ed that this was meant to give greater horror to the scene, and
it is very like Tintoret if it be so; but there is a strangeness and
discordance in it which makes me suspect the colors may have changed.

5. _The Magdalen._ This and the picture opposite to it, "St. Mary of
Egypt," have been painted to fill up narrow spaces between the windows
which were not large enough to receive compositions, and yet in which
single figures would have looked awkwardly thrust into the corner.
Tintoret has made these spaces as large as possible by filling them
with landscapes, which are rendered interesting by the introduction of
single figures of very small size. He has not, however, considered his
task, of making a small piece of wainscot look like a large one, worth
the stretch of his powers, and has painted these two landscapes just
as carelessly and as fast as an upholsterer's journeyman finishing a
room at a railroad hotel. The color is for the most part opaque, and
dashed or scrawled on in the manner of a scene-painter; and as during
the whole morning the sun shines upon the one picture, and during the
afternoon upon the other, hues, which were originally thin and
imperfect, are now dried in many places into mere dirt upon the
canvas. With all these drawbacks the pictures are of very high
interest, for although, as I said, hastily and carelessly, they are
not languidly painted; on the contrary, he has been in his hottest and
grandest temper; and in this first one ("Magdalen") the laurel tree,
with its leaves driven hither and thither among flakes of fiery cloud,
has been probably one of the greatest achievements that his hand
performed in landscape: its roots are entangled in underwood; of which
every leaf seems to be articulated, yet all is as wild as if it had
grown there instead of having been painted; there has been a mountain
distance, too, and a sky of stormy light, of which I infinitely regret
the loss, for though its masses of light are still discernible, its
variety of hue is all sunk into a withered brown. There is a curious
piece of execution in the striking of the light upon a brook which
runs under the roots of the laurel in the foreground: these roots are
traced in shadow against the bright surface of the water; another
painter would have drawn the light first, and drawn the dark roots
over it. Tintoret has laid in a b