[55] Amongst the curiosities of criticisms are the differences between experts as to whether this is a morning or an evening effect. Contradictory opinions on the point were submitted to the Select Committee of 1853, but as the picture had been "restored," each side was able to impute the difficulty of deciding to the "ruinous" nature of that operation.
[56] It may be interesting to note on the other side that Dr. Waagen (whose experience of the sea is given under No. 149) finds the waves in this picture to "run high," and to be "extraordinarily deep and full."
[57] Compare for equally defective perspective the covered portico in 30.
[58] Visitors to Venice may like to be reminded that most of Ruskin's criticism upon Tintoret's works there is now easily accessible in (1) The Relation between Michael Angelo and Tintoret, (2) The Stones of Venice, travellers' edition, and (3) the reissue of the second volume of Modern Painters. Mr. Ruskin always accounted his "discovery" of Tintoret as one of the chief works of his life. "I have supplied," he wrote in Stones of Venice (1853), "somewhat copious notices of the pictures of Tintoret, because they are much injured, difficult to read, and entirely neglected by other writers on art." "I say with pride," he wrote in the epilogue to the second volume of Modern Painters (1883), "what it has become my duty to express openly, that it was left to me, and to me alone, first to discern, and then to teach, so far as in this hurried century any such thing can be taught, the excellency and supremacy of five great painters, despised until I spoke of them;—Turner, Tintoret, Luini, Botticelli, and Carpaccio. Despised,—nay, scarcely in any true sense of the word, known." For the Pre-Ruskinian view of Tintoret, the reader may consult Kugler's Handbook of Painting.
[59] For an exhaustive and interesting history of the legend see Mr. J. R. Anderson's Supplement to St. Mark's Rest. One account, it seems, places both Perseus and St. George in the Nile Delta. Politicians who say that England has gone to Egypt to save that country from itself may perhaps see some significance in this. The superstitious in such things will not forget either that one of Gordon's names was George.
[60] It is proper to mention that most of the critics dispute the genuineness of this picture, and consider it a copy by some scholar or imitator. "It is but a school repetition of a signed picture in The Hermitage, with the omission, however, of a charming figure of St. Catherine." In connection with this disputed point, it may not be out of place to recall the famous forgery in which Andrea himself played the chief part. The Duke of Mantua coveted Raphael's portrait of Leo X., and obtained permission from the Pope to appropriate it. The owner determined to meet force by fraud, and employed Andrea to make a copy which was sent to the Duke as the original. The copy, when at Mantua, deceived even Giulio Romano, who had himself taken part in the execution of the original—a fact which might well induce some modesty of judgment in connoisseurs.
[61] The title usually given to this picture, "Christ Disputing with the Doctors," cannot be correct, for the figure of Christ is too old for an incident which occurred when he was twelve years old.
[62] In the little-known collection in the library of Christ Church, Oxford, there is a powerful but unpleasantly realistic picture of a group in a butcher's shop, by one of the Carracci, which is perhaps a family portrait.
[63] See Blake's Auguries of Innocence.
[64] Gaspard was particularly unfaithful to the variety of nature in his representation of leaves (see 98). It is interesting therefore, as showing how long it passed for truth, to note that Lanzi (i. 481) singles out this point for special praise: "Everything that Gaspard expresses is founded in nature; in his leaves he is as various as the trees themselves."