The Stones of Venice, Volume 3 (of 3)

by John Ruskin

11. Baptism. There is more of the true picture quality in this work than in the former one, but still very little appearance of enjoyment or care. The color is for the most part grey and uninteresting, and the figures are thin and meagre in form, and slightly painted; so much so, that of the nineteen figures in the distance, about a dozen are hardly worth calling figures, and the rest are so sketched and flourished in that one can hardly tell which is which. There is one point about it very interesting to a landscape painter: the river is seen far into the distance, with a piece of copse bordering it; the sky beyond is dark, but the water nevertheless receives a brilliant reflection from some unseen rent in the clouds, so brilliant, that when I was first at Venice, not being accustomed to Tintoret’s slight execution, or to see pictures so much injured, I took this piece of water for a piece of sky. The effect as Tintoret has arranged it, is indeed somewhat unnatural, but it is valuable as showing his recognition of a principle unknown to half the historical painters of the present day,—that the reflection seen in the water is totally different from the object seen above it, and that it is very possible to have a bright light in reflection where there appears nothing but darkness to be reflected. The clouds in the sky itself are round, heavy, and lightless, and in a great degree spoil what would otherwise be a fine landscape distance. Behind the rocks on the right, a single head is seen, with a collar on the shoulders: it seems to be intended for a portrait of some person connected with the picture.

12. Resurrection. Another of the “effect of light” pictures, and not a very striking one, the best part of it being the two distant figures of the Maries seen in the dawn of the morning. The conception of the Resurrection itself is characteristic of the worst points of Tintoret. His impetuosity is here in the wrong place; Christ bursts out of the rock like a thunderbolt, and the angels themselves seem likely to be crushed under the rent stones of the tomb. Had the figure of Christ been sublime, this conception might have been accepted; but, on the contrary, it is weak, mean, and painful; and the whole picture is languidly or roughly painted, except only the fig-tree at the top of the rock, which, by a curious caprice, is not only drawn in the painter’s best manner, but has golden ribs to all its leaves, making it look like one of the beautiful crossed or chequered patterns, of which he is so fond in his dresses; the leaves themselves being a dark olive brown.

13. The Agony in the Garden. I cannot at present understand the order of these subjects; but they may have been misplaced. This, of all the San Rocco pictures, is the most hastily painted, but it is not, like those we have been passing, clodly painted; it seems to have been executed altogether with a hearth-broom, and in a few hours. It is another of the “effects,” and a very curious one; the Angel who bears the cup to Christ is surrounded by a red halo; yet the light which falls upon the shoulders of the sleeping disciples, and upon the leaves of the olive-trees, is cool and silvery, while the troop coming up to seize Christ are seen by torch-light. Judas, who is the second figure, points to Christ, but turns his head away as he does so, as unable to look at him. This is a noble touch; the foliage is also exceedingly fine, though what kind of olive-tree bears such leaves I know not, each of them being about the size of a man’s hand. If there be any which bear such foliage, their olives must be the size of cocoa-nuts. This, however, is true only of the underwood, which is, perhaps, not meant for olive. There are some taller trees at the top of the picture, whose leaves are of a more natural size. On closely examining the figures of the troops on the left, I find that the distant ones are concealed, all but the limbs, by a sort of arch of dark color, which is now so injured, that I cannot tell whether it was foliage or ground: I suppose it to have been a mass of close foliage, through which the troop is breaking its way; Judas rather showing them the path, than actually pointing to Christ, as it is written, “Judas, who betrayed him, knew the place.” St. Peter, as the most zealous of the three disciples, the only one who was to endeavor to defend his Master, is represented as awakening and turning his head toward the troop, while James and John are buried in profound slumber, laid in magnificent languor among the leaves. The picture is singularly impressive, when seen far enough off, as an image of thick forest gloom amidst the rich and tender foliage of the South; the leaves, however, tossing as in disturbed night air, and the flickering of the torches, and of the branches, contrasted with the steady flame which from the Angel’s presence is spread over the robes of the disciples. The strangest feature in the whole is that the Christ also is represented as sleeping. The angel seems to appear to him in a dream.

14. The Last Supper. A most unsatisfactory picture; I think about the worst I know of Tintoret’s, where there is no appearance of retouching. He always makes the disciples in this scene too vulgar; they are here not only vulgar, but diminutive, and Christ is at the end of the table, the smallest figure of them all. The principal figures are two mendicants sitting on steps in front; a kind of supporters, but I suppose intended to be waiting for the fragments; a dog, in still more earnest expectation, is watching the movements of the disciples, who are talking together, Judas having just gone out. Christ is represented as giving what one at first supposes is the sop to Judas, but as the disciple who received it has a glory, and there are only eleven at table, it is evidently the Sacramental bread. The room in which they are assembled is a sort of large kitchen, and the host is seen employed at a dresser in the background. This picture has not only been originally poor, but is one of those exposed all day to the sun, and is dried into mere dusty canvas: where there was once blue, there is now nothing.

15. Saint Rocco in Glory. One of the worst order of Tintorets, with apparent smoothness and finish, yet languidly painted, as if in illness or fatigue; very dark and heavy in tone also; its figures, for the most part, of an awkward middle size, about five feet high, and very uninteresting. St. Rocco ascends to heaven, looking down upon a crowd of poor and sick persons who are blessing and adoring him. One of these, kneeling at the bottom, is very nearly a repetition, though a careless and indolent one, of that of St. Stephen, in St. Giorgio Maggiore, and of the central figure in the “Paradise” of the Ducal Palace. It is a kind of lay figure, of which he seems to have been fond; its clasped hands are here shockingly painted—I should think unfinished. It forms the only important light at the bottom, relieved on a dark ground; at the top of the picture, the figure of St. Rocco is seen in shadow against the light of the sky, and all the rest is in confused shadow. The commonplaceness of this composition is curiously connected with the languor of thought and touch throughout the work.

16. Miracle of the Loaves. Hardly anything but a fine piece of landscape is here left; it is more exposed to the sun than any other picture in the room, and its draperies having been, in great part, painted in blue, are now mere patches of the color of starch; the scene is also very imperfectly conceived. The twenty-one figures, including Christ and his Disciples, very ill represent a crowd of seven thousand; still less is the marvel of the miracle expressed by perfect ease and rest of the reclining figures in the foreground, who do not so much as look surprised; considered merely as reclining figures, and as pieces of effect in half light, they have once been fine. The landscape, which represents the slope of a woody hill, has a very grand and far-away look. Behind it is a great space of streaky sky, almost prismatic in color, rosy and golden clouds covering up its blue, and some fine vigorous trees thrown against it; painted in about ten minutes each, however, by curly touches of the brush, and looking rather more like seaweed than foliage.

17. Resurrection of Lazarus. Very strangely, and not impressively conceived. Christ is half reclining, half sitting, at the bottom of the picture, while Lazarus is disencumbered of his grave-clothes at the top of it; the scene being the side of a rocky hill, and the mouth of the tomb probably once visible in the shadow on the left; but all that is now discernible is a man having his limbs unbound, as if Christ were merely ordering a prisoner to be loosed. There appears neither awe nor agitation, nor even much astonishment, in any of the figures of the group; but the picture is more vigorous than any of the three last mentioned, and the upper part of it is quite worthy of the master, especially its noble fig-tree and laurel, which he has painted, in one of his usual fits of caprice, as carefully as that in the “Resurrection of Christ,” opposite. Perhaps he has some meaning in this; he may have been thinking of the verse, “Behold the fig-tree, and all the trees; when they now shoot forth,” &c. In the present instance, the leaves are dark only, and have no golden veins. The uppermost figures also come dark against the sky, and would form a precipitous mass, like a piece of the rock itself, but that they are broken in upon by one of the limbs of Lazarus, bandaged and in full light, which, to my feeling, sadly injures the picture, both as a disagreeable object, and a light in the wrong place. The grass and weeds are, throughout, carefully painted, but the lower figures are of little interest, and the face of the Christ a grievous failure.

18. The Ascension. I have always admired this picture, though it is very slight and thin in execution, and cold in color; but it is remarkable for its thorough effect of open air, and for the sense of motion and clashing in the wings of the Angels which sustain the Christ: they owe this effect a good deal to the manner in which they are set, edge on; all seem like sword-blades cutting the air. It is the most curious in conception of all the pictures in the Scuola, for it represents, beneath the Ascension, a kind of epitome of what took place before the Ascension. In the distance are two Apostles walking, meant, I suppose, for the two going to Emmaus; nearer are a group round a table, to remind us of Christ appearing to them as they sat at meat; and in the foreground is a single reclining figure of, I suppose, St. Peter, because we are told that “he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve:” but this interpretation is doubtful; for why should not the vision by the Lake of Tiberias be expressed also? And the strange thing of all is the scene, for Christ ascended from the Mount of Olives; but the Disciples are walking, and the table is set, in a little marshy and grassy valley, like some of the bits near Maison Neuve on the Jura, with a brook running through it, so capitally expressed, that I believe it is this which makes me so fond of the picture. The reflections are as scientific in the diminution, in the image, of large masses of bank above, as any of Turner’s, and the marshy and reedy ground looks as if one would sink into it; but what all this has to do with the Ascension I cannot see. The figure of Christ is not undignified, but by no means either interesting or sublime.

19. Pool of Bethesda. I have no doubt the principal figures have been repainted; but as the colors are faded, and the subject disgusting, I have not paid this picture sufficient attention to say how far the injury extends; nor need any one spend time upon it, unless after having first examined all the other Tintorets in Venice. All the great Italian painters appear insensible to the feeling of disgust at disease; but this study of the population of an hospital is without any points of contrast, and I wish Tintoret had not condescended to paint it. This and the six preceding paintings have all been uninteresting,—I believe chiefly owing to the observance in them of Sir Joshua’s rule for the heroic, “that drapery is to be mere drapery, and not silk, nor satin, nor brocade.” However wise such a rule may be when applied to works of the purest religious art, it is anything but wise as respects works of color. Tintoret is never quite himself unless he has fur or velvet, or rich stuff of one sort or the other, or jewels, or armor, or something that he can put play of color into, among his figures, and not dead folds of linsey-woolsey; and I believe that even the best pictures of Raffaelle and Angelico are not a little helped by their hems of robes, jewelled crowns, priests’ copes, and so on; and the pictures that have nothing of this kind in them, as for instance the “Transfiguration,” are to my mind not a little dull.

20. Temptation. This picture singularly illustrates what has just been observed; it owes great part of its effect to the lustre of the jewels in the armlet of the evil angel, and to the beautiful colors of his wings. These are slight accessaries apparently, but they enhance the value of all the rest, and they have evidently been enjoyed by the painter. The armlet is seen by reflected light, its stones shining by inward lustre; this occult fire being the only hint given of the real character of the Tempter, who is otherways represented in the form of a beautiful angel, though the face is sensual: we can hardly tell how far it was intended to be therefore expressive of evil; for Tintoret’s good angels have not always the purest features; but there is a peculiar subtlety in this telling of the story by so slight a circumstance as the glare of the jewels in the darkness. It is curious to compare this imagination with that of the mosaics in St. Mark’s, in which Satan is a black monster, with horns, and head, and tail, complete. The whole of the picture is powerfully and carefully painted, though very broadly; it is a strong effect of light, and therefore, as usual, subdued in color. The painting of the stones in the foreground I have always thought, and still think, the best piece of rock drawing before Turner, and the most amazing instance of Tintoret’s perceptiveness afforded by any of his pictures.