Part 14
[24] This is one of the four or five paintings which Tintoret signed. It was finished in 1565. His receipt for its payment still exists. It is dated March 9, 1566. The sum received was two hundred and fifty ducats.
We have no evidence that Tintoret visited Rome, nor any record of his journeys, except that to Mantua, yet we may be sure that he was familiar with the scenery of the mainland. The woods and foliage, the streams, valleys, and meadows, the little hills and picturesque mountains, which abound in his paintings, he did not see at Venice. Our lack of information leaves us in doubt, therefore, whether he studied Michael Angelo’s “Last Judgment” in the Sixtine Chapel. If he never went to Rome, he probably was acquainted, from engravings or copies, with the composition of that extraordinary work; yet his own painting of that subject bears so little resemblance to Michael Angelo’s that it seems to have been produced independently.
The masterpiece of the Sixtine Chapel is so complicated that it bewilders the student, until he observes that the principal groups are roughly arranged in an immense irregular horseshoe, the points of which are near the bottom of the lower wall, while Christ, the chief figure, is inclosed in the upper oval. Four fifths of the action takes place in the air, the lower portion alone of the fresco being occupied by the river Styx and its adjacent bank. In its present nearly ruined condition we cannot guess the original effect of this work; but I doubt whether it could ever have satisfied the beholder’s instinctive demand for harmony. The groups, even the individuals, seem isolated, not only in space but in spirit. There is not, nor could there be, a single prevailing passion. The only characteristic which applies to the whole work is tremendous energy. Whatever of agony, of fury, of stubbornness, of determination, can be expressed by the human body, is expressed here. There is no muscle or tendon which is not exhibited in various positions; no posture of limbs or trunk which is not represented. The resurrection of the _body_ is illustrated in a hundred ways, and the expression of the faces is of secondary importance. Here, patriarchs have the vigor of Titans; saints are as robust as athletes; Christ himself might be a majestically stern Apollo. Not without reason may we call these effigies of restless, writhing human beings wonderful diagrams of anatomy and concrete illustrations of dynamics. Even the saved, who occupy the higher regions, are not tranquil. In striving to comprehend these whirlwinds of action, the mind is wearied and baffled. Unit by unit you examine this multitude, and you are amazed in turn by sublimity, or horror, or power.
The space[25] to which Tintoret had to adapt his picture of “The Last Judgment” is oblong, about fifty feet high and twenty feet broad. In the upper part of the heavens Christ is represented, not in the character of the inexorable Judge, but in that of the Shepherd who welcomes his faithful flock to Paradise; for the resurrection and judgment are coincident. On one side, near Christ, John the Baptist is kneeling, and Mary and the repentant sinner, who bears a cross, are near; on the other side are personifications of the cardinal virtues. Extremely lovely is Charity, carrying in her arms two young children to present to the Saviour. Zones of fleecy clouds separate the upper part of the painting into sections, in which the saints are ranked; but the distribution seems natural, not arbitrary, and serves to prevent confusion among so many figures. Midway in the scene, angels plunge earthward to rouse the dead. Michael, with his terrible sword unsheathed, pursues the wicked toward a mighty river, which sweeps irresistibly into the abyss. In the distance, on a low shelf of sand amid the waters, is huddled a crowd of sinners, too indolent or too terrified to struggle against the flood which must soon engulf them. Crouching, they await their doom. In them Tintoret has perhaps typified those miserable creatures whom Dante describes as “_a Dio spiacenti ed a’ nemici sui_,”--hateful to God and to his enemies. Demons convoy a bark-load of the damned through the hellish torrent. And on the shore what a spectacle! Bodies starting from their graves, some not yet clothed with flesh, some with leafy branches growing from their arms, some striving to free themselves from the earth into which corruption resolved them; everywhere signs of the suddenness and awfulness of that supreme moment when the dead shall rise again in the forms they bore when alive, and go to the eternal abode, of bliss or punishment, for which each has fitted himself by his career on earth.
[25] In the church of Santa Maria dell’ Orto, Venice.
A parallel has frequently been drawn between the genius of Michael Angelo and that of Dante, and many have deplored the loss of that portfolio in which Michael Angelo is known to have made a series of illustrations to _The Divine Comedy_. The resemblance between the supreme Tuscan poet and the supreme Tuscan artist seems to me, however, to hold only when we limit our view to Dante as the author of the _Inferno_. In energy, in intense perception of evil, in unswerving condemnation of sin, in austerity, in appreciation of the terror of life, the poet and the painter were indeed akin. These are the characteristics which most readers associate with Dante’s genius, for the reason that most readers go no farther than the _Inferno_, or are unable to comprehend the more spiritual sublimity of the _Purgatorio_ and the _Paradiso_. The _Inferno_ describes torments which the most sluggish person can understand, and the contrasts of lurid flames and impenetrable gloom by which the scenes in hell are diversified are so vivid as to require no commentary. We marvel at the imagination that could traverse unparalyzed these horrors and dare to report them. But Dante’s genius stopped not here: it passed in review all human nature, from its lowest sinful condition to that highest excellence when it merges with God. Though Evil be a terrible reality, Dante saw that Love is even more real, the source and the goal of all things, and he proved his universality by his power to describe it. And they whose imagination is strong enough to follow him through the regions of the blessed incline to rank the third canticle of his “sacred poem” even higher than the first.
Among painters, Tintoret only has, like Dante, swept through the full circuit of human experience and aspiration. He has shown us the anguish of the damned in his “Last Judgment,” and the peace and bliss of the blessed in his “Paradise.” That “The Last Judgment” should be Michael Angelo’s masterpiece, and that he should have painted it on the altar wall of the Pope’s favorite chapel, are fatally appropriate. In that terrific scene, the judge is not Christ, but Michael Angelo himself; a righteous man, who looked out upon the iniquities of his time and dared to condemn them; a religious man, who, coming to Rome, the religious centre of Christendom, discovered there a second Sodom, in which pope, cardinals, and bishops were the most shameless offenders; a patriotic man, who had fought for the liberty of his beloved Florence, and had beheld her, through the treachery of some and the apathy of others, become the slave of a corrupt master. No wonder that the terror and anguish, the depravity and hopelessness, of life should have eaten into Michael Angelo’s soul. As he worked solitarily in the Sixtine Chapel, no wonder that a vision of the retribution which shall overtake the wicked should have possessed his imagination, and transformed the artist into the judge. Day by day, a spirit mightier than theirs painted the protest which Savonarola, Zwingli, Luther, and Calvin had preached,--the spirit of a Job united to that of an Isaiah.
Not less appropriate was it that the genius of Tintoret and of Venetian art should culminate in the representation of Paradise. Of all commonwealths, Venice had enjoyed the longest prosperity; of all peoples, hers had been the most sensitive to the joy of life. Even at the end of the sixteenth century, when her power abroad had been curtailed, and when luxury at home was slowly enervating the integrity of her citizens, she was still outwardly imposing, magnificent. No pope had ever succeeded, either by guile or by force, in ravishing her independence. Her immemorial glory blazed across the past and irradiated the present, as the setting sun spreads an avenue of splendor upon the ocean and fills the heavens with golden and purple light. Venice was indeed the abode of Joy; and Tintoret, at the close of a long career, in which he had witnessed all the aspects and pondered all the possibilities of human life, was filled, like Dante, with hope, and felt Joy and Love to be the supreme realities, the everlasting fulfilments, of mankind’s desires.
If the Last Judgment is an “unimaginable” theme, as Mr. Ruskin remarks, how much more so is Paradise! Men have always found it easier to represent grief than happiness, villainy than virtue, shadows than sunshine; for the former are by their nature limited, and draw their own outlines, while the latter have a quality of boundlessness which to define abridges it. Moreover, pleasure is oftenest unconscious, and always individual; pain, on the contrary, is too conscious of self, and is manifest in attributes common to many. Nevertheless, Tintoret has achieved the seeming impossibility of representing, so far as painting may, the happiness, unmixed and eternal, of the celestial host.
His painting is known to most visitors at Venice as being the largest in the world. The ordinary traveler, after reading the dimensions in his guidebook, looks up at the canvas, and sees crowds of figures and colors grown dark; wonders what it all means, and why the janitor does not sweep down the dust and cobwebs; and then turns away to devote equal attention to the black panel where Marino Faliero’s portrait would be had he not died a traitor’s death. In like manner, I have seen intelligent strangers exhaust the treasures of the Acropolis of Athens in a quarter of an hour, and return to their hotel to read the last English newspaper. But let him who would commune with one of the few supreme masterpieces of art sit down patiently and reverently before Tintoret’s “Paradise,” and he will be rewarded by revelations proportioned to his study. As soon as his eyes grow used to the dimness of the hall, the tones of the canvas begin to be intelligible to him: it is as if he heard a symphony played in a lower key than the composer intended; many of the original effects are lost, but harmony interpenetrates and unifies all the parts. When he has adjusted his eyes to this pitch, he can examine the figures separately; until, little by little, in what seemed a vast confused multitude, he will be aware of the presence of an all-controlling order; and he will gaze at last understandingly, as in a vision, upon the congregations of heaven as they are unfolded in Tintoret’s design.
Christ is seated in the central upper part of the painting: his left hand rests on a crystal globe; innumerable rays of light illumine his head and dart in all directions. Opposite to him is the Madonna, above whom sparkles a circlet of stars. At Christ’s left soars the archangel Michael bearing the heavenly scales; at Mary’s right is Gabriel with a spray of lilies. A cloud of countless cherubs hovers at the feet of the Divine Personage; while on each side of the archangels, curving toward the upper extremities of the canvas, sweep companies of seraphim and cherubim, and the thrones, principalities, and powers, and angels with swords, sceptres, and globes. These form the first circle of the angelic host, who from eternity have held their station nearest to their Lord. Below them is a larger circle, composed of those spirits who, by prophecy or preaching, established and extended the kingdom of God on earth. On the left we see the forerunners of Christ,--David playing the cithern, Moses holding up the tables of the law, Noah with his ark, Solomon, Abraham, and the other patriarchs; and near these we distinguish John the Baptist, who displays a scroll on which is written _Ecce Agnus_. Midway in this circle are the Evangelists, the four corners of the Christian temple, and the intermediaries between the old and new dispensations. Here is Mark accompanied by his lion, Luke and his ox, Matthew with pen in hand, and John with his book resting on an eagle. As the line sweeps on, we see the early fathers, doctors, and great popes,--Peter and Gregory; Paul, the apostle militant, recognizable by his sword; Jerome, Ambrose, and Augustine. In the centre, between Luke and Matthew, is the third archangel, Raphael, whose clasped hands and upturned face betoken a soul rapt in adoration. The third and lowest circle is made up of many groups of martyrs and holy men and women, the great body of the Church of Christ. Among the throng on the left are Barbara; Catherine with her wheel; Francis of Assisi and Dominick, the founders of the great religious orders; Giustina bearing a palm branch; St. George (with banner), Lawrence, Sebastian, Agnes, and Stephen, each recognizable by a familiar emblem. In the centre, along the bottom of the painting, hover clusters of worshiping angels; beyond them, more saints, Monica, and Magdalen; then Rachel and a troop of lovely children, and Christopher, who carried the boy Christ on his shoulder here below, and now carries a globe. At last, on the extreme right, we reach the assembly of prelates and theologians.
With this key to the general distribution, the student who has Tintoret’s “Paradise” before him can recognize scores of other figures. He will compare Tintoret’s portrayal of each saint, or prophet, or martyr with conceptions other painters have drawn; and if he reflect that any one of these groups, and many of these figures singly, would have sufficed to establish the renown of an artist less masterly than Tintoret, his astonishment will swell into admiration, and this into awe, when he surveys the work as a whole. Who can describe the effect of the innumerable multitude? Cast your eyes almost anywhere upon the canvas, and lo! out of the deeper, distant spaces angelic countenances loom up. Forms, though distinctly outlined, by some magic seem diaphanous; and the farther your gaze penetrates, the brighter is the light which radiates throughout heaven from the throne of Christ. Still more marvelous is the sense of infinite tranquillity, even in those figures which are moving. These are veritable spirits, though they have human bodies, and they move or rest with equal ease. In this heavenly ether there is no effort. Even those rushing seraphim, whose majestic pinions seem to beat melody from air in their rhythmic flight, suggest a certain grand repose begotten of motion itself,--a repose akin to that produced by the sight of the sea, whose myriad little waves dance and glisten, or of Niagara, whose falling flood seems stationary. The spectator who has risen to this conception will not fail to note the light of a joy, not vehement but profound, which bathes every face; and how the action of every individual and of every group is in some manner addressed to Christ, and would be incomplete but for that divine centre. Christ and the Madonna, and the dove of the Holy Spirit floating between them, he will look at first and turn from last,--the noblest personification of ideal manhood and ideal womanhood that ever painter expressed. The embodiment and essence of _Love_, which is the author of all good, they are enthroned amid the serenity of the highest heaven. Round them wheels the inner circle of the archangels and the angels, the symbols of divine _Power_. Then, in ever-widening circles, the saints and apostles and prophets, and the elect of every clime and condition, all children of _Faith_ and exemplars of _Charity_, float and revolve in bliss forevermore. And it needs no strain of the imagination to hear the hosannas which the morning stars sing together, and all the sons of God shout for joy.[26]
[26] In the execution of the “Paradise” he was assisted by his son Domenico. If Tintoret was born in 1512, most of the work was done after his eightieth year, an indication of physical vigor almost unparalleled. A rapid study for another “Paradise,” in which the groups are arranged on a different plan, reminding one of Dante’s description of the Celestial Rose, is now in the Louvre.
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The dark chapel of the Rucellai, in the church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, has a dingy altar-piece representing the Virgin and the infant Christ. Cimabue painted it; and when it was finished the Florentines made a holiday, and bore the picture through the streets, amid great rejoicing, to the chapel where it now hangs. That stiff and awkward Madonna, that doll-like Child, were hailed by them as the highest achievement of painting. For us Cimabue’s masterpiece has only an historic interest,--we find no charm in its Byzantine rigidness. Yet that crude work was the seed of Italian painting, and if we follow its growth during three centuries we shall be led to the “Paradise” of Tintoret, in which are embodied all the excellences and advances of the painter’s art. Between that humble beginning and that glorious culmination an army of artists and myriads of paintings intervene. If we look deep enough, we shall be conscious that they were all agents whereby a mighty spirit was seeking to express itself to man,--a spirit which first appealed to human piety through the symbols of religion, and which, as its agents acquired skill and reach, bodied itself forth in higher images and in conscious forms. The name of that spirit is Beauty, never to be found perfect in the outer world, but known as it communicates through the senses portents of itself which the soul sublimes into that ideal unity by which the laws of nature and the destiny of man are beheld in their highest aspect. True Worship, as in the sweet piety of Fra Angelico, led to Beauty; to Beauty also, along an inevitable path, led the pursuit of Truth by the sixteenth century masters, latest among whom was Tintoret: for Beauty is the final seal and test of both Holiness and Truth.
GIORDANO BRUNO: HIS TRIAL, OPINIONS, AND DEATH[27]
[27] First printed in _The Atlantic Monthly_, March, 1890.
I
On Saturday, the 23d of May, 1592, Giovanni Mocenigo, son of the late excellent Marcantonio Mocenigo, addressed to the Father Inquisitor of Venice a letter containing charges of heresy against Giordano Bruno, the Nolan. Among other things, he alleged that Bruno had said “that it is a great blasphemy to say, as Catholics do, that bread is changed to flesh; that he is hostile to the mass; that no religion satisfies him; that Christ was a good-for-nothing, and did wretched tricks to seduce the people, and ought to have been hanged; that there is no separating God into persons; that the world is eternal; that worlds are infinite, and God makes an infinite number of them continually; that Christ wrought apparent miracles and was a magician, and so were the Apostles; that Christ showed that he died unwillingly, and evaded death as long as he could; that there is no punishment of sins; and that souls created by the agency of nature pass from one animal into another; and that as the brutes are begotten of corruption, so also are men. Further, he has denied that the Virgin could have borne a child; he asserted that our Catholic faith is full of blasphemies against the majesty of God; that he wished to give himself to the diviner’s art, and draw the whole world after him; that St. Thomas and all the doctors were blockheads compared with himself. Therefore, urged by my conscience and by command of my confessor, I have denounced this Bruno to the Holy Office. Suspecting that he might depart, I have locked him up in one of my rooms, at your requisition; and because I believe him possessed of a demon, I pray you to take speedy resolution concerning him.”
Two days later, this Mocenigo, of whom we know no more than that he belonged to one of the illustrious families of Venice, and was thirty-four years of age, added to his accusations: “On that day when I had Giordano Bruno locked up, on my asking him if he would teach me what he had promised, in view of the many courtesies and gifts he had had from me, so that I might not accuse him of the many wicked words which he had said to me, both against our Lord and against the Holy Catholic Church, he replied that he was not afraid of the Inquisition, because he offended nobody in living as he chose; and then that he did not remember to have said anything bad to me, and that even if he had said it he had said it to me alone, and that he did not fear that I could harm him in this way, and that, even should he come under the hand of the Inquisition, it could at the most force him to wear his friar’s gown again.”
On May 29, Mocenigo, who had in the mean time, at the suggestion of the Inquisition, dredged in the slimy depths of his memory for other charges, informed the Father Inquisitor that he had heard Bruno say “that the forms which the Church now uses are not those which the Apostles used, because the Apostles, by preaching and by example of a good life, converted the people, but that now he who will not be a Catholic must suffer the rod and punishment, because force is used, and not love; that the world could not go on thus, because now only ignorance, and not religion, is good; that the Catholic religion pleased him more than the others, but that it had need of great formalities, which was not right, but very soon the world would see itself reformed, because it was impossible that such corruption should endure. He told me, too, that now, when the greatest ignorance flourishes which the world ever had, some glory in having the greatest knowledge there ever was, because they say they know what they do not understand,--which is, that God can be one and three,--and that these are impossibilities, ignorances, and most shocking blasphemies against the majesty of God. Besides this, he said that he liked women hugely, and that the Church committed a great sin in calling sin that which is according to nature.”
After these charges, we hear no more of this latter-day Judas, Giovanni Mocenigo. Honest we can hardly deem him, for he confesses that he intended to betray Bruno long before he did betray him, and only delayed till he should gather sufficient damning evidence against him. And so we dismiss him to join the despicable crew of those who were traitors to their lords and benefactors.