Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3

arison with Florence-The Ducal Palace-Art regarded as an adjunct to State Pageantry-Myth of Venezia-Heroic Deeds of Venice-Tintoretto

o dramatise Venetian Art-Veronese's Mundane Splendour-Titian's Sophoclean Harmony-Their Schools-Further Characteristics of Veronese-of Tin

mate treatment at the hands of Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese. To idealise the sensualities of the external universe, to achieve for colour what the Florentines had done for form, to invest the worldly grandeur of human life at one of its most gorgeous epochs with the

r quays and squares aglow with the costumes of the Levant, her lagoons afloat with the galleys of all nations, her churches floored with mosaics, her silvery domes and ceilings glittering with sculpture bathed in molten gold: Venice luxurious in the light and colour of a vaporous atmosphere, where sea-mists rose into the mounded summer clouds; arched over by the broad expanse of sky, bounded only by the horizon of waves and plain and distant mountain r

goons of Venice yield almost daily to the eyes? The Venetians had no green fields and trees, no garden borders, no blossoming orchards, to teach them the tender suggestiveness, the quaint poetry of isolated or contrasted tints. Their meadows were the fruitless furrows of the Adriatic, hued like a peacock's neck; they called the pearl-shells of their Lido flowers, fior di mare. Nothing distracted their attention from the glories of morning and of evening presented to them by their sea and sky. It was in consequence of this that the Venetians con

etian sunset strikes the keyno

ause on some d

pleasant pilg

the evening a

ween the city

e image of th

towards the n

heaven-sustainin

st and west; a

h clouds of ri

the zenith, w

p west into a

burning gold,

sun yet paused

ny-folded hi

Euganean hill

ido through th

of a clump of

f the earth an

one lake of f

towering, as fro

rous sun, from

ple spirit of

ks transparent

nion, "I will

tion." So, o

nd from that

saw the city;

many isles, in

and its pala

f enchantment

In this mood I went and leaned my arms upon the sill outside my window, and throwing my chest and nearly all my body on the marble, abandoned myself to the contemplation of the spectacle presented by the innumerable boats, filled with foreigners as well as people of the city, which gave delight not merely to the gazers, but also to the Grand Canal itself, that perpetual delight of all who plough its waters. From this animated scene, all of a sudden, like one who from mere ennui knows not how to occupy his mind, I turned my eyes to heaven, which, from the moment when God made it, was never adorned with such painted loveliness of lights and shadows. The whole region of the air was what those who envy you, because they are unable to be you, would fain express. To begin with, the buildings of Venice, though of solid stone, seemed made of some ethereal substance. Then the sky was full of variety-here clear and ardent

no mark on Venice. How different was this town from Florence, every inch of whose domain could tell of civic warfare, whose passionate aspirations after independence ended in the despotism of the bourgeois Medici, whose repeated revolutions had slavery for their climax, whose grey palaces bore on their fronts the stamp of medi?val vigilance, whose spirit was incarnated in Dante the exile, whose enslavement forced from Michael Angelo those groans of a chained Titan expressed in the marbles of S. Lorenzo! It is not an insignificant, though a slight, detail, that the predominant colour of Florence is brown, while the predominant colour of Venice is that of mother-of-pearl, concealing within its general whiteness every tint that can be placed upon the palette of a painter. The conditions of Florence stimulated mental energy and turned the

diaper of pink and white, was designed at the same early period. The inner court and the fa?ade that overhangs the lateral canal, display the handiwork of Sansovino. The halls of the palace-spacious chambers where the Senate assembled, where ambassadors approached the Doge, where the Savi deliberated, where the Council of Ten conducted their inquisition-are walled and roofed with pictures of inestimable value, encased in framework of carved oak; overlaid with burnished gold. Supreme art-the art of the imagination perfected with delicate and skilful care

ool wait Justice with the sword and Peace with the olive branch, as a queen of heaven exalted to the clouds. They have made her a goddess, those great painters; they have produced a mythus, and personified in native loveliness that bride of the sea, their love, their lady. The beauty of Venetian women and the glory of Venetian empire find their meeting point in her, and live as the spirit of Athens lived in Pallas Promachos. On every side, above, a

life separate from the rest of Italy. Their Church claimed independence of the see of Rome, and the enthusiasm of S. Francis was but faintly felt in the lagoons. Siena in her hour of need dedicated herself to Madonna; Florence in the hour of her regeneration gave herself to Christ; Venice remained under the ensign of the leonine S. Mark. While the cities of Lombardy and Central Italy ran wild with revivalism and religious panics, the Venetians maintained their calm, and never suffered piety to exceed the limits of political prudence. There is, therefore, no mystical exaltation in the faith depicted

eyes of penitence look down upon them. 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. If the fine gentlemen and ladies below felt out of

the State. The Venetian painters, as we have seen, exalted Venice and set forth her acts of power. Their work is a glorification of the Republic; but no doctrine is inculcated, and no system of thought is conveyed to the mind through the eye. Daily pacing the saloons of the palace, Doge and noble were reminded of the greatness of the State they represented. They were not invited to reflect upon the duties of the governor and governed. Their imaginations were dilated and

varini of Murano the Venetian school in its infancy began with a selection from the natural world of all that struck them as most brilliant. No other painters of their age in Italy employed such glowing colours, or showed a more marked predilection for the imitation of fruits, rich stuffs, architectural canopies, jewels, and landscape backgrounds. Their piety, unlike the mysticism of the Sienese and the deep thought of the Florentine masters, is somewhat superficial a

ese are the source of inspiration to the Venetians of the second period. Mantegna, a few miles distant, at Padua, was working out his ideal of severely classical design. Yet he scarcely touched the manner of the Venetians with his influence, though Gian Bellini was his brother-in-law and pupil, and though his genius, in grasp of matter and in management of composition, soared above his neighbours. Lionardo da Vinci at Milan was perfecting his problems of psychology in painting, offering to the world solutions of the greatest difficulties in the delineation of the spirit by expression. Yet not a trace of Lionardo's subtle play of lig

llustrate the tendency of the Venetian masters to express the actual world, rather than to formulate an ideal of the fancy or to search the secrets of the soul. This realism, if the name can be applied to pictures so poetical as those of Carpaccio, is not, like the Florentine r

eased from singing, and were ready to recommence at the pleasure of their mistress. Meanwhile there is a silence in the celestial company, through which the still voice of the praying heart is heard, a silence corresponding to the hushed mood of the worshipper.[276] The children are accustomed to the

the Renaissance. In him the colourists of the next age found an absolute teacher; no one has surpassed him in the difficult art of giving tone to pure tints in combination. There is a picture of Bellini's in S. Zaccaria at Venice-Madonna enthroned with Saints-where the skill of the colourist may be said to culminate in unsurpassable perfection. The whole painting is bathed in a soft but luminous haze of gold; yet each figure has its individuality of trea

s, and launched it on the waves of the Renaissance liberty. While equal as a colourist to Bellini, though in a different and more sensuous region, Giorgione, by the variety and inventiveness of his conception, proved himself a painter of the calibre of Titian. Sacred subjects he seems to have but rarely treated, unless such purely idyllic pictures as the "Finding of Moses" in the Uffizzi, and the "Meeting of Jacob and Rachel" at Dresden deserve the name. Allegories of deep and problematic meaning, the key whereof has to be found in states of the emotion rather than, in thoughts, delighted him. He may

ts concentrated feeling-the very soul of music, as expressed in Mr. Robert Browning's "Abt Vogler," passing through his eyes. This power of painting the portrait of an emotion, of depicting by the features a deep and powerful but tranquil moment of the inner life, must have been possessed by Giorgione in an eminent degree. We find it again in the so-called "Begrüssung" of the Dresden Gallery.[280] The picture is a large landscape, Jacob and Rachel mee

reserved in large numbers and in excellent condition. Chronologically speaking, Titian, the contemporary of Giorgione, precedes Tintoretto, and Tintoretto is somewhat earlier than

etry of chiaroscuro, expressing moods of passion and emotion by brusque lights, luminous half-shadows, and semi-opaque darkness, no less unmistakably than Beethoven by symphonic modulations. He too engrafted on the calm and natural Vene

ise harmony, without either the ?schylean fury of Tintoretto, or the material gorgeousness of Veronese, realised an ideal of pure beauty. Continuing the traditions of Bellini and Giorgione, with a breadt

oper value to the imaginative and the scenic elements of the Venetian style, without exaggerating either. In his masterpieces thought, colour, sentiment, and composition-the spiritual and technical elements of art-exist in perfect balance; one harmonious tone is given to all th

breath, one afflatus, inspired them all; and it is due to this coherence in their style and inspiration that the school of Venice, taken as a whole, can show more masterpieces by artists of the second class than any other in Italy. Superior or inferior as they may relatively be among themselves, each bears the indubitable stamp of the Venetian Renaissance, and produces work of a qualit

ups or extended in long lines beneath white marble colonnades, which enclose spaces of clear sky and silvery clouds. Armour, shot silks and satins, brocaded canopies, banners, plate, fruit, sceptres, crowns, all things, in fact, that burn and glitter in the sun, form the habitual furniture of his pict

re men of about twenty-five, manly, brawny, crisp-haired, full of nerve and blood. In all this Veronese resembles Rubens. But he does not, like Rubens, strike us as gross, sensual, fleshly;[282] he remains proud, powerful, and frigidly materialistic. He raises neither repulsion nor desire, but displays with the calm strength of art the empire of the mundane spiri

ement emotions. There are no brusque movements, no extended arms, like those of Tintoretto's Magdalen in the "Pietà" at Milan, in his pictures. His Christs and Maries and martyrs of all sorts are composed, serious, courtly, well-fe

s mise en scène is invariably borrowed from luxurious Italian palaces-large open courts and loggie, crowded with guests and lacqueys-tables profusely laden with gold and silver plate. The same love of display led him to delight in allegory-not allegory of the deep and mystic kind, but of the pompous and processional, in which Venice appears enthroned among the deities, or Jupiter fulminates against the vices, or the genii of the arts are personified as handsome women and blooming boys. In dealing with m

deity and prostrate groups of women, sunk below the grief of tears;-the Temptation in the wilderness, with its passionate contrast of the grey-robed Man of Sorrows and the ruby-winged, voluptuous fiend;-the Temptation of Adam in Eden, a glowing allegory of the fascination of the spirit by the flesh;-Paradise, a tempest of souls, whirled like Lucretian atoms or gold dust in sunbeams by the celestial forces that perform the movement of the spheres;-the Destruction of the world, where all the fountains and rivers and lakes and seas of earth have formed one cataract, that thunders with cities and nations on its rapids down a bottomless gulf; while all the winds and hurricanes of the air have grown into

he body is subordinate. The painter selects situations in which physical form is of the first importance, and a feeling or a thought is suggested. But Tintoretto grapples immediately with poetical ideas; and he often fails to realise them fully through the inadequacy of painting as a medium for such matt

his "Marriage of Bacchus and Ariadne," that most perfect lyric of the sensuous fancy from which sensuality is absent;[287] in his "Temptation of Adam," that symphony of grey and brown and ivory more lustrous than the hues of sunset; in his "Miracle of S. Agnes," that lamb-like maiden with her snow-white lam

ovement like that of Aphrodite floating in the air, or of Madonna adjuring Christ in the "Paradiso," or of Christ Himself judging by the silent simplicity of his divine attitude the worldly judge at whose tribunal He stands, or of the tempter raising his jewelled arms aloft to dazzle with meretricious

his art, in solidity of execution, and in unwavering hold upon his subject, he falls below the level of Titian. Many of his pictures are unworthy of his genius-hurriedly designed, rapidly dashed upon the canvas, studied by candlelight from artificial models, with abnormal effects of light and dark, has

thwarted by no obstacles. When we think of Titian, we are irresistibly led to think of music. His "Assumption of Madonna" (the greatest single oil-painting in the world, if we except Raphael's "Madonna di San Sisto") can best be described as a symphony-a symphony of colour, where every hue is brought into harmonious combination-a symphony of movement, where every line contributes to melodious rhythm-a symphony of light without a cloud-a symphony of joy in which the heavens and earth sing Hallelujah. Tintoretto, in the Scuola di San Rocco, painted an "Assumption of the Virgin" with characteristic energy and impulsiveness. A group of agitated men around an open tomb, a rush of air and clash of seraph wings above, a blaze of glory, a woman borne with sideways-swaying figure from darkness into light;-that is his picture, all brio, excitement, speed. Quickly conceived, hastily executed, this painti

istory or sacred subject, he treated in this large and healthful style. It is easy to tire of Veronese; it is possible to be fatigued by Tintoretto. Titian, like nature, waits not for moods or humours in the spectator. He gives to

ore simply with pagan mythology, or more completely purged of mysticism. The Umbrian devotion felt by Raphael in his boyhood, the prophecy of Savonarola, and the Platonism of Ficino absorbed by Michael Angelo at Florence, the scientific preoccupations of Lionardo and the antiquarian interests of Mantegna, were all alike unknown at Venice. Among the Venetian painters there was no conflict between art and religion, or art and curiosity-no reaction against previous pietism, no perplexity of conscience,

TNO

2

uring island. The description, richly coloured and somewhat confused in detail, seems to me peculiarly true to Venetian scenery. With the exception of Tunis

2

b. iii. p. 48. I have made a paraphrase rather than

2

n Patricien de

2

ove, p

2

Age of the De

2

ol of Squarcione. Antonello da Messina brought his method of oil-painting into the city in 1470, and Gian Bellini learned something at Padua from Andrea Ma

2

n Venice. The misty flats of Belgium have some of the atmospheric qualities of Venice. As Van Eyck is t

2

s sons Gentil

2

of S. Catherine in a picture ascribed t

2

meeting for companies called

2

nd figures of the saint herself, and her young bridegroom, the Prince of Britain. Attendant squires and pages in t

2

ng from their foreheads, are in a Sacra Conversazione of Carpaccio's in the

2

fidence, since the name of no other great painter has b

2

The celebrated Concert of the Louvre Gallery, so charming for its landscape and so voluptuous in its dreamy sense of Arcadian luxury

2

nuine. Coarse and unselect as are the types of the boy angels, as well as of the young athletic giant, who plays the part in it of the dead Christ, this is a truly grandiose and strik

2

ther the frescoes at Colleoni's Castle of Malpaga. I have ventured to notice it above in connection with Giorgione, since it ex

2

b. 1477, d. 1576. Tintoretto, b. 1512

2

painting anything like Rubens' two pic

2

Louvre, the little "Crucifixion" and the "Baptism" of t

2

S. Maria dell' Orto at Venice; also from "Pietàs," in the Brera and the Pitti

2

ia del

2

ure in S. Lorenzo, compared with Greek sculpture, the norm and canon of the p

2

icture has a poem of feeling and of fancy, a romance of varied lights and shades, a symphony of delicately blended hues, a play of attitude and movement transitory but in no sense forced or violent, been more successf

2

in the Ducal Palace, the othe