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

Scuola di San Rocco, we see that he shows no real zest for
these compositions.
It was not the pride of life, not the opportunities for paint-
ing voluptuous and material scenes which these halls afforded
him, that appealed to Tintoretto. Venice enthroned among the
gods, the Doges presented like ambassadors at a Court, columned
halls and toggle crowded with guests and attendants in splendid
liveries, were not in themselves sufficient to inspire him, the
pompous and processional was not his natural element. He
required the stimulus of thought, of fancy, of roused emotion,
and if he could not find them, in the words of Carracci, ‘ Tinto-
retto is not always equal to Tintoretto.’ But it is not only in
the tragedies of religion that he finds themes that incite him
to a display of his strength. That his imagination can pierce
the tenderest secrets of the heart, he has shown us on these walls,
where he has given us, what is not only his most beautiful paint-
ing, but one of the most beautiful in existence.
The thought of Ariadne, desolate and abandoned, and of
Bacchus, the god of life and laughter, brought to her rescue by
the goddess of love, rose in his mind to symbolize Venice, once
dependent and forlorn, wooed by the Adriatic into all that love
could provide of happiness and prosperity. Never perhaps have
painting and poetry so combined as in this delicious idyll of the
morning of life. Here are the earth’s great gifts of the Golden
Age; youth and beauty and love and the sweet air of land and
sea. Never till now have such ivory limbs, with such golden and
silvery lights and such transparent shadows, been seen upon canvas.
There is nothing to startle here; Venus comes with no swoop or
rustle of wings; we are not reminded of St. Mark’s descent to
the relief of the slave. She steals gently on the scene, and
seems really to swim in a sea of light and air as a fish swims
in water, while her gauze veil, delicately unfolding, recalls those
silver webs which float in the radiant air of autumn, and which
the Germans call ‘ Our Lady’s winding-sheet.’ There is not any
great variety of colour; ivories and browns, the deep green of
the god’s vine-leaf girdle, the deep, blue of the sky, the blue of
Adriatic seas, the soft blue of Ariadne’s robe; yet surely never
have tints been welded in such delicious harmony, or such a
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