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

of the landscape, the colours of the dresses, the deep crimson and
shoaling green of Elizabeth’s dress, the glowing brick-red of that
of the Virgin, combine to make an appeal upon the heart
and senses, so that we can hardly separate the colour from the
deep inner meaning. Never has Tintoretto’s colour been more
sensuous, never has his feeling been more pure and tender. It is
a passionate picture, but the passion is of the sweetest quality,
and there runs through it an insight into the nature of woman, an
underlying understanding of the mutual affection and dependence
that can exist between them, which it is rare to find a man
expressing so intimately. The figure of Zachariah is drawn
with Giorgionesque simplicity, in a rich brown-black. The knee
of Elizabeth is outlined by a brilliant line of white, such a sudden,
sharp line as really in Nature relieves dark objects against a
luminous background, and what a touch of lightness and variety
is given by the trefoil leaves, which catch the eye before
anything else, and the overhanging boughs of such a chestnut-tree
as Tintoretto must have sketched near the home of his friend
Jacopo da Ponte, in the woodlands round Bassano. Ridolfi
mentions that in his time the space at the foot of the staircase was
filled by a scene of S. Roch healing the sick. This has disappeared,
but it may possibly be the picture of this subject which now hangs
in the Pitti Palace.
The entrance hall on the ground-floor is of the same size as
the great assembly room above, but its ceiling, instead of being
painted, is elaborately carved in rosettes and heavily gilt. The
light is distributed in the same way, and is even less satisfactory,
but that the paintings on the walls are those of the greatest
moment of the artist’s life, admits of little doubt, so excellent are
they in conception, so sure in touch, so sustained in quality. Like
those already executed, they are as broad as possible in treatment,
Tintoretto evidently realizing throughout that to paint anything
in minute finish on these wide dark spaces would be to defeat
his own end, and we are thankful that he was therefore able to
paint them all with his own hand, instead of leaving a host of
minor figures and details to a band of assistants, which, with
better-paid work, would have been the natural course to take.
The actions of San Rocco having been moulded on the life of
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