand; they then turned and went slowly out of the church, not one of the whole eighteen ever giving a single glance to any of the four Tintorets, and only one of them, as far as I saw, even raising his eyes to the walls on which they hung, and immediately withdrawing them, with a jaded and nonchalant expression easily interpretable into “Nothing but old black pictures.” The two Tintorets above noticed, at the end of the church, were passed also without a glance; and this neglect is not because the pictures have nothing in them capable of arresting the popular mind, but simply because they are totally in the dark, or confused among easier and more prominent objects of attention. This picture, which I have called “St. Rocco in the Hospital,” shows him, I suppose, in his general ministrations at such places, and is one of the usual representations of a disgusting subject from which neither Orcagna nor Tintoret seems ever to have shrunk. It is a very noble picture, carefully composed and highly wrought; but to me gives no pleasure, first, on account of its subject, secondly, on account of its dull brown tone all over,—it being impossible, or nearly so, in such a scene, and at all events inconsistent with its feeling, to introduce vivid color of any kind. So it is a brown study of diseased limbs in a close room.
6. Cattle Piece. (Above the picture last described.) I can give no other name to this picture, whose subject I can neither guess nor discover, the picture being in the dark, and the guide-books leaving me in the same position. All I can make out of it is, that there is a noble landscape with cattle and figures. It seems to me the best landscape of Tintoret’s in Venice, except the “Flight into Egypt;” and is even still more interesting from its savage character, the principal trees being pines, something like Titian’s in his “St. Francis receiving the Stigmata,” and chestnuts on the slopes and in the hollows of the hills; the animals also seem first-rate. But it is too high, too much faded, and too much in the dark to be made out. It seems never to have been rich in color, rather cool and grey, and very full of light.
7. Finding of Body of San Rocco. (On the left-hand side of the altar.) An elaborate, but somewhat confused picture, with a flying angel in a blue drapery; but it seemed to me altogether uninteresting, or perhaps requiring more study than I was able to give it.
8. San Rocco in Campo d’ Armata. So this picture is called by the sacristan. I could see no San Rocco in it; nothing but a wild group of horses and warriors in the most magnificent confusion of fall and flight ever painted by man. They seem all dashed different ways as if by a whirlwind; and a whirlwind there must be, or a thunderbolt, behind them, for a huge tree is torn up and hurled into the air beyond the central figure, as if it were a shivered lance. Two of the horses meet in the midst, as if in a tournament; but in madness of fear, not in hostility; on the horse to the right is a standard-bearer, who stoops as from some foe behind him, with the lance laid across his saddle-bow, level, and the flag stretched out behind him as he flies, like the sail of a ship drifting from its mast; the central horseman, who meets the shock, of storm, or enemy, whatever it be, is hurled backwards from his seat, like a stone from a sling; and this figure with the shattered tree trunk behind it, is the most noble part of the picture. There is another grand horse on the right, however, also in full action. Two gigantic figures on foot, on the left, meant to be nearer than the others, would, it seems to me, have injured the picture, had they been clearly visible; but time has reduced them to perfect subordination.
Rocco, Scuola di San, bases of, [I. 291], [431]; soffit ornaments of, I. 337. An interesting building of the early Renaissance (1517), passing into Roman Renaissance. The wreaths of leafage about its shafts are wonderfully delicate and fine, though misplaced.
As regards the pictures which it contains, it is one of the three most precious buildings in Italy; buildings, I mean, consistently decorated with a series of paintings at the time of their erection, and still exhibiting that series in its original order. I suppose there can be little question, but that the three most important edifices of this kind in Italy are the Sistine Chapel, the Campo Santo of Pisa, and the Scuola di San Rocco at Venice: the first is painted by Michael Angelo; the second by Orcagna, Benozzo Gozzoli, Pietro Laurati, and several other men whose works are as rare as they are precious; and the third by Tintoret.
Whatever the traveller may miss in Venice, he should therefore give unembarrassed attention and unbroken time to the Scuola di San Rocco; and I shall, accordingly, number the pictures, and note in them, one by one, what seemed to me most worthy of observation.
There are sixty-two in all, but eight of these are merely of children or children’s heads, and two of unimportant figures. The number of valuable pictures is fifty-two; arranged on the walls and ceilings of three rooms, so badly lighted, in consequence of the admirable arrangements of the Renaissance architect, that it is only in the early morning that some of the pictures can be seen at all, nor can they ever be seen but imperfectly. They were all painted, however, for their places in the dark, and, as compared with Tintoret’s other works, are therefore, for the most part, nothing more than vast sketches, made to produce, under a certain degree of shadow, the effect of finished pictures. Their treatment is thus to be considered as a kind of scene-painting; differing from ordinary scene-painting only in this, that the effect aimed at is not that of a natural scene but a perfect picture. They differ in this respect from all other existing works; for there is not, as far as I know, any other instance in which a great master has consented to work for a room plunged into almost total obscurity. It is probable that none but Tintoret would have undertaken the task, and most fortunate that he was forced to it. For in this magnificent scene-painting we have, of course, more wonderful examples, both of his handling, and knowledge of effect, than could ever have been exhibited in finished pictures; while the necessity of doing much with few strokes keeps his mind so completely on the stretch throughout the work (while yet the velocity of production prevented his being wearied), that no other series of his works exhibits powers so exalted. On the other hand, owing to the velocity and coarseness of the painting, it is more liable to injury through drought or damp; and, as the walls have been for years continually running down with rain, and what little sun gets into the place contrives to fall all day right on one or other of the pictures, they are nothing but wrecks of what they were; and the ruins of paintings originally coarse are not likely ever to be attractive to the public mind. Twenty or thirty years ago they were taken down to be retouched; but the man to whom the task was committed providentially died, and only one of them was spoiled. I have found traces of his work upon another, but not to an extent very seriously destructive. The rest of the sixty-two, or, at any rate, all that are in the upper room, appear entirely intact.
Although, as compared with his other works, they are all very scenic in execution, there are great differences in their degrees of finish; and, curiously enough, some on the ceilings and others in the darkest places in the lower room are very nearly finished pictures, while the “Agony in the Garden,” which is in one of the best lights in the upper room, appears to have been painted in a couple of hours with a broom for a brush.
For the traveller’s greater convenience, I shall give a rude plan of the arrangement, and list of the subjects, of each group of pictures before examining them in detail.