Venice; developed his genius at
home, under such conditions for development as were afforded by the
example of the earlier masters of Brescia itself; left his work there
abundantly, and almost there alone, as the thoroughly representative
product of a charming place. In the little Church of San Clemente he
is still "at home" to his lovers; an intimately religious artist, full
of cheerfulness, of joy. Upon the airy galleries of his great
altar-piece, the angels dance against the sky above the Mother and the
Child; Saint Clement, patron of the church, being attendant in
pontifical white, with Dominic, Catherine, the Magdalen, and good,
big-faced Saint Florian in complete armour, benign and strong. He
knows many a saint not in the Roman breviary. Was there a single
sweet-sounding name without its martyr patron? Lucia, Agnes, Agatha,
Barbara, Cecilia--holy women, dignified, high-bred, intelligent--[103]
have an altar of their own; and here, as in that festal high
altar-piece, the spectator may note yet another artistic alliance,
something of the pale effulgence of Correggio--an approach, at least,
to that peculiar treatment of light and shade, and a pre-occupation
with certain tricks therein of nature itself, by which Correggio
touches Rembrandt on the one hand, Da Vinci on the other. Here, in
Moretto's work, you may think that manner more delightful, perhaps
because more refined, than in Correggio himself. Those pensive,
tarnished, silver side-lights, like mere reflexions of natural
sunshine, may be noticed indeed in many another painter of that day, in
Lanini, for instance, at the National Gallery. In his "Nativity" at
the Brera, Procaccini of Verona almost anticipates Correggio's Heilige
Nacht. It is, in truth, the first step in the decomposition of light,
a touch of decadence, of sunset, along the whole horizon of
North-Italian art. It is, however, as the painter of the white-stoled
Ursula and her companions that the great master of Brescia is most
likely to remain in the memory of the visitor; with this fact, above
all, clearly impressed on it, that Moretto had attained full
intelligence of all the pictorial powers of white. In the clearness,
the cleanliness, the hieratic distinction, of this earnest and
deeply-felt composition, there is something "pre-Raphaelite"; as also
in a certain liturgical formality in the grouping of the virgins--the
[104] looks, "all one way," of the closely-ranged faces; while in th