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Bruce, of Roman Wall fame, and of the beloved and lamented Bishop Lloyd, are particularly fine. Near the east end of the church, which was raised to the rank of a Cathedral in 1881, is hung a large painting by Tintoretto, "Christ washing the feet of the Disciples"; this was presented to the church by Sir Matthew White Ridley in 1818.
Indeed, it is from 1454 to 1572, between the institution of state inquisitors and the battle of Lepanto, between the accomplishment of internal despotism and the last of the great outward victories, that the brilliant productions of Venetian art appear. John Bellini was born in 1426, Giorgone died in 1511, Titian in 1578, Veronese in 1572 and Tintoretto in 1594.
In the church of S. Rocco across the way Tintoretto has a picture of this scene in which we discern the dog to have been a liver-and-white spaniel. Golard, discovering the dog's fidelity to Rocco, himself passed into the saint's service and was so thoroughly converted by him that he became a humble mendicant in the Piacenza streets.
Yet there is a certain epigrammatic point in both; and I have often speculated whether even Venice could have so warped the genius of Poussin as to shed one ray of splendour on his canvases, or whether even Tintoretto could have so sublimed the prophet of Queen Anne as to make him add dramatic passion to a London drawing-room.
There was nothing else for it; the mountain was obliged to come to Mohammed or the man to the pup. Then the miner, no less than Tintoretto, was astonished. To ward off the barking, the red little hunter had raised his arm across his face, but his big brown eyes were visible above his hand, and their childish seriousness appealed to the man at once.
Raphael could scarcely have done better; besides, there is an air of sincerity, a stamp of popular truth in this episode which lies beyond Raphael's sphere. It reminds us rather of Tintoretto. The "Assumption of the Magdalen" for which fresco there is a valuable cartoon in the Albertina Collection at Turin must have been a fine picture; but it is ruined now.
While on a visit to friends in Venice, he avoided every building which contains a Tintoretto, averring that the sight of Tintoretto's pictures would injure his carefully trained taste. It is probable that neither anecdote is strictly true.
He often toiled there all day long, his hands red and swollen with the cold, for the winter, as I have before remarked, was unusually severe. For many days I saw him working on a Descent from the Cross by Tintoretto a bold attempt, for Tintoretto's colors are as baffling as those of the great Venetian master himself.
When he is thoroughly penetrated with his subject, Tintoretto soars perhaps on a stronger pinion and higher above the earth than the elder master. Yet in fulness and variety of life, in unexaggerated dignity, in coherence, in richness and beauty, if not in poetic significance of colour, in grasp of humanity and nature, Titian stands infinitely above his younger competitor.
Tintoretto could not but have foreseen that the world of living pettiness and passion would perpetually jostle with his world of painted sublimities and sanctities in that vast hall. Yet he did not on that account shrink from the task or fail in its accomplishment. Paradise existed: therefore it could be painted; and he was called upon to paint it here.
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