and
sensitive type of his Christ and the realistic and even brutal study of
the two despairing malefactors--one a common ruffian, the other an aged
offender of a higher class. His altarpiece at Este, representing S.
Tecla staying the plague, is painted with a real insight into disaster
and agony, and S. Tecla is a pathetic and beautiful figure. Sometimes
in his easel-pictures he paints a Head of Christ, a S. Anthony, or a
Crucifixion, but he always returns before long to the ample spaces and
fantastic subjects which his soul loved.

Tiepolo is a singular contradiction. His art suggests a strong being,
held captive by butterflies. Sometimes he is joyous and limpid,
sometimes turbulent and strong, but he has always sincerity, force, and
life. A great space serves to exhilarate him, and he asks nothing better
than to cover it with angels and goddesses, white limbs among the
clouds, sea-horses ridden by Tritons, patrician warriors in Roman
armour, balustrades and columns and _amoretti_. He does not even need to
pounce his design, but puts in all sorts of improvised modifications
with a sure hand. The vastness of his frescoes, the daring poses of his
countless figures, and the freedom of his line speak eloquently of the
mastery to which his hand had attained. He revels, above all, in effects
of light--"all the light of the sky, and all the light of the sea; all
the light of Venice ... in which he swims as in a bath. He paints not
ideas, scarcely even forms, but light. His ceilings are radiant, like
the sky of birds; his poems seem to be written in the clouds. Light is
fairer than all things, and Tiepolo knows all the tricks and triumphs of
light."[6]

[6] Philippe Monnier, _Venice in the Eighteenth Century_.

Nearly all his compositions have a serene and limpid horizon, with
the figures approaching it painted in clear, silvery hues, airy and
diaphanous, while the forms below are more muscular, the flesh tints are
deeper, and the whole of the foreground is often enveloped in shadow.
Veronese had lit up the shadows, which, under his contemporaries, were
growing gloomy. Tiepolo carries his art further on the same lines. He
makes his figures more graceful, his draperies more vaporous, and
illumines his clouds with radiance. His faded blue and rose, his
golden-greys, and pearly whites and pastel tints are not so much solid
colours as caprices of light. We have remarked already that with
Veronese the accessories of gleaming s