DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.68745#0131
SCHEME OF THE SCUOLA
warmest acknowledgments. Any one who has had experience of
the fatiguing and often dispiriting occupation of searching the
intricate recesses of the British Museum for information, will
sympathize with the keen delight with which, after a long day
spent in following up clues which yielded unimportant results, I
suddenly lit on a small pamphlet, one of those faded, yellow
papers, of about 20 pages, unbound and stitched up with perhaps
half a dozen others on topics varying as widely as the results of
vaccination and the Free Church in Scotland. ‘The Paintings in
the Scuola di San Rocco ’ is a little brochure, published in 1876, by
one Edgar Barclay, and in it I quickly discovered ideas calculated
to add materially to the interest of my study.
I cannot discover that the short and apparently insignificant
work made any mark at the time it appeared, certainly its substance
has not been incorporated in any book dealing with Tintoretto, nor
has any other observer, before or since, been able so well and truly
to read the artist’s mind. It has lain there these many years, over-
looked, but biding its time, and the following pages which examine
the scheme of the Scuola are founded mainly upon its insight,
supplemented by such amplifications as the clue it affords would
naturally suggest.
It hardly leaves us room to doubt that when Tintoretto first
set himself in that vast upper chamber, to consider how he should
carry out the scheme, of which he had already sketched a part in
the refectory, his early veneration for Michelangelo was strong
upon him, and that his thoughts went far away and lingered long
in that famous chapel, which we do not know that he had ever
seen, but which he must have known well from descriptions and
engravings. He would recall its plan; the old dispensation
typifying the new, the miracles and mighty deeds of the Old
Testament vivified by the acts of Christ and His followers, and
he saw his opportunity, the chance given him to emulate Michel-
angelo, who had illustrated a well-rounded scheme, every part
bearing on a central idea, even to the monochromes or minor
groups.
In looking for the harmonious significance which it is reason-
able to suppose must govern the whole undertaking, Mr. Barclay
has been mainly actuated by the consideration that the Scuola was
69
warmest acknowledgments. Any one who has had experience of
the fatiguing and often dispiriting occupation of searching the
intricate recesses of the British Museum for information, will
sympathize with the keen delight with which, after a long day
spent in following up clues which yielded unimportant results, I
suddenly lit on a small pamphlet, one of those faded, yellow
papers, of about 20 pages, unbound and stitched up with perhaps
half a dozen others on topics varying as widely as the results of
vaccination and the Free Church in Scotland. ‘The Paintings in
the Scuola di San Rocco ’ is a little brochure, published in 1876, by
one Edgar Barclay, and in it I quickly discovered ideas calculated
to add materially to the interest of my study.
I cannot discover that the short and apparently insignificant
work made any mark at the time it appeared, certainly its substance
has not been incorporated in any book dealing with Tintoretto, nor
has any other observer, before or since, been able so well and truly
to read the artist’s mind. It has lain there these many years, over-
looked, but biding its time, and the following pages which examine
the scheme of the Scuola are founded mainly upon its insight,
supplemented by such amplifications as the clue it affords would
naturally suggest.
It hardly leaves us room to doubt that when Tintoretto first
set himself in that vast upper chamber, to consider how he should
carry out the scheme, of which he had already sketched a part in
the refectory, his early veneration for Michelangelo was strong
upon him, and that his thoughts went far away and lingered long
in that famous chapel, which we do not know that he had ever
seen, but which he must have known well from descriptions and
engravings. He would recall its plan; the old dispensation
typifying the new, the miracles and mighty deeds of the Old
Testament vivified by the acts of Christ and His followers, and
he saw his opportunity, the chance given him to emulate Michel-
angelo, who had illustrated a well-rounded scheme, every part
bearing on a central idea, even to the monochromes or minor
groups.
In looking for the harmonious significance which it is reason-
able to suppose must govern the whole undertaking, Mr. Barclay
has been mainly actuated by the consideration that the Scuola was
69