[7] If Tintoret shines thus in the shades of night, what will he do when radiant day has risen?
Soon after, he displayed on the Rialto bridge another picture, by which the surprise already excited was increased, and he began thenceforward to get employment in the smaller churches and convents. Important commissions which brought wealth and honors were reserved for Titian and a few favorites; but Tintoret rejected no offer. Only let him express those ideas swarming in his imagination: he asked no further recompense. He seems to have been early noted for the practice of taking no pay at all, or only enough to provide his paints and canvas,—a practice which brought upon him the abuse of his fellows, who cried out that he would ruin their profession. But there was then no law to prohibit artist or artisan from working for any price he chose, and Tintoret, as usual, took his own course.
At last a great opportunity offered. On each side of the high altar of the Church of Sta. Maria dell’ Orto was a bare space, nearly fifty feet high and fifteen or twenty feet broad. “Let me paint you two pictures,” said Tintoret to the friars, who laughed at the extravagant proposal. “A whole year’s income would not suffice for such an undertaking,” they replied. “You shall have no expense but for the canvas and colors,” said Tintoret. “I shall charge nothing for my work.” And on these terms he executed “The Last Judgment” and “The Worship of the Golden Calf.” The creator of those masterpieces could no longer be ignored. Here was a power, a variety, which hostility and envy could not gainsay: they must note, though they refused to admire. It was in 1546, or thereabouts, that Tintoret uttered this challenge. In a little while he had orders for four pictures for the School of St. Mark; one of which, “St. Mark Freeing a Fugitive Slave,” soon became popular, and has continued so. “Here is coloring as rich as Titian’s, and energy as daring as Michael Angelo’s!” visitors still exclaim. Other commissions followed, until there came that which the Venetian prized above all others,—an order to paint for the Ducal Palace.
As the patriotic Briton aspires to a monument in Westminster Abbey, as the Florentine covets a memorial in Santa Croce, so the Venetian artist coveted for his works a place in the Palace of the Doges. That was his Temple of Fame. His dream, however, soared beyond the gratification of personal ambition: he desired that through him the glory and beauty of Venice might be enhanced and immortalized. This devotion to the ideal of a city, this true patriotism, has unfortunately almost disappeared from the earth. The very conception of it is now unintelligible to most persons. The city where you live—New York, Boston, London—you value in proportion as it affords advantages for your business, objects for your comfort and amusement; but you quit it without compunction if taxes be lower and trade brisker elsewhere. You are interested in its affairs just in so far as they affect your own. When you build a dwelling or a factory, you do not inquire whether it will improve or injure your neighbor’s property, much less whether it will be an ornament to the city; you need not even abate a nuisance until compelled to do so by the law.
But to the noble-minded Venetian, his city was not merely a convenience: it was a personality. Venezia was a spiritual patroness, a goddess who presided over the destiny of the State; he and every one of his fellow-citizens shared the honor and blessing of her protection. She had crowned with prosperity the energy and piety, the rectitude and justice, of his ancestors through many centuries. Every act of his had more than a personal, more even than a human, bearing. How would it affect her?—that was his test. He could do nothing unto himself alone; for good or for ill, what he did reacted upon the community, upon the ideal Venezia. The outward city—the churches, palaces, and dwellings—was but the garment and visible expression of that ideal city. Venezia had blessed him, and he was grateful; she was beautiful, and he loved her. His gratitude impelled him to deeds worthy of her protection; his love blossomed in gifts that should increase her beauty.
This reverence and devotion have, as I remarked, vanished from among men; yet in this ideal beams the conception of the true commonwealth. Observe that those three cities which held such an ideal before them have bequeathed to us the most precious works of beauty. Athens, Florence, Venice,—these are the Graces among the cities. At Karnak, at Constantinople, at Rome, at Paris, you will behold stupendous ruins or imposing monuments commemorating the pride and power of individual Pharaohs, Sultans, Cæsars, Popes, and Napoleons, but you will not find the spirit which was worshiped by the beautifying of the Acropolis, and of republican Florence, and of Venice. In which modern city will the most diligent search discover it?
Tintoret, then, had at last earned the privilege of consecrating his genius to Venezia. His first work for her seems to have been a portrait of the reigning Doge.[8] Then he painted two historical subjects,—“Frederick Barbarossa being crowned by Pope Adrian,” and “Pope Alexander III excommunicating Frederick Barbarossa;” and “The Last Judgment,” destroyed by the fire of 1557. Not long thereafter began his employment by the brothers of the confraternity of San Rocco. For their church, about 1560, he painted two scenes in the life of St. Roch, and then he joined in competition for a ceiling painting for the Salla dell’ Albergo in the School itself. The brothers called for designs, and upon the appointed day Paul Veronese, Andrea Schiavone, Giuseppe Salviati, and Federigo Zuccaro submitted theirs. But Tintoret had outsped them, and when his design was asked for he caused a screen to be removed from the ceiling, and lo! there was a finished picture of the specified subject. Brothers and competitors were astonished, and not greatly pleased. “We asked for sketches,” said the former. “That is the way I make my sketches,” replied Tintoret. They demurred; but Tintoret presented the picture to the School, one of whose rules made it obligatory that all gifts should be accepted. The displeasure of the confraternity soon passed away, and Tintoret was commissioned to furnish whatever paintings should be required in future. An annual salary of one hundred ducats was bestowed upon him, in return for which he was to give at least one painting a year. Generously did he fulfil the contract; for at his death the School possessed more than sixty of his works, for which he had been paid but twenty-four hundred and forty-seven ducats.
[8] It is interesting to know that the price regularly paid to Titian and Tintoret for state portraits was twenty-five ducats (about thirty-one dollars). Painters who have not a hundredth part of the genius of either Titian or Tintoret now receive one hundred times that sum.
In 1577 a fire in the Ducal Palace destroyed many of the paintings, and when the edifice was restored the government looked for artists to replace them. Titian being dead, his opposition had no longer to be overcome; yet even now Tintoret had to compete with men of inferior powers, but of stronger influence. Nevertheless, to him and Paul Veronese was assigned the lion’s share of the undertaking, and for ten years those two men labored side by side, in noble rivalry, to eternize the beauty and the glory of Venice. In 1588, owing to the death of Paul Veronese, who with Francesco Bassano had been commissioned to paint a “Paradise” in the Hall of the Grand Council, the work was transferred to Tintoret, who devoted to it the last six years of his life, and left in it the highest expression not only of his genius, but of Italian painting.[9] Old age robbed him of none of his energy, but added sublimity to his imagination, and interfused serenity and mellowness throughout his work. Still teeming with plans, he died of a gastric trouble, after a fortnight’s illness, on the 31st of May, 1594.[10]
[9] Has any one remarked that when Tintoret was painting the “Paradise,” Cervantes, Spain’s spokesman before the nations, Montaigne, the largest figure in French literature, and Shakespeare, paragon not of England only, but of the world, were his contemporaries? Those four might have met in his studio; and Science might have furnished three peerless representatives,—Bacon, Galileo, and Kepler.