atins and rich brocades serve to
obscure the persons. In many of Tiepolo's scenes the figures are lost
in a flutter of drapery, subject and action melt away, and we are only
conscious of soft harmonies of delicious colour, as ethereal as the
hues of spring flowers in woodland ways and joyous meadows. With these
delicious, audacious fancies, put on with a nervous hand, we forget the
age of profound and ardent passion, we escape from that of pompous
solemnity and studied grace, and we breathe an atmosphere of
irresponsible and capricious pleasure. In this last word of her great
masters Venice keeps what her temperament loved--sensuous colour and
emotional chiaroscuro, used to accentuate an art adapted to a city of
pleasure.

The excellence of the old masters' drawings is a perpetual revelation.
Even second-class men are almost invariably fine draughtsmen, proving
that drawing was looked upon as something over which it was necessary
for even the meanest to have entire mastery. Tiepolo's drawings,
preserved in Venice and in various museums, are as beautiful as can be
wished; perfect in execution and vivid in feeling. In Venice are twenty
or thirty sheets in red carbon, of flights of angels, and of draperies
studied in every variety of fold.

Poor work of his school is often ascribed to his sons, but the superb
"Stations of the Cross," in the Frari, which were etched by Domenico,
and published as his own in his lifetime, are almost equal to the
father's work. Tiepolo had many immediate followers and imitators. The
colossal roof-painting of Fabio Canal in the Church of SS. Apostoli,
Venice, may be pointed out as an example of one of these. But he is full
of the tendencies of modern art. Mr. Berenson, writing of him, says he
sometimes seems more the first than the last of a line, and notices how
he influenced many French artists of recent times, though none seem
quite to have caught the secret of his light intensity and his exquisite
caprice.

PRINCIPAL WORKS

Aranjuez. Royal Palace: Frescoes; Altarpiece.
Orangery: Frescoes.
Bergamo. Cappella Colleoni: Scenes from the Life of the Baptist.
Berlin. Martyrdom of S. Agatha; S. Dominia and the Rosary.
London. Sketches; Deposition.
Madrid. Escurial; Ceilings.
Milan. Palazzi Clerici, Archinto, and Dugnano: Frescoes.
Brera: Loves of Rinaldo and Armida.
Paris. Christ at Emmaus.
Stra. Villa Pisani: Ceiling.
Venice. Academy: S.