ade perfect in weakness, is of later date and was the
commission of Cardinal Contarini.

It is interesting to realise how Tintoretto, especially in the
"Presentation," has contrived, while using the traditional episodes, to
infuse so strong an imaginative sense. The contrast of age and youth,
the joy of the Gentiles, the starlike figure of the child surrounded by
shadows, convey an emotional feeling, in harmony with the nature of the
scene.

Next let us group together the miracles in the history of St. Mark. One
of the qualities which strikes us most in the "Miracle of the Slave" is
its strong local colour. It tells of Titian and Bonifazio and is unlike
Tintoretto's later style. The colours are glowing and gem-like;
carnations, orange-yellows, deep scarlet, and turquoise-blue. The
crimson velvet of the judge's dress is finely relieved against a
blue-green sky, and Tintoretto has kept that instinctive fire and dash
which culminates at once and without effort in perfect action, "as a
bird flies, or a horse gallops." It startled the quiet members of the
Guild, and at the first moment they hesitated to accept it. The "Rescue
of the Saracen" and the "Transportation of the Body" are more in the
golden-brown manner to which he was moving, but it is in the "Finding
of the Body" (Brera) that he rises to the highest emotional pitch. The
colossal form of the saint, expanding with life and power as he towers
in the spirit above his own lifeless clay, draws all eyes to him and
seems to fill the barrel-roofed hall with ease and energy. Every part of
the vault is flooded by his life-giving energy, and here Tintoretto
deals with light and shade with full mastery.

As we follow Tintoretto's career, it is borne in upon us how little
positive colour it takes to make a great colourist. The whole Venetian
School, indeed, does not deal with what we understand as bright colour.
Vivid tints are much more characteristic of the Flemish and the
Florentine, or, let us say, of the painters of to-day. Strong, crude
colours are to be seen on all sides in the Salon or the Royal Academy,
but they are absent from the scheme of sombre splendour which has
given the Venetians their title to fame. This is especially true of
Tintoretto, and it becomes more so as he advances. His gamut becomes
more golden-brown and mellow; the greys and browns and ivories combine
in a lustrous symphony more impressive than gay tints, flooded with
enveloping shadow and illu