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Phillipps, Evelyn March; Tintoretto
Tintoretto: with 61 plates — London: Methuen & Co., 1911

DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.68745#0034
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TINTORETTO
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spectacles. The Doge alone went in procession thirty-six times
a year, and no event was better calculated to satisfy the Venetian
love of splendour and gaiety and of pride in the State. Every
religious feast, every return of an expedition, every visit of a
distinguished personage was an occasion for joyous revelry. At
the regattas, as many as three thousand gondolas, gilded and richly
shaped and filled with the fairest ladies in Venice, dressed in cloth
of gold and silver, attended by nobles and their households,
crowded the canals to witness the contests.
Public buildings must be as magnificent as private dwellings.
Every great merchant, every victorious general, as he swept up
the Grand Canal with galleys laden with spoils of war or gains of
commerce, had his eyes caught by monuments, the gifts of his
fathers, and vowed to add to their number.
Among such brilliant scenes moved the painter, taking note of
every detail, saturating his soul with all that could feed the senses,
the interpreter of the community. A mixture of craftsman and
dictator, he took his subjects from the grand old men with vener-
able brows and patrician air, the superb women in trailing robes, the
young warriors and courtiers of the Imperial Republic, and he took
his orders from princes and senators and representatives of the
Church, down to the principal of the smallest monastery. In view of
the dominating ideas which devoted so many to the life of Church
and Court, the painter’s genius was consecrated to religious
painting, to the aristocratic portrait and to the peinture de fete,
but his position was determined by the fact that in that day the
demand exceeded the supply, instead of as now the supply being
in excess of the demand.
The joy-loving Venetians demanded of art that it should
embody their throbbing feeling for life and pleasure. For a time
they had been satisfied with the tender, refined creations of Gian
Bellini and delighted with the historical scenes of his brother, or the
austere work of Crivelli and Cima, and Carpaccio’s lively fancy ; but
the moment came when these appeared too restrained, too sober;
treasured they still were, but they had become old fashioned,
they were no longer the full expression of the sumptuous life of
Venice.
The learning, the secrets of technique, the refinement of colour
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