DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.68745#0250
TINTORETTO
whose work is startling, disturbing and marked by reckless
innovations. It calls on them to conform to preconceived ideals
if they would win its praise, but the few who are led by the
spirit can only give one answer: ‘ I must take my own road. I
cannot practise your shibboleths. Right or wrong, to be myself
is all that is possible to me. Leave me to go my way, and if I
perish, I perish.’
Titian and Veronese stand before the world like men who
know how to make a grand appearance ; they know how to exact
esteem, to mix in courtly wise in the best of company. They
love their art, but they love also not a little the distinction she
brings, even the pleasure of wearing rich velvets and gold chains,
and they have no hesitation in suiting their art to their brilliant
and worldly company.
Tintoretto cares little or nothing for all this. His course of
life is a detail, he takes what comes and enjoys it well enough, as
an incident and a relaxation, but his real life is in that silent
chamber, ‘ in the most remote part of the house,’ where he pours
out his teeming imagination upon canvas, and all he asks of Art in
return for his whole-hearted acknowledgment of her sovereignty
is that she should grant to him the power of creation.
Titian was the first to expand those landscapes which Giorgione
and himself in his early days had confined within such modest limits,
and it is some time before he discovers how to increase the size of
his paintings without diminishing his strength or depriving his
colour of depth. Tintoretto follows his lead with a natural aptitude ;
he delights in throwing himself with prodigality upon wide spaces,
without relaxing the intensity of his feeling, and as he does so, he
develops to its utmost limits that power that is almost new to us ;
the power of touch. He loves to lay on broad expanses of thin
colour, leaving much of the form and feeling to the sudden sweeps
or abundant plentitudes of the brush-work, and instead of smooth-
ing away all traces of the machinery, the actual touch of the
brush and manipulation of the material are made to advance and
to express his meaning.
It must have been difficult to prophesy what would become in
his hands of the colour of Giorgione and Titian, of those full,
blended tones, those deep, positive hues, slowly mellowed and
144
whose work is startling, disturbing and marked by reckless
innovations. It calls on them to conform to preconceived ideals
if they would win its praise, but the few who are led by the
spirit can only give one answer: ‘ I must take my own road. I
cannot practise your shibboleths. Right or wrong, to be myself
is all that is possible to me. Leave me to go my way, and if I
perish, I perish.’
Titian and Veronese stand before the world like men who
know how to make a grand appearance ; they know how to exact
esteem, to mix in courtly wise in the best of company. They
love their art, but they love also not a little the distinction she
brings, even the pleasure of wearing rich velvets and gold chains,
and they have no hesitation in suiting their art to their brilliant
and worldly company.
Tintoretto cares little or nothing for all this. His course of
life is a detail, he takes what comes and enjoys it well enough, as
an incident and a relaxation, but his real life is in that silent
chamber, ‘ in the most remote part of the house,’ where he pours
out his teeming imagination upon canvas, and all he asks of Art in
return for his whole-hearted acknowledgment of her sovereignty
is that she should grant to him the power of creation.
Titian was the first to expand those landscapes which Giorgione
and himself in his early days had confined within such modest limits,
and it is some time before he discovers how to increase the size of
his paintings without diminishing his strength or depriving his
colour of depth. Tintoretto follows his lead with a natural aptitude ;
he delights in throwing himself with prodigality upon wide spaces,
without relaxing the intensity of his feeling, and as he does so, he
develops to its utmost limits that power that is almost new to us ;
the power of touch. He loves to lay on broad expanses of thin
colour, leaving much of the form and feeling to the sudden sweeps
or abundant plentitudes of the brush-work, and instead of smooth-
ing away all traces of the machinery, the actual touch of the
brush and manipulation of the material are made to advance and
to express his meaning.
It must have been difficult to prophesy what would become in
his hands of the colour of Giorgione and Titian, of those full,
blended tones, those deep, positive hues, slowly mellowed and
144