TINTORETTO.*

THE genius of Tintorotto, the last and the most productive of the great Venetian painters, is the most complex and the least purely Venetian in its character. The influence of that yearning, feverish, passionate element in Michael Angelo, and a naturally strong sympathy with it, is traceable in much of Tintoretto's work, and makes it another link between mean:oval art-feeling and modern art-feeling ; between the calm serenity of early undoubt- ing faith and sunlit purity which were distinctive characteristics of the earlier Italian schools, and the more complex, subtle, mysterious sentiment in modern art. Mr. Ruskin often com- pares Turner to Tintoretto; and Turner, in speaking of Tin- toretto's work, makes use of the expression, "the stormy brush of Tintoretto," an epithet which might truly be applied to his • The Great Artists—Jacopo Robusa, called rim ven& By W. Bowe Color. London : Sampson Low, Marston, and Co. MD.

own. The lulling brilliancy of wave and colour we asso- ciate with Venetian landscape, is changed by Tintoretto into turmoils of swiftest cloud and solemn shade. The author of this Life of Tintoretto has most happily described the most distinctive feeling of his landscape by a few words, in speaking of "The Agony in the Garden,"—" It is a very im-

pressive work, with some wavy and feverish flakes of foliage relieved amid the deep gloom.. It is a picture not easily de-

scribed." Nor can any of Tintoretto's pictures be easily described.

We must be in Venice, and see for ourselves, before we can form any idea of the peculiar quality of his genius. His great force of will and energy in developing his genius can alone be imagined by those who have a knowledge of his work. The Furioso " was a name applied alike to him and to Beethoven, and there is the same splendid sense of speed, balanced by mystery and solemnity, which suggests a comparison between the Venetian and the German. With the artist's feverish restlessness and desire to create, both possessed consummate powers of completion. So far as Tintoretto meant to complete, lie did so. In some instances, he worked under conditions which would have made high finish useless. The pictures in the Scuola di San Rocco, Mr. Ruskin describes " as vast sketches made to produce, under a certain degree of shadow, the effect of finished pictures." These Mr. Osler describes, omitting, however, two which used to hang opposite the " Crucifixion," on either side of the door, and which he could not have overlooked, as one, the " Christ before Pilate," must be, to every artist eye, a figure never to be forgotten, if once seen. In unconventional dignity and impressive, pathetic beauty, it is sublime beyond description or comparison, and is especially interesting in showing, more than any other figure in Tintoretto's work, the modern, thoughtful, intricate vein of sentiment. It cannot be that these two pictures have fallen into the restorer's hands !

The account of what is known of Tintoretto, chiefly gathered from the work of the old Italian cavalier, Carlo Ridolfi, the Maraviglie dell' Arte, gives a delightful picture of the family life of the great, giant workman. He began, life probably in the year 1518, surrounded by splendid colour, his fathor being a dyer,—" ti store," the origin of " Tintoretto," his real name being Jacopo Robusti. Dyeing was then one of the great arts of Venice, and Mr. Osler says :—" The painter's earliest boyish memories were thus associated with the rich dyes of the Venetian dresses, as they were lifted fresh from his father's vats. He would never forget as long as he lived what colour can do Perhaps the fondness of the great Tintoretto for grave and solemn tones was matured more readily in one whose love of brilliance had been satiated to so great an extent in early life." We must refer the reader to the book itself, for the details of Tiutoretto's life and works ; his disappointment at being suddenly dismissed from Titian's studio, a disappoint- ment which evidently ate very deeply into his life, and for which apparent unkindness Mr. Osler finds the most probable solution ; for the picture of his working out alone his great ideas, in his large attic studio, the windows overlooking Murano Torcello, and the distant range of the Cadore heights, casts from the Greek and Michael Angelo, and his own clay and wax models, surrounding him within; his marriage with the noble Faustina, to whose rule he seems generally to have submitted, except in two instances, where he evaded her supremacy. The one was refusing to take care of his citizen's coat in the rain, and the other to give a full ac- count of the money tied up in a handkerchief with which he was entrusted when he went out, saying vaguely he had dis- posed of it to the poor and the prisoners. His great affection for his artist-daughter, Marietta, who used to assist him at his work when still a child, dressed in boy's clothes, but who died before her father, his indomitable eagerness for work on a large scale, with or without pay ; all this, and more, is well recorded by Mr. Osler. Moreover, the real usefulness of writing an account of such a man as Tiutoretto—namely, eliciting out of the life of a great achiever, lessons

valuable to workers of the present day—is successfully attained in this small volume. Granted the creative genius, which of course Tintoretto possessed to an extra- ordinary degree, the interesting question is,—What means did he use to develop it so successfully P Before the stupendous work still existing in Venice, we ask, how are such things done P How can one man in one life produce so much that is first-rate P For it is the quantity as well as the quality that these giant- painters of old overwhelm us with. And Tintoretto surpassed all other Venetians in quantity. (Messrs. Guggenheim, at Venice, possess a document which is an agreement on the part of Tiutoretto to finish within two months two historical pictures of twenty figures each, and seven portraits.) Now that so much art is taught, the study of how these giants learnt is vitally interesting to students ; and Mr. Osler has given from his own artistic study, and by quotations from others, most interesting and valuable information, not only with regard to Tiutoretto's manner of study, but applicable to all sound teaching in art,— teaching which, unfortunately, is not carried out in any of our art-schools. Theoretically, it is assumed that a student must know how to draw, before he attempts to paint. But how few students know really how to draw so as to use drawing as a means towards the development of the creative faculty, even after years of study at the Academy, the Slade Schools, or South Kensington !—

" A favourite .maxim with Tintoretto was, that drawing was the foundation of a painter's work. He was always pressing this upon those who came to ask his advice; and was aware how the whole field of Art suddenly extends, to one who has acquired the method of true design, a method of particular and definite nature. Some of those who are acquainted with Ridolfi, may be surprised to hoar that Tintoretto maintained that drawing from the nude life was only to be attempted by efficient men, as the natural form usually lacked, says Tintoretto, gracefulness and good shape. In connection with this subject, it is interesting to recall the advice given by Mr. G. F. Watts, R.A., before the Royal Academy Commission of 1863. lie said :—` I

certainly would teach the antique in combination with the living model. I would demonstrate the action of the limbs and the use of the muscles from the living model, in combination with the antique. It is impossible to learn much about the human form by merely drawing tho figure in a set position."

And again,-

" I think that the general practice of drawing from the nude figure is of very little importance,---hardly of any use whatever. The figure is put in one position, and fixed there without expression, with no play of light, and shadow, and colour, and is, therefore, perfectly un- natural. I do not think the student learns anything from it ; he acquires a little facility, and that is all."

Words worthy of the deepest attention. " The works of crea- tive art," as a great painter once said, " do not show the results of a study from nature, but with nature." In our schools, we fear, it is almost exclusively from nature, and not with nature, the study is carried on. One method used by Tintoretto, Titian, Michael Angelo, also by a few of our modern creative artists, Mr. Watts, Mr. Burin Jones, Mr. Richmond (the now Oxford Slade Professor), and Mr. Walter Crane, but which has never been insisted upon in our schools, is the work- ing-out in clay or wax of the figures in a design, in order that the structural qualities should be thoroughly understood, before the lines of the design on the flat can be satisfactory. When we think what drawing is, we can easily not only understand of what help such a method is, but how indispensable it becomes in the education of the sense of form. Drawing is a repre- sentation on a flat plan of varying receding surfaces. The student ought surely to know the structure of the form he is to make an abstract of, before he begins the difficulties of his own special art, which consist in giving that ab- stract a souse of solidity, distance, and colour. In modern schools, it is thought sufficient to teach the knowledge of the skeleton and the building-up of the muscles by drawing them on the fiat. This doubtless adds to the scientific knowledge of the student, but does not develop his artistic sense of structural form. Now, though the Venetian school is not so famous as the Florentine in the refined qualities of design and arrangement of line which are the qualities generally understood by the term " drawing," the structural qualities, the thorough understanding of the form and solidity of the figures in the Venetian work, is quite as powerful an element of excellence as the beauty of colour and atmosphere. In fact, without the force given by the one, the beauty of the other could not exist in the same degree. Take the well known " Bacchus and Ariadne," in the Ducal Palace, by Tintoretto, as an example. The wonderful sea-background in which Theseus is sailing away would not be a wonder of atmospheric painting, were it not for the sense of solidity in the forms, a sense gained by Tintoretto, as by others, from a study in solid material. In this pic- ture, as in the three companion pictures, there are faults in the form which a student at a very early stage of study might discover; but though not sculpturesque in the feel- ing of line, they have the sculptor's sense of solidity, a sense which finds no direct education among students of painting in the present day of picture-making. Mr. Osler forcibly teaches

these two lessons through the example and precepts of Tintoretto, and the teaching of one of our few first-rate living masters. He quotes from Ridolfi a passage which contains other valuable lessons to the student. He says :— " This excellent man was of so secluded habits, that ho lived away from every pleasure, because of the continuous fatigues and troubles that were caused to him by study and devotion to art ; because ho who is devoted to the realms of imagination in painting is always at work, and loses inclination for the pleasures of human intercourse. During the greater part of the time which he did not spend in paint- ing, he remained in his working-room, which was situated in the furthest part of his house ; and the bold person who was resolved to obtain access to him was obliged to light a candle, at whatever time in the day. There he spent hours of perfect quiet among a great quantity of casts, and there, by means of tho arrangements of his models (such as have been already mentioned), he determined the in- ventions of effect which were to he introduced on to his canvas. Into that room he very seldom admitted any one, however groat a friend

he might be He was, however, of a kind and pleasant dis- position, for painting does not cause men to become peouliar, as is often thought ; but it makes thorn accomplished, and ready for emer- gencies. lfo used to talk with his friends in a most kind manner, and many witty sayings and kind deeds were associated with him ; and he used to utter his best sayings very gracefully, without oven the appearance of smiling and, when he thought he could do so, be used even to make his jokes with great persons, and take advantage of the keenness of his mind, so that he often obtained his own way with them."

We are accustomed to hear our great painters who refuse to mix in the social hurry of modern life accused of being morbid, but surely if, in that gorgeous, leisurely, noiseless life of Venice, Tintoretto found solitude necessary, in our London whirr and rattle and ugly haste our poet-painters must be excused for wishing to avoid the masses of their fellow-creatures. It is, we fear, true that from the time an artist takes a prominent part in society, from that time his work shows the marks of careless- ness, incompleteness, or repetition.

The first and last chapters of this little book, though they contain a few sentences wanting in lucidity,—are full of suggestive writing, and wide, true sympathy for all real art, —sympathies which are fit heralds and endings to the biography of such a splendid workman's life. The writer has fully entered into the quality in painting which suggests comparison with music, a quality pre-emin- ent in the Venetian school, and shows in every line he writes the reverence for the mighty works of creative genius which a real appreciation alone can give. One alteration, we think, might with advantage be made in future numbers of this series. The engravings ought not to be bound into the volume, when they cover more than one page, but folded back, as is already done in one or two cases. The engravings give a very fair idea of the designs. Had it been possible to publish photo- graphs from the original pictures, they would have materially increased the value of this series ; but in the case of Tintoretto's work, the difficulty of obtaining original photographs is very great, owing to the darkness of the position in which so many of the pictures hang.