[19] At the School of San Rocco, Venice.
With equal originality and truth, Tintoret has illustrated the allegory of the temptation of St. Anthony.[20] This subject is usually treated either absurdly or grotesquely; as when the saint is discovered in a grotto through which bats, mice, witches, and imps flit and gambol. Not one of these ridiculous creatures, we may safely say, would frighten or tempt anybody. But who are the enemies that a man whose life is dedicated to holiness, and who has taken the three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, must resist? Tintoret’s picture gives the answer. In it one of the figures, typifying Riches, offers gold and precious gems. “Why live a beggar?” she pleads softly; “take these and have power.” A second figure, Voluptuousness, is that of a woman fair in body. “Come with me,” she urges; “let us taste of joy together while there is still time.” A third, who (I think) represents Unbelief or Heresy, has already dashed the saint’s missal and rosary to the ground, has snatched up his scourge, and, endeavoring to drag him away, has plucked off his mantle. “Come with me,” this tempter seems to say; “there will be no more scourging, and fasting, and mortification; with me your life shall be without care and unrestrained.” Nevertheless, Anthony, thus hard beset, looks heavenward, uttering a prayer for succor. Are not these apt personifications of those lower impulses to which even men of high resolve have succumbed? All the witches of the Brocken and all the bats in a Pharaoh’s tomb have nothing alluring about them.
[20] In the church of San Trovaso, Venice.
There are few of Tintoret’s paintings which will not make similar revelations, if you look attentively. Often what appears to be only a casual accessory is the key to the whole composition. Let me cite two instances of his imaginative use of color. The first occurs in “The Martyrdom of St. Stephen.”[21] The saint has fallen on his knees beneath the stoning of his persecutors, but there is no melodramatic spurting of blood or sign of physical pain. His face betokens fortitude, resignation, and forgiveness of his tormentors. He gazes up steadfastly into heaven, and sees the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God. The Almighty is clothed in a robe of red and a black mantle. In the background on earth, behind the martyr, a crowd watch the persecution; they are too far away for us to distinguish faces, but one of them, who is seated, is clothed in black and red. It is Paul, soon to acknowledge Christ and put on the livery of God. Again, in the “Paradise,” Tintoret gives profound significance to color as a symbol: Moses, the witness to the Old Covenant, and Christ, the witness to the New Covenant, have robes of similar colors.
[21] In the church of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice. Mr. Ruskin was the first to point out this stroke of genius.
The Doges’ Palace contains a score of Tintoret’s imaginative paintings and many of his portraits, and there are few churches in Venice which have not at least one altar-piece by him. His best portraits, as I think, outrank even Titian’s best: they have a vital quality, an inevitableness, which can be felt, but not described. What a concourse of doges, senators, procurators, nobles, and soldiers he has portrayed! Their grave, refined faces, their stately carriage, the sobriety as often as the sumptuousness of their dress, bear witness to the glory and power of Venice; that glory and power which had begun to decline in the sixteenth century, though the Venetians perceived it not. They misread the signs. They could not believe that Venice, which had continually grown in wealth during ten centuries, could decline or perish. Esto perpetua!—may she live forever!—was the last prayer of her historian, Sarpi, the abiding dream of all her citizens.
It was Tintoret’s pride to immortalize on canvas her legends and her history, and to illustrate her grandeur by means of allegory. He painted the popular stories of the recovery of St. Mark’s body from Alexandria, and of the miracles performed by that holy patron. He painted the siege of Zara, the battle of Lepanto, and the ambassadors of Venice holding head before the haughtiness of Frederick Babarossa. He painted Venice enthroned among the gods, and Venice as mistress of the sea.
But his genius was not confined to the expression of pomp and patriotism. It delighted not only in majestic flights of imagination, but also in contemplating and in setting forth pure beauty. In one of the smaller rooms of the Ducal Palace are two classic subjects by him,—“Mercury and the Graces,” “Ariadne and Bacchus,”—which, whether we regard their perfect symmetry, or the grace of their forms, or the delicious poetic spirit that emanates from them like fragrance from a bed of lilies, have few rivals in loveliness. They arouse in some beholders a mood akin to that which a joyous theme in one of Beethoven’s symphonies can arouse,—a mood sweeter than hope itself, or the brightest afterglow of memory; for, while it lasts, the present, flooded with peace and beauty and a nameless ecstacy, satisfies the soul.
The School of San Rocco possesses sixty-four pictures by Tintoret. This series, illustrating the principal events in the Old and New Testaments, is quite without parallel, not only in extent, but in the excellence of a large number of the separate paintings. You pass from one to another as from scene to scene in Shakespeare; and it is only when you return to the works of lesser men that you realize the richness and strength of the master, who has lifted you to his level so easily that you were conscious of no effort. The halls in which these paintings are kept are utterly inadequate for their proper examination: not one can be seen in a favorable light; many are almost buried in gloom, or hidden in the equally impenetrable glare that falls on their surface from the cross-lights of conflicting windows. Some of the canvases have been injured by water; the colors have grown dim or dingy with age; and in some cases “restorers”[22] have blurred the outlines and brought discord among the tones. Nevertheless, who that has once seen can ever forget many of those paintings? The original conception looms up beautiful and grand from amid the wreck of time and neglect, like a mutilated, earth-stained Greek statue, and your imagination exerts itself to see the work as it must have appeared when the colors were fresh. Who can forget that flock of angels in “The Annunciation;” or “The Visit of the Magi;” or “The Flight into Egypt;” or the terrible “Slaughter of the Innocents,” which seems to have been painted in blood, though there is hardly any blood to be seen; or “The Adoration of the Shepherds;” or “Christ’s Agony in Gethsemane;” or “Christ before Pilate;” or “Christ being led to Calvary”?
[22] One painting bears the inscription, REST. ANTONIVS FLORIAN, 1834. “Exactly in proportion to a man’s idiocy,” Mr. Ruskin remarks, “is always the size of the letters in which he writes his name on the picture that he spoils.”