cco. Of all
Tintoretto's religious pictures, that is the most profoundly felt, the
most majestic. No other artist succeeded as he has here succeeded in
presenting to us God incarnate. For this Christ is not merely the
just man, innocent, silent before his accusers. The stationary,
white-draped figure, raised high above the agitated crowd, with
tranquil forehead slightly bent, facing his perplexed and fussy judge,
is more than man. We cannot say perhaps precisely why he is divine.
But Tintoretto has made us feel that he is. In other words, his
treatment of the high theme chosen by him has been adequate.

We must seek the Scuola di San Rocco for examples of Tintoretto's
liveliest imagination. Without ceasing to be Italian in his attention
to harmony and grace, he far exceeded the masters of his nation in the
power of suggesting what is weird, mysterious, upon the borderland
of the grotesque. And of this quality there are three remarkable
instances in the Scuola. No one but Tintoretto could have evoked
the fiend in his 'Temptation of Christ.' It is an indescribable
hermaphroditic genius, the genius of carnal fascination, with
outspread downy rose-plumed wings, and flaming bracelets on the full
but sinewy arms, who kneels and lifts aloft great stones, smiling
entreatingly to the sad, grey Christ seated beneath a rugged
pent-house of the desert. No one again but Tintoretto could have
dashed the hot lights of that fiery sunset in such quivering flakes
upon the golden flesh of Eve, half hidden among laurels, as she
stretches forth the fruit of the Fall to shrinking Adam. No one but
Tintoretto, till we come to Blake, could have imagined yonder Jonah,
summoned by the beck of God from the whale's belly. The monstrous
fish rolls over in the ocean, blowing portentous vapour from his
trump-shaped nostril. The prophet's beard descends upon his naked
breast in hoary ringlets to the girdle. He has forgotten the past
peril of the deep, although the whale's jaws yawn around him. Between
him and the outstretched finger of Jehovah calling him again to life,
there runs a spark of unseen spiritual electricity.

To comprehend Tintoretto's touch upon the pastoral idyll we must turn
our steps to San Giorgio again, and pace those meadows by the
running river in company with his Manna-Gatherers. Or we may seek the
Accademia, and notice how he here has varied the 'Temptation of Adam
by Eve,' choosing a less tragic motive of seduction than the on