DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.68745#0089
COLOUR AND LIGHT
be hidden under minute finish. . . . Tintoretto and Tiepolo, above
all, saw in its management one of their best means of expression.
Tintoretto carves out a silhouette with a few cuts like a sabre’s
stroke, and vehement gestures are matched by violence of hand.
‘ This wonderful touch admits of impressions which cannot be
otherwise suggested. For a painter who brings it to perfection,
it suggests light, colour, substance, distance, even movement,
and the most successful is he who can condense most sensations
into a mass of hatched work.’ The dash, the turns and twists
with which his thin oil-colour is laid on give an ever-increasing
spontaneity to his work. He attains that triumph of which
M. Hourticq speaks in the ‘ Death of Abel,’ in which the execu-
tion is so charged with emotion, that subject and technique are
inseparable, and it becomes the most vehement and terrible piece
of work he ever produced. The contrast is keen between the
young elastic Abel, with balance lost, and leg and arm thrown
out in a desperate effort to recover equilibrium, and the powerful,
muscular Cain, vibrating with concentrated hate and determined
purpose. The expression of the hand, vainly grasping and finding
nothing, makes an appeal that is like a cry for help. The gloomy
cypresses and the lurid night-clouds have a wildness, such as
might act upon a wild nature and drive it on to fierce and passion-
ate deeds done in the scorn of consequence, and the sure and
impetuous brushwork is almost as responsible as the design for
the sense of overpowering energy which it conveys.
If you spend half an hour looking at Titian’s ceiling in the
sacristy of the Salute, and then go on to the ‘ Adam and Eve,’ and
the ‘ Cain and Abel,’ you see where Tintoretto got his early ideas.
Titian had already hit upon the same device of chiaroscuro, but
it was left to the younger master to make it peculiarly his own,
by a fluent and spontaneous truth of rendering, and by his keen
appreciation of the natural beauty of flowing silhouettes.
A group of altarpieces painted for churches which lie near
together in the centre of the city, are all about the same size and
shape, are nearly related to one another in colour and style, and
may be attributed to this decade, culminating in the ‘ Marriage of
Cana’ in 1561.
‘ The Finding of the True Cross ’ in S. Maria Mater Domini
45
be hidden under minute finish. . . . Tintoretto and Tiepolo, above
all, saw in its management one of their best means of expression.
Tintoretto carves out a silhouette with a few cuts like a sabre’s
stroke, and vehement gestures are matched by violence of hand.
‘ This wonderful touch admits of impressions which cannot be
otherwise suggested. For a painter who brings it to perfection,
it suggests light, colour, substance, distance, even movement,
and the most successful is he who can condense most sensations
into a mass of hatched work.’ The dash, the turns and twists
with which his thin oil-colour is laid on give an ever-increasing
spontaneity to his work. He attains that triumph of which
M. Hourticq speaks in the ‘ Death of Abel,’ in which the execu-
tion is so charged with emotion, that subject and technique are
inseparable, and it becomes the most vehement and terrible piece
of work he ever produced. The contrast is keen between the
young elastic Abel, with balance lost, and leg and arm thrown
out in a desperate effort to recover equilibrium, and the powerful,
muscular Cain, vibrating with concentrated hate and determined
purpose. The expression of the hand, vainly grasping and finding
nothing, makes an appeal that is like a cry for help. The gloomy
cypresses and the lurid night-clouds have a wildness, such as
might act upon a wild nature and drive it on to fierce and passion-
ate deeds done in the scorn of consequence, and the sure and
impetuous brushwork is almost as responsible as the design for
the sense of overpowering energy which it conveys.
If you spend half an hour looking at Titian’s ceiling in the
sacristy of the Salute, and then go on to the ‘ Adam and Eve,’ and
the ‘ Cain and Abel,’ you see where Tintoretto got his early ideas.
Titian had already hit upon the same device of chiaroscuro, but
it was left to the younger master to make it peculiarly his own,
by a fluent and spontaneous truth of rendering, and by his keen
appreciation of the natural beauty of flowing silhouettes.
A group of altarpieces painted for churches which lie near
together in the centre of the city, are all about the same size and
shape, are nearly related to one another in colour and style, and
may be attributed to this decade, culminating in the ‘ Marriage of
Cana’ in 1561.
‘ The Finding of the True Cross ’ in S. Maria Mater Domini
45