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

within the frame, while the cross is allowed to rise beyond the
limits. Light flows into the picture from the left side, catching
the brilliant folds of the flying banner, and concentrating on the
body of the Crucified, and the women gathered round the Madonna,
who are painted with Tintoretto’s keen appreciation of female
loveliness. Radiance from the halo gleams between the upraised
arm and the cross, and outlines the man standing on the ladder.
The handling is full of freedom, the heavy banners lift and rustle
with the first breath of the coming tempest; beneath them a rider
reins in his horse with easy gesture, as he turns to look at a group
of women gathered together on the hill. There is not a figure
that does not belong to the artistic completeness; none are
dragged in unnecessarily. On the right, a tall white horse and
a grave and noble rider seem about to plunge out of the picture,
as if willing to trample down the sordid group casting lots at
their feet. Behind the tumult, the distant landscape lies in broad
spaces, of exquisite colour, soft, yet intense, beneath the falling
night and hurrying clouds. The distant light is crossed by the
graceful sprays and sharp leaves of an olive-branch; the only one
remaining on a tree, from which the boughs have been lately
lopped. In spite of all we sometimes hear of Tintoretto’s
violence of movement, there is here not one figure that is extra-
vagant in gesture, and that of the Christ is statuesque in its
solemn gravity.
The golden light of this picture, with colour embedded like
jewels in a setting, binds it to the other altarpieces of which we
have spoken, but it is again the variety, the boundless fertility
of the painter which strike us, as we turn to one of the most
mystical of all his works, that wonderful ‘ Last Supper ’ in S.
Polo. It was not the first time he had dealt with the subject;
we have already examined the version he painted in S. Ermagora,
but it was one which throughout his career appealed to his
deepest imagination, and which he constantly found new ways
of treating.
The first impression is almost one of violence. Christ offers
the sacred food with a vehement gesture; his disciples receive it
with eagerness, with awe. Light streams from the halo, radiates
from the Bread and shines into the eyes of one of the disciples, who
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