The series concludes with “The Crucifixion,” a masterpiece before which artists and amateurs, and even academic critics, have stood in mute wonder. It is a panoramic summary of the last acts in the persecution of Christ. No detail which the Evangelists furnish has been omitted, but all details have been subordinated to a unity so vast and impressive that it eludes analysis. Primarily, this is a pictorial representation of an historical event; but for the Christian believer it is an image of the profoundest religious meaning. There are many groups, but if you study each group you will discover that without it something would have been wanting to the whole. Here are Romans, to whom the spectacle has no moral interest; they are soldiers and judges, executing unperturbed the Roman law upon the person of a Jew who has stirred up the wrath of his fellows and caused a popular tumult. Here are Jews, mocking and full of hate. Here, too, is the little remnant of Jews who, believing in the victim as their master, are faithful to him unto death. Is not the indifference or the idle curiosity of some of the spectators as significant as the cruelty of his enemies and the devotion and anguish of his friends? For consider well what it implies that any human being should gaze unmoved, or moved only as by an every-day occurrence, at a fellow creature suffering the penalty of death. Is life, then, so cheap? Is a human soul of so slight account that men can cast lots or jeer while it passes in agony from earth forever? Who can estimate the cruelty which delights in the torments of that struggle? And if this sacrifice be viewed with the eyes of a Christian, and not of an impassive observer, if the victim be esteemed not merely a man, but the Son of God, what words shall describe its solemnity?
Tintoret has painted all this into his picture, in which the central object is the cross with Christ upon it. His head has sunk upon his bosom, and we imagine that with his downcast eyes he beholds the group of holy women at the foot of the cross, and says to Mary, “Woman, behold thy son.” That group is the most pathetic that painter ever drew. Some of the women, overwhelmed by grief, have fainted. Not by their faces, but by their drooping, motionless bodies, can you infer the unspeakable burden which is crushing them. One kneels; another—Magdalen, it may be—has risen, and looks up at the expiring Saviour. A venerable disciple gazes tenderly at the face of the Virgin, who has swooned. A younger disciple lifts his eyes toward Christ. They cannot help; they cannot speak; they can only wait and sorrow. Who shall utter the agony that love feels when it is powerless to relieve the suffering of its beloved!
Behind this group stands a man holding a bowl, into which another man, who has climbed a ladder resting against the back of the cross, dips a sponge stuck on a spear. At the left, other executioners are raising the cross on which one of the malefactors has been bound. Some men in front are tugging at ropes; others behind are pushing or steadying it. Hammers, adzes, a saw, and other tools bestrew the ground. Farther on are many spectators,—a Roman officer in armor, elders, dignitaries, and a soldier bearing the Roman standard. Some point toward Christ, and evidently say to one another: “That is the impostor who calls himself the Son of God and the King of the Jews. Where is his pretended might?” A little in the background, a mounted spearman has thrown the reins on the neck of his ass, which complacently feeds on withered palm leaves,—an imaginative touch characteristic of Tintoret, which will not be lost on those who recall Christ’s entry into Jerusalem a few days before.
In the foreground, to the right, a man is digging a hole for the cross of the second malefactor, while soldiers are drawing lots for Christ’s garments, and other mounted soldiers are watching the proceedings near by. A little beyond, another group is busy attaching that malefactor to his cross; one boring a hole for the spike to pierce his hand, another holding down his legs so that they can be bound, while a third has a rope. In the distance, men hurry toward the scene, lest they be too late to enjoy it; and the foremost camels of a caravan on its way into the city appear just at a turn in the road. For traffic and the daily toil of men are not interrupted by the crucifixion of Christ, though soldiers and idlers have come out to witness it. On the left there is a palace, and then hills succeeded by craggy mountains. The clouds have deepened almost into darkness along the horizon. The sun, as it sinks into this gloom, appears as a huge disk of ghastly light, and this disk forms a dim halo behind Christ’s head. Yet a little while and the earth shall be wholly darkened, and these curious, careless spectators shall flee away in terror.[23]
[23] In a great picture, now ruined, at the abandoned Bavarian palace of Schleissheim, near Munich, Tintoret has represented the Crucifixion in its later aspect.
Such, told briefly and inadequately,—for language can only hint at the effects of painting,—is this solemn event as conceived by Tintoret’s imagination.[24]
[24] This is one of the four or five paintings which Tintoret signed. It was finished in 1565. His receipt for its payment still exists. It is dated March 9, 1566. The sum received was two hundred and fifty ducats.
We have no evidence that Tintoret visited Rome, nor any record of his journeys, except that to Mantua, yet we may be sure that he was familiar with the scenery of the mainland. The woods and foliage, the streams, valleys, and meadows, the little hills and picturesque mountains, which abound in his paintings, he did not see at Venice. Our lack of information leaves us in doubt, therefore, whether he studied Michael Angelo’s “Last Judgment” in the Sixtine Chapel. If he never went to Rome, he probably was acquainted, from engravings or copies, with the composition of that extraordinary work; yet his own painting of that subject bears so little resemblance to Michael Angelo’s that it seems to have been produced independently.
The masterpiece of the Sixtine Chapel is so complicated that it bewilders the student, until he observes that the principal groups are roughly arranged in an immense irregular horseshoe, the points of which are near the bottom of the lower wall, while Christ, the chief figure, is inclosed in the upper oval. Four fifths of the action takes place in the air, the lower portion alone of the fresco being occupied by the river Styx and its adjacent bank. In its present nearly ruined condition we cannot guess the original effect of this work; but I doubt whether it could ever have satisfied the beholder’s instinctive demand for harmony. The groups, even the individuals, seem isolated, not only in space but in spirit. There is not, nor could there be, a single prevailing passion. The only characteristic which applies to the whole work is tremendous energy. Whatever of agony, of fury, of stubbornness, of determination, can be expressed by the human body, is expressed here. There is no muscle or tendon which is not exhibited in various positions; no posture of limbs or trunk which is not represented. The resurrection of the body is illustrated in a hundred ways, and the expression of the faces is of secondary importance. Here, patriarchs have the vigor of Titans; saints are as robust as athletes; Christ himself might be a majestically stern Apollo. Not without reason may we call these effigies of restless, writhing human beings wonderful diagrams of anatomy and concrete illustrations of dynamics. Even the saved, who occupy the higher regions, are not tranquil. In striving to comprehend these whirlwinds of action, the mind is wearied and baffled. Unit by unit you examine this multitude, and you are amazed in turn by sublimity, or horror, or power.
The space[25] to which Tintoret had to adapt his picture of “The Last Judgment” is oblong, about fifty feet high and twenty feet broad. In the upper part of the heavens Christ is represented, not in the character of the inexorable Judge, but in that of the Shepherd who welcomes his faithful flock to Paradise; for the resurrection and judgment are coincident. On one side, near Christ, John the Baptist is kneeling, and Mary and the repentant sinner, who bears a cross, are near; on the other side are personifications of the cardinal virtues. Extremely lovely is Charity, carrying in her arms two young children to present to the Saviour. Zones of fleecy clouds separate the upper part of the painting into sections, in which the saints are ranked; but the distribution seems natural, not arbitrary, and serves to prevent confusion among so many figures. Midway in the scene, angels plunge earthward to rouse the dead. Michael, with his terrible sword unsheathed, pursues the wicked toward a mighty river, which sweeps irresistibly into the abyss. In the distance, on a low shelf of sand amid the waters, is huddled a crowd of sinners, too indolent or too terrified to struggle against the flood which must soon engulf them. Crouching, they await their doom. In them Tintoret has perhaps typified those miserable creatures whom Dante describes as “a Dio spiacenti ed a’ nemici sui,”—hateful to God and to his enemies. Demons convoy a bark-load of the damned through the hellish torrent. And on the shore what a spectacle! Bodies starting from their graves, some not yet clothed with flesh, some with leafy branches growing from their arms, some striving to free themselves from the earth into which corruption resolved them; everywhere signs of the suddenness and awfulness of that supreme moment when the dead shall rise again in the forms they bore when alive, and go to the eternal abode, of bliss or punishment, for which each has fitted himself by his career on earth.