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Veronese was precisely the painter suited to a nation of merchants, in whom the associations of the counting-house and the exchange mingled with the responsibilities of the Senate and the passions of princes. He never portrayed vehement emotions. There are no brusque movements, no extended arms, like those of Tintoretto's Magdalen in the "Piet
In this last he incurred strictures from the Inquisition more severe than those of Kugler upon Tintoretto's Last Supper, and possibly with as much reason, it being objected that the introduction of German soldiery, buffoons, and a parrot was "irreligious." His Family of Darius, now in the National Gallery, was one of his latest works.
This statue is vigorous, and one feels that it is true to life, but for the old admiral at his finest and most vivid you must go to Vienna, where Tintoretto's superb and magnificent portrait of him is preserved. There he stands, the old sea dog, in his armour, but bare-headed, and through a window you see the Venetian fleet riding on a blue sea.
"The Transfiguration," "The Miraculous Draught of Fishes," "The Charge to Peter," "The Holy Family," "The Massacre of the Innocents," "Moses at the Burning Bush," "The Nativity," "Michael the Archangel," and the four or five exquisite "Madonnas." What are Tintoretto's great pictures?
The task comprises the scenes in the life of the Virgin, in the lower hall; the scenes in the life of Christ, on the walls of the upper hall; the scenes from the Old Testament, on the ceiling of the upper hall; and the last scenes in the life of Christ, in the Refectory. In short, the Scuola di S. Rocco is Tintoretto's Sistine Chapel.
After the time of Raphael, a pretty form of Madonna in glory was occasionally painted, showing the Virgin with her babe sitting above the crescent moon. The conception appears more than once in the paintings of Albert Dürer, and later, artists of all schools adopted it. Sassoferrato's picture in the Vatican Gallery is a popular example. Tintoretto's, in Berlin, is not so well known.
The more one studies the picture the more real is the scene and the more amazing the achievement. I do not say that one is ever moved as one can be in the presence of great simplicity; one is aware in all Tintoretto's work of a hint of the self-conscious entrepreneur; but never, one feels, was the great man so single-minded as here; never was his desire to impress so deep and genuine.
But I reserve the outline of Venetian painting until the Bellinis are normally reached. The two great pictures of this next room are Titian's "Assumption" and Tintoretto's "Miracle of S. Mark," reproduced opposite page 164, and this one. I need hardly say that it is the Titian which wins the rapture and the applause; but the other gives me personally more pleasure.
In the centre of the church, the sacristan scraped the carpenter's rubbish away from a flat tablet in the floor, and said that it was Tintoretto's tomb. It is a sad thing to doubt even a sacristan, but I pointed out that the tomb bore any name in the world rather than Robusti.
Thus has it always been with the great innovators in art, except that Tintoretto's triumph was more speedy: they have almost invariably been condemned first.
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