ct as are the types of the boy angels, as well as of the young
athletic giant, who plays the part in it of the dead Christ, this is a
truly grandiose and striking picture. Nothing proves the average
greatness of the Venetian masters more than the possibility of
attributing such compositions to obscure and subordinate craftsmen of the
school.

[280] Crowe and Cavalcaselle assign this picture with some confidence and
with fair show of reason, to Cariani, on whom again they father the
frescoes at Colleoni's Castle of Malpaga. I have ventured to notice it
above in connection with Giorgione, since it exhibits some of the most
striking Giorgionesque qualities, and shows the ascendency of his
imagination over the Venetian School.

[281] Giorgione, b. 1478; d. 1511. Titian, b. 1477, d. 1576. Tintoretto,
b. 1512; d. 1594. Veronese, b. 1530; d. 1588.

[282] I cannot, for example, imagine Veronese painting anything like
Rubens' two pictures of the "Last Judgment" at Munich.

[283] For his sacred types see the "Marriage at Cana" in the Louvre, the
little "Crucifixion" and the "Baptism" of the Pitti, and the "Martyrdom
of S. Agata" in the Uffizzi.

[284] These examples are mostly chosen from the Scuola di S. Rocco and
the church of S. Maria dell' Orto at Venice; also from "Pietas," in the
Brera and the Pitti, the "Paradise" of the Ducal Palace, and a sketch for
"Paradise" in the Louvre.

[285] S. Maria dell' Orto.

[286] What is here said about Tintoretto is also true of Michael Angelo.
His sculpture in S. Lorenzo, compared with Greek sculpture, the norm and
canon of the perfect in that art, may be called an invasion of the realm
of poetry or music.

[287] There are probably not few of my readers who, after seeing this
painting in the Ducal Palace, will agree with me that it is, if not the
greatest, at any rate the most beautiful, oil picture in existence. In no
other picture has a poem of feeling and of fancy, a romance of varied
lights and shades, a symphony of delicately blended hues, a play of
attitude and movement transitory but in no sense forced or violent, been
more successfully expressed by means more simple or with effect more
satisfying. Something of the mythopoeic faculty must have survived in
Tintoretto, and enabled him to inspire the Greek tale with this intense
vitality of beauty.

[288] The first of these pictures is in the Ducal Palace, the other two
in the Academy at Venice.

CHAPTER VIII

LIFE