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Updated: June 6, 2025
There were beautiful paintings sent out from France at the time of the Revolution; and wood-carvings round the high-altar, done by Quebec artists in the beginning of the last century; for he said they had a school of arts then at St. Anne's, twenty miles below the city. Then there was an ivory crucifix, so life-like that you could scarcely bear to look at it.
Above the high-altar is the celebrated silver statue of S. Blaise which was saved from the fire, and is now preserved under glass. It is made of silver plates, gilded, on a basis of wood, and shows the front part of an old man with a long beard, in episcopal robes, holding a model of the city. The back portion has never been completed.
After the high-altar, the most brilliant spot was the altar of Saint Joseph, in the west transept; beside which was a magnificent crèche the figures half life-size, beautifully modelled, and richly clothed. But there was nothing whimsical about this crèche: the group might have been, and very possibly had been, composed after a well-painted "Nativity" by some artist of the late Renaissance.
Returning afterwards to Tuscany, he wrought a panel in distemper, which inclines to the manner of Ugolino Sanese, in San Gimignano; and this panel is to-day behind the high-altar of the Pieve, and faces the choir of the priests.
And for the high-altar of the Church of S. Pietro, an abbey of Black Friars in Perugia, he painted a large panel containing the Ascension, with the Apostles below gazing up to Heaven; in the predella of which panel are three stories, wrought with much diligence namely, that of the Magi, the Baptism of Christ, and His Resurrection.
To this building the retable of the high-altar, dedicated in 1469 and now in the north aisle, belongs, still called La Madonna del Coro.
Lifting the big green drapery which had first attracted me to that church, for it hung outside it, and pushing the door, there was a shock of surprise; a plunge into mystery. The round church was empty, dark, but full of the smell of fresh incense; and in that darkness I was fairly blinded by the effulgence of the high-altar, tier upon tier of tapers.
In a convent of Dominicans at Bol, on the south coast, is a Gothic church, with a restored altar-piece representing the Marriage of S. Catherine, with SS. Mary Magdalene, Paul, and Dominic as witnesses. An entry in the convent register attests the authorship "to Master Jacomo Tintoretto, painter, a further payment of 200 ducats for the high-altar piece."
Within it are three interesting altar-pieces by Francesco da Santa Croce; one above the high-altar has two rows of panels with figures of the Madonna, SS. Helena, Lucy, Clara, Elizabeth, Stephen, Peter, Francis, Anthony, Bernardino of Siena, and Bonaventura; another shows seven prophets; and a third has the Madonna in the centre, with three little angels below, and S. Jerome on the left, and S. John on the right.
All the side-altars were blazing with candles; and as the service went on, and the high-altar also flamed up, the whole building was filled with a soft radiance save that strange luminous shadows lingered in the lofty vaulting of the nave.
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