Satan, fluttering with pink wings like some smug seraph of Bernini's
pupils. After this it is scarce necessary to speak of whatever is
dramatically abortive (because successfully expressing just the wrong
sort of sentiment, the wrong situation) in Tintoret's work: his Woman
taken in Adultery, with the dapper young Rabbi, offended neither by
adultery in general nor by this adulteress in particular; the Washing of
the Feet, in London, where the conversation appears to turn upon the
excessive hotness or coldness of the water in the tub; the Last Supper
at S. Giorgio Maggiore, where, among the mysterious wreaths of smoke
peopled with angels, Christ rises from His seat and holds the cup to His
neighbour's lips with the gesture, as He says, "This is My blood," of
a conjuror to an incredulous and indifferent audience. To Tintoret
the contents of the chalice is the all-important matter: where is the
majesty of the old Giottesque gesture, preserved by Leonardo, of pushing
forward the bread with one hand, the wine with the other, and thus
uncovering the head and breast of the Saviour, the gesture which does
indeed mean--"I am the bread you shall eat, and the wine you shall
drink"? There remains, however, to mention another work of Tintoret's
which, coming in contact with one's recollections of earlier art, may
suggest strange doubts and well nigh shake one's faith in the imaginative
efficacy of all that went before: his enormous canvas of the Last Day,
at S. Maria dell' Orto. The first and overwhelming impression, even
before one has had time to look into this apocalyptic work, is that
no one could have conceived such a thing in earlier days, not even
Michelangelo when he painted his Last Judgment, nor Raphael when he
designed the Vision of Ezechiel. This is, indeed, one thinks, a revelation
of the end of all things. Great storm clouds, whereon throne the Almighty
and His Elect, brood over the world, across which, among the crevassed,
upheaving earth, pours the wide glacier torrent of Styx, with the boat
of Charon struggling across its precipitous waters. The angels, confused
with the storm clouds of which they are the spirit, lash the damned down
to the Hell stream, band upon band, even from the far distance. And in
the foreground the rocks are splitting, the soil is upheaving with the
dead beneath; here protrudes a huge arm, there a skull; in one place the
clay, rising, has assumed the vague outline of the face below. In the
ro