Universitätsbibliothek HeidelbergUniversitätsbibliothek Heidelberg
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THE REFECTORY
means, renders it the centre of the whole composition, so alone is
it, so detached, so opposed to the busy gestures of all around, the
aspiration, onwards and upwards, visible in its whole devoted
air. It is hardly fancy that when we turn to the ‘ Ecce Homo,’
which is placed between the two last, we find it painted with a
certain painful reluctance; the spectator in armour can hardly
bear to look round at the Christ sinking and fainting; Pilate has
an air of deprecation, even the warder at the back would
gladly draw together the white mantle, and hide the tragic
sadness.
These are no lightly-painted pictures: the man who finished
the Refectory, and passed out to decorate the great hall beyond,
was not only engrossed with the secrets of form and colour;
his intense nature was absorbed in this subject. To paint the
Passion of Christ, His life and actions, was henceforth, to the end
of his days, the purpose from which Tintoretto drew his deepest
inspiration. Much as we may believe in the detachment of an
artist from his subject, or in the power of artistic imagination to
divine real feeling, as, for instance, is the case in Perugino’s earlier
and better work, I think, most people will feel as they sit in
this small chamber, and turn from one wall to another, that here is
brought to bear upon us something more than artistic knowledge.
A magnetism still flows to us from those luminous walls; they are
imbued with a depth and weight of emotion that come from the
heart of one ‘who, being dead, yet speaketh.’ Tintoretto had
never seen the work of Fra Angelico in San Marco; would not
have understood it if he had ; a chasm of centuries and knowledge,
of modes of life and thought, lie between the Monk of Fiesole
and the great Venetian ; but once more we feel that each has left
us, in his own way, the same kind of legacy, and that there are no
two places in which we feel more strongly that great beings have
been borne out of themselves in dealing with the story that has
moved the world beyond any other.

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