shadow, like those of Bacchus, Eve, and Ariadne. Titian himself was
powerless to imagine movement like that of Aphrodite floating in the air,
or of Madonna adjuring Christ in the "Paradiso," or of Christ Himself
judging by the silent simplicity of his divine attitude the worldly judge
at whose tribunal He stands, or of the tempter raising his jewelled arms
aloft to dazzle with meretricious brilliancy the impassive God above him,
or of Eve leaning in irresistible seductiveness against the fatal tree, or
of S. Mark down-rushing through the sky to save the slave that cried to
him, or of the Mary who has fallen asleep with folded hands from utter
lassitude of agony at the foot of the cross.

It is in these attitudes, movements, gestures, that Tintoretto makes the
human form an index and symbol of the profoundest, most tragic, most
delicious thought and feeling of the inmost soul. In daylight radiancy and
equable colouring he is surpassed perhaps by Veronese. In mastery of every
portion of his art, in solidity of execution, and in unwavering hold upon
his subject, he falls below the level of Titian. Many of his pictures are
unworthy of his genius--hurriedly designed, rapidly dashed upon the
canvas, studied by candlelight from artificial models, with abnormal
effects of light and dark, hastily daubed with pigments that have not
stood the test of time. He was a gigantic _improvitsatore_: that is the
worst thing we can say of him. But in the swift intuitions of the
imagination, in the purities and sublimities of the prophet-poet's soul,
neither Veronese nor yet even Titian can approach him.

The greatest difficulty meets the critic who attempts to speak of Titian.
To seize the salient characteristics of an artist whose glory it is to
offer nothing over-prominent, and who keeps the middle path of perfection,
is impossible. As complete health may be termed the absence of obtrusive
sensation, as virtue has been called the just proportion between two
opposite extravagances, so is Titian's art a golden mean of joy unbroken
by brusque movements of the passions--a well-tempered harmony in which no
thrilling note suggests the possibility of discord. In his work the world
and men cease to be merely what they are; he makes them what they ought to
be: and this he does by separating what is beautiful in sensuous life from
its alloy of painful meditation and of burdensome endeavour. The disease
of thought is unknown in his kingdom; no divisi