PLATE VII.—THE RISEN CHRIST APPEARING TO THREE SENATORS(In the Venetian Academy)This is a curious work remarkable for the splendid handling of the figure of Christ. The three Senators are so obviously standing for their portraits that they do not interest us.
PLATE VII.—THE RISEN CHRIST APPEARING TO THREE SENATORS(In the Venetian Academy)This is a curious work remarkable for the splendid handling of the figure of Christ. The three Senators are so obviously standing for their portraits that they do not interest us.
(In the Venetian Academy)
This is a curious work remarkable for the splendid handling of the figure of Christ. The three Senators are so obviously standing for their portraits that they do not interest us.
Some five years would seem to have elapsed between the time when Tintoretto forced his picture of St. Roque upon the astonished brotherhood, and the time when he painted the "Crucifixion" for the Scuola in return for a fee of 250 ducats, becoming thereafter a member of the brotherhood. He worked for them for ten years or more, leaving the question of terms to their judgment, but receiving a very fair price. By the middle of the 'sixties his position in Venicewas assured. He was accepted on every hand as a man who honoured the churches and brotherhoods, civil or religious, that employed him. Unlike Titian he was very reliable, and does not seem to have accepted commissions and then to have ignored them because better work came along unexpectedly. His work in the churches is very varied and is scattered throughout Venice. Ridolfi refers to his early pictures in the Church of St. Benedict, but they are not to be found there now. Santa Maria dell 'Orto, which was one of the first to employ his brush, holds his famous "Last Judgment," a composition of singular nobility, painted with great technical skill, and the wonderful imagination that inspired all the painter's efforts. Unfortunately the details on the canvas are not easily seen, and the whole work wouldappear to have been handed over more than once to the renovator whose tender mercies, like those of the wicked, are cruel. In the same church there are two "Martyrdoms," one of St. Paul or St. Christopher, and another of St. Agnes, and there is the fascinating "Presentation of the Virgin," which ranks side by side with Titian's masterpiece in the Venetian Academy. Tintoretto's colour scheme is more subdued, but the composition is singularly attractive, and the painter's knowledge of perspective, his gift of conveying atmosphere, his skill in handling the human figure in any position have hardly been seen to greater advantage than in this master work. Perhaps because the church Santa Maria dell 'Orto received the artist's earliest work he loved it above all other churches, for it held the vault of theVescovis and he chose to be buried there. Clearly he was one for whom his wife's family held no terrors. Many other painters figure in this church, which lies well away from the city's main thoroughfares, by the canal Rio della Madonna dell 'Orto. Palma Vecchio is to be seen there and that Girolamo who is said to have acted for Titian when he wished to expel Tintoretto from his workshop. The church also has a "Pieta" by Lorenzo Lotto, and a "Madonna" by Gian Bellini. Tintoretto's burial in the church is recorded on a tablet.
The church of San Cassiano has two or three pictures by Tintoretto, and that of San Francisco della Vigna is said to have another, but it is not to be seen, and the brethren of St. Francis who pace to and fro along the broken-down cloisters can give no information to intruders armed withred guide-books. San Giorgio Maggiore is rich in Tintorettos, and has one or two attractive works by Bassano. A very famous "Last Supper" was painted for this church, but the work will not vie with much that Tintoretto did elsewhere. Santa Maria dei Frari has a beautiful "Massacre of the Innocents." San Marziale has an "Ascension," and two "Annunciations," together with a work that the painter did not live to finish. On the Giudecca in the old Franciscan Church of the Redentore, where a famous water festival is held throughout one night in the summer, there are two splendid examples of the painter's work, and in the church of the Madonna della Salute there is a "Marriage of Cana." This church holds several pictures by Titian and other masters of renown. Santo Stefano is said to have some famous picturesby Tintoretto in the sacristy, but the writer has not seen them.
The list of church pictures is by no means exhausted. It would not be easy to deal with them without giving these pages a suspicious resemblance to a catalogue. The visitor to Venice may be well advised to visit as many churches as he can, and to remember that many a building of little latter-day significance holds priceless work belonging to the sixteenth century. In Florence there are a score or more of Tintoretto's pictures in the galleries of the Uffizi and the Pitti Palace; in the former there is a striking replica of the "Wedding at Cana" in the Venetian church of the Madonna della Salute, but all these have their crowd of admirers; they are catalogued and clearly seen. In Venice, on the other hand, many a church from whichthe hurried tourist turns aside holds one or more of Tintoretto's masterpieces, and if it is well hung and has escaped the troublesome attentions of restorer and candle-burner, it will well repay quiet study.
The story that a great picture has to tell travels far beyond its own subject-matter, and the quality of that imagination which is associated with all great work is seen in a very high degree in many a church picture by the great Venetian master. Perhaps he owes his heroic achievements to Michelangelo. The full story of his indebtedness has been treated at length by John Ruskin, for whom the painter's work held great attractions; but it may be said, without fear of contradiction, that where a picture has survived its surroundings, the vigour of mind, the breadth of view, the dramatic sense of the painter, his splendid power ofseeing the great stories of Old or New Testament in their most dramatic aspect, will satisfy the most critical sense of the onlooker almost as much as the conquest of difficulties in light, shade, foreshortening, composition, and graded tones please the man who has mastered the technicalities of the painter's art.
Looking at Tintoretto's work and remembering that he hardly stirred beyond the limits of the Republic, it is impossible not to reflect upon the chance and luck that beset the lives of men. Tintoretto, with his splendid gifts, his rapid accomplishment, his courteous manner, remains in Venice; his fame suffering because he could see far beyond the limits that beset the view of his great and popular master. Had Tintoretto not been able to see quite so clearly, had he not alarmed contemporary criticism bygroping successfully after the first truths of impressionism, he might have been in the fulness of time the court painter of popes and emperors. His splendour might have been diffused throughout Italy; it might have travelled to Spain, then the greatest of all world powers. Titian, for all his extraordinary gifts, had certain conventional limitations. Tintoretto, equally gifted, could see more deeply into the truths that underlie painting, so he did not prosper in like degree. Happily for him he was a man who worked for work's sake, as long as his hands were full and he could labour from morning until night, the pecuniary and social results hardly seemed worth bothering about. We know that Titian, whose income was much larger than Tintoretto's, was loud in his complaints of bad times and inadequate payments, but if Tintoretto complained, Ridolfi has forgottento record the fact. There is no attempt here to belittle Titian or to praise Tintoretto; each was a man for whom the sixteenth century and its successors must need be grateful. The difference between them was temperamental, and is worth recording, though it is not set down in any spirit of unfriendly criticism.
PLATE VIII.—ADAM AND EVE(From the Venetian Academy)This picture, representing Eve in the act of offering the apple to Adam, is remarkable for the beauty of the flesh painting. John Ruskin was moved to express his admiration for it in terms of enthusiasm.
PLATE VIII.—ADAM AND EVE(From the Venetian Academy)This picture, representing Eve in the act of offering the apple to Adam, is remarkable for the beauty of the flesh painting. John Ruskin was moved to express his admiration for it in terms of enthusiasm.
(From the Venetian Academy)
This picture, representing Eve in the act of offering the apple to Adam, is remarkable for the beauty of the flesh painting. John Ruskin was moved to express his admiration for it in terms of enthusiasm.
It would seem that the pictures for the brotherhood of St. Roque secured for Tintoretto the crowning honour of his life, the commission to bring his brush to the service of the Doges' Palace. It is hardly too much to say that just as the Doges' Palace is the most remarkable monument of the Venetian Republic left in Venice to-day, so Tintoretto's pictures are the most remarkabledecorations in the palace itself. There must be fifty or more of them, if we include the Hall of Grand Council, the Hall of Scrutiny, the College, the Entrance and the Passage to the Council of Ten, the Ante-room to the Chapel, the Senate and the Salon of the Four Doors; but the task of painting fifty pictures, stupendous though it may seem, is not realised until we remember the size and quality of some of these works. The "Paradise," for example, in the Council Hall, is more than twenty-five yards long, and is such a work as many a painter would have given the greater part of his life to; but Tintoretto had little more than six years to live when he undertook the work, and there is no doubt that while the brain behind the picture was always his, the hand was sometimes that of his son or one of his pupils.
It may be supposed that most painters,who have reached Tintoretto's age when they received their commission for the Ducal Palace, would have hesitated to begin work on such a colossal scale. They would have felt that the span of their life could hardly stretch much farther, and knowing that much was to be done in the way of portraits and small pictures, would have been content with these. It was characteristic of Tintoretto that he should at once undertake pictures on the largest scale known to painters. Not only did he undertake the work, but he accomplished it.
The student of Tintoretto who finds himself in Venice should, we think, endeavour to leave the Doges' Palace alone until he has watched the painter's development in the various Venetian churches. Then he should study the work done for the brotherhood of St. Roque, and finallyshould go to St. Mark's to see the crowning achievement of one of the greatest men who ever took a paint-brush in hand. Students of opera will have noticed how a great singer will sometimes keep his voice back until the work is nearly over, in order to put all his energy into the last act, and so leave an impression that will not be forgotten easily. So it was with Tintoretto. He did splendid work in many directions, but saved himself for the last act, and the crowning achievement of his life was reserved for the Doges' Palace. There all the inspiration that had blossomed in the Venetian churches, and budded in the Scuola of St. Roque, came suddenly into flower, and the visitor to the palace will look in vain throughout the civilised world for an equally enduring monument to any one man. Other great artists haveleft their traces in many cities, but it may be doubted whether Michelangelo and Raphael in the Vatican have left a more enduring record than Tintoretto gave to the Palace of the Doges. So vast was his achievement, so brilliant was his imagination, that our eyes, trained down to see small things, and unaccustomed to realise the full idea underlying great pictures, tremble before the "Paradise" and "Venice with the Gods and the Doge Nicolo da Ponte," or the "Capture of Zara," or "St. Mark Introducing the Doge Mocenigo to Christ," or the splendid "Descent from the Cross," in the Senate, or the Pagan picture in the Salon of the Four Doors, in which Jupiter gives Venice the Empire of the Sea. Any one of these pictures might have been regarded as the crowning achievement in the life of a very considerablepainter. Before them all imagination stops. Certainly Tintoretto was a long time coming into his kingdom, but there could have been few to dispute his supremacy when he arrived.
In 1574 Tintoretto applied to the Fondaco de Tedeschi for a broker's patent, and thus history repeated itself, for it will be remembered that Titian had endeavoured to secure Bellini's place in the great house of the German merchants, and now Tintoretto was supplanting Titian. The application seems to have been quite successful. The house to-day serves as a general post-office, and still shows some slight trace of the frescoes of Giorgione and Titian. There does not seem to be any record of work that Tintoretto did for the German merchants, but the appointment was largely an honorary one as far as the work went,although it brought a certain income to the fortunate owner of the office. Tintoretto had now reached the time when his work could no longer be ignored, and even Florence which looked askance at art in Venice elected the painter a member of its Academy, an honour that was conferred also upon Titian, Paul Veronese, and a few smaller men.
Throughout all the years in which the painter's art was maturing, and the circle of his patrons was widening, he seems to have lived a quiet and uneventful life in Venice, seeking friends in his own circle, labouring diligently in his studio, and never permitting the claims of affairs lying outside his work to tempt him to be idle. A man of happy disposition, with no vices, and no extravagant tastes, he would seem to have found his earning sufficient for his need, and to havebeen happy in his home life, although we have already recorded the fact upon Ridolfi's authority that like so many other good men Tintoretto was in the habit of telling lies to his wife. Signora Robusti must have been a little trying when she sought to regulate her husband's expenditure, the times of his going out and coming in, and other trifles of the sort that good women delight to take an interest in.
The great grief of Tintoretto's life was happily delayed until 1590, when the well-beloved Marietta, who had been her father's friend and companion for so long, died. The shock must have been a very serious one, for Tintoretto himself was well over seventy, but it does not seem to have diminished his activity. He would appear to have given all his days to his own labour, or the superintendence of the labours of others, and sothe years crept on uneventfully for him, until the last day of May 1594 when his strenuous, vigorous, and brilliant career found its closing hour, and those whom he left behind, together with a great concourse of admiring citizens, took him to the tomb of his wife's house in the Church of the Madonna dell 'Orto, which he had enriched with so much fine painting. His daughter, having predeceased him—as we have seen, she was a portrait painter, and her father's dearest friend—his son Domenico carried on the family work, and completed his father's commissions, but neither brain, nor hand, nor eye could compare with those that were now at rest, and the younger Tintoretto makes small claim upon the attention of artist or historian.
So a very great man passed out of the life of Venice, and for a brief while his fameslumbered, but in years to come great artists, Velazquez foremost among them, made the great city of the Adriatic a place of pilgrimage for his sake. His influence, travelling on another road, extended as far as Van Dyck. We have already traced the descent to the modern school of impressionism, but he would be a bold man who would say that the influence of Tintoretto is exhausted, or holds that he has nothing to teach the twentieth century. His light will hardly grow dim as long as his painting has a claim upon the attention of civilised men.
The plates are printed byBemrose Dalziel, Ltd., WatfordThe text at theBallantyne Press, Edinburgh
Transcriber's Notes:Simple typographical errors were corrected.Defective printing of names of authors of some other titles in the Series was remedied by reference to another title in the Series, whose list was well-printed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected.
Defective printing of names of authors of some other titles in the Series was remedied by reference to another title in the Series, whose list was well-printed.