DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.68745#0151
THE UPPER HALL
Body, sanctified by the Ascension of the Lord. It admits the
legitimacy of satisfying bodily needs, it approves the attempt to
cure sickness, to seek for health, yet in the 4 Temptation ’ there is
the warning not to put the body before the things of the spirit.
The 4 Miracle of the Loaves ’ is a charming picture, and one
peculiarly appropriate to the almsgiving of the Confraternity.
Christ stands against the high light of the sky, and sweeps His
arm in blessing across the basket of loaves held up to Him by a
kneeling boy, who is presented in faith and wonder by a disciple :
all around is gathered the hungry and fainting crowd, which
affords an opportunity for several little bits of grouping. A mother
bends over her sucking child, an eager woman holds out her
hands, a youth is giving some of the bread to a beautiful girl, and
a woman is rousing a sleeping man to witness the miracle. All
the lines, all the gestures combine to lead us up the sharply
defined hill, to the figure on the mountain top, with the golden
and rosy evening sky of the 4 day far spent ’ behind Him.
As darkness to light, so Death must give way to Life, and in
the next division, Christ seated in the immediate foreground,
calls back from the grave the bound and trammelled form of
Lazarus, whom two friends are freeing from his cerements, while
Martha looks up at him in awe, and Mary throws herself on her
knees to adore the Lord of Life. Mary’s figure is a very
charming one. It is the only one in anything like full light.
Like the 4 Magdalen ’ in the Brera and the little Princess in the
National Gallery, we have here, amid all the development
of later work, something childlike in the gesture, naif in spirit,
short and blunt in type and touch, a note by which Tintoretto
from time to time, all through his life, recalls his early association
with Andrea Schiavone. The fig-tree in full leaf, so finely painted,
but with such simplification of technique, becomes here the
symbol of the accomplishment of signs and wonders that herald
the second coming, as shown in the 4 Vision of St. John.’ 4 And
the stars of heaven fell into the earth, even as a fig-tree casting her
untimely figs when she is shaken of a mighty wind.’ And it was
immediately after recounting those signs and wonders that Christ
went on to give a parable of the fig-tree. 4 When the branch is
yet tender and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh.’
85
Body, sanctified by the Ascension of the Lord. It admits the
legitimacy of satisfying bodily needs, it approves the attempt to
cure sickness, to seek for health, yet in the 4 Temptation ’ there is
the warning not to put the body before the things of the spirit.
The 4 Miracle of the Loaves ’ is a charming picture, and one
peculiarly appropriate to the almsgiving of the Confraternity.
Christ stands against the high light of the sky, and sweeps His
arm in blessing across the basket of loaves held up to Him by a
kneeling boy, who is presented in faith and wonder by a disciple :
all around is gathered the hungry and fainting crowd, which
affords an opportunity for several little bits of grouping. A mother
bends over her sucking child, an eager woman holds out her
hands, a youth is giving some of the bread to a beautiful girl, and
a woman is rousing a sleeping man to witness the miracle. All
the lines, all the gestures combine to lead us up the sharply
defined hill, to the figure on the mountain top, with the golden
and rosy evening sky of the 4 day far spent ’ behind Him.
As darkness to light, so Death must give way to Life, and in
the next division, Christ seated in the immediate foreground,
calls back from the grave the bound and trammelled form of
Lazarus, whom two friends are freeing from his cerements, while
Martha looks up at him in awe, and Mary throws herself on her
knees to adore the Lord of Life. Mary’s figure is a very
charming one. It is the only one in anything like full light.
Like the 4 Magdalen ’ in the Brera and the little Princess in the
National Gallery, we have here, amid all the development
of later work, something childlike in the gesture, naif in spirit,
short and blunt in type and touch, a note by which Tintoretto
from time to time, all through his life, recalls his early association
with Andrea Schiavone. The fig-tree in full leaf, so finely painted,
but with such simplification of technique, becomes here the
symbol of the accomplishment of signs and wonders that herald
the second coming, as shown in the 4 Vision of St. John.’ 4 And
the stars of heaven fell into the earth, even as a fig-tree casting her
untimely figs when she is shaken of a mighty wind.’ And it was
immediately after recounting those signs and wonders that Christ
went on to give a parable of the fig-tree. 4 When the branch is
yet tender and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh.’
85