DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.68745#0235
PORTRAITS AND DRAWINGS
of nature would enhance his conception, we see that he has not
been able to resist striking it in, in harmony. Mr. Gilbert, in his
Landscape in Art, speaks of Tintoretto’s intense sympathy
with nature. ‘ The approach of this unnatural night ’ (in his
e Crucifixion ’ in the Scuola di San Rocco) ‘ is the finest landscape-
thought in the picture. It comes with a rushing mighty wind
from behind the doomed city, foreshadowing its fate. The trees
—some dark and massive in their foliage, some thin and spectral
—bow weightily beneath it or toss in the tormented air. The
towers and battlements are lit only by the last light of day, fast
disappearing on the horizon.’ . . . ‘ But Tintoret can show a
noble calm sometimes, as, for instance, in that “Entombment” at
Parma . . . it is solemn more than wild. Very significant is the
treatment of the dark rocky hill of the sepulchre to the left, in its
contrast to that of the fifteenth-century literalists, Italian or
Flemish. There is nothing here of the sharply-lighted quarry, but
the mossy masses bound with roots, seamed with grasses, moist
with dew, and wrapped in shadow, retain all the mystery of a
rocky scene, dimly visible when day is almost done. Yet
Tintoret, like Titian, knew where to give the most precise
delineation. A few leaves and pendulous grasses are intensely
defined against the clear, distant, ineffable splendour in the west,
which in another moment will be gone. Artistically he gains
much by this one instance of strong and vivid contrast between
light and dark, but poetically he gains much more; there is here
that contrast between the individual and the Infinite to which we
have before referred as having so strange a fascination; the
fluttering leaf, the broken blade of grass and beyond—heaven’s
depths of light! Yet scarcely less impressive are those gloomy
shades above, against which the trembling leaves are scarcely
seen, lost in front of that dark mystery! If along with all these
we note the sweeps of cloud, the ruined shed, the three lonely
crosses upon a bushy bluff, and the stream with its glimmering
light beneath, we feel that Tintoret has given us here the result
of perfect poetic vision.’ And again, ‘ There is no more remarkable
instance of his quiet mood than the landscape in a portrait in
Colonna Palace, Rome. A man sits playing a spinet alone; his
window open to the sunset. It is a solemn, blood-red sunset over
135
of nature would enhance his conception, we see that he has not
been able to resist striking it in, in harmony. Mr. Gilbert, in his
Landscape in Art, speaks of Tintoretto’s intense sympathy
with nature. ‘ The approach of this unnatural night ’ (in his
e Crucifixion ’ in the Scuola di San Rocco) ‘ is the finest landscape-
thought in the picture. It comes with a rushing mighty wind
from behind the doomed city, foreshadowing its fate. The trees
—some dark and massive in their foliage, some thin and spectral
—bow weightily beneath it or toss in the tormented air. The
towers and battlements are lit only by the last light of day, fast
disappearing on the horizon.’ . . . ‘ But Tintoret can show a
noble calm sometimes, as, for instance, in that “Entombment” at
Parma . . . it is solemn more than wild. Very significant is the
treatment of the dark rocky hill of the sepulchre to the left, in its
contrast to that of the fifteenth-century literalists, Italian or
Flemish. There is nothing here of the sharply-lighted quarry, but
the mossy masses bound with roots, seamed with grasses, moist
with dew, and wrapped in shadow, retain all the mystery of a
rocky scene, dimly visible when day is almost done. Yet
Tintoret, like Titian, knew where to give the most precise
delineation. A few leaves and pendulous grasses are intensely
defined against the clear, distant, ineffable splendour in the west,
which in another moment will be gone. Artistically he gains
much by this one instance of strong and vivid contrast between
light and dark, but poetically he gains much more; there is here
that contrast between the individual and the Infinite to which we
have before referred as having so strange a fascination; the
fluttering leaf, the broken blade of grass and beyond—heaven’s
depths of light! Yet scarcely less impressive are those gloomy
shades above, against which the trembling leaves are scarcely
seen, lost in front of that dark mystery! If along with all these
we note the sweeps of cloud, the ruined shed, the three lonely
crosses upon a bushy bluff, and the stream with its glimmering
light beneath, we feel that Tintoret has given us here the result
of perfect poetic vision.’ And again, ‘ There is no more remarkable
instance of his quiet mood than the landscape in a portrait in
Colonna Palace, Rome. A man sits playing a spinet alone; his
window open to the sunset. It is a solemn, blood-red sunset over
135