PLATE IV.—ST. GEORGE AND THE DRAGON
(National Gallery, London)
This remarkable work is one of the finest examples of Tintoretto in England. Composition and colouring are alike masterly and though some of the beauty of paint has passed, the St. George and the Dragon remains a striking work.
[II]
Thanks to Carlo Ridolfi we can form a fairly correct idea of the conditions under which young Tintoretto lived in the early days. The expulsion from Titian's studio must have been a very serious blow to his hopes and ambitions, but he did not repine unduly—he was made of sterner stuff. He took a small apartment and began those unremitting labours that were to land him in the first rank of draughtsmen. Through Daniele da Volterra, a pupil of Michaelangelo, he secured the models of the master's work that were to teach him so much about anatomy, and were to be used for experiments in foreshortening, and the treatment of light and shade. He had one friend, an artist known as Schiavone, a man almost as poor as himself in those first days of struggle and disappointment—a man who had likewise sought instruction in Titian's studio but had left it without incurring that great master's ill-will. One of the earliest commissions that fell to Schiavone was for the decoration of St. Mark's Library, but Tintoretto had to wait longer for work, and some years would seem to have passed before he realised his ambition and received a commission to paint altar-pieces. There are some workers to whom enforced idleness would be fatal, and Tintoretto might have been one of them, but for the fact that he had no capacity for indolence, and would work even though he worked for nothing.
The first church to give him a commission would seem to be that of Santa Maria del Carmine, and the impression that he gave to his masters must have been a very favourable one, for we find that the churches of St. Benedetto and Santo Spirito gave him orders soon after. Then the Scuola della Trinita recognised his talent, and gave him an order for certain pictures, including the famous "Death of Abel" and the equally famous "Adam and Eve," of which John Ruskin said, "this in absolute power of painting is the supremest work in all the world." These Scuoli or confraternities were both wealthy and powerful bodies, able and eager to give valuable commissions to artists. They would often grant permanent pay and regular work to the man whose accomplishment satisfied their requirements, and the work that remains to us shows that the directors of the Scuoli were men of taste and discretion.
As soon as Tintoretto felt that he was within sight of the goal of his ambitions he married, choosing for his wife one Faustina of Vescovi, the daughter of a patrician house, and a woman who seems to have realised that her husband's devotion to the ideals of art were likely to make him a very bad business man. Like many of the wives of clever men she played the tyrant in matters that did not concern the studio, and the painter would seem to have evaded some of her regulations for his comfort by saying the thing that was not. We would not say that he originated the habit, but it is said to have become popular and traces of it are still found among husbands in the twentieth century. Tintoretto took a house in the west end of Venice on the Fondamenta dei Mori overlooking Murano, and there he worked hard and lived simply. He must have been a man of engaging manner and amusing conversation, because Ridolfi has recorded many amusing little facts about him in his famous volume of biographies.
PLATE V.—THE PROCURATOR MOROSINI