t to the plague, Tintoret has not been
content with one horizon; I have before mentioned the excessive
strangeness of this composition, in having a cavern open in the right
of the foreground, through which is seen another sky and another
horizon. At the top of the picture, the Divine Being is seen borne by
angels, apparently passing over the congregation in wrath, involved in
masses of dark clouds; while, behind, an Angel of mercy is descending
toward Moses, surrounded by a globe of white light. This globe is
hardly seen from below; it is not a common glory, but a transparent
sphere, like a bubble, which not only envelopes the angel, but crosses
the figure of Moses, throwing the upper part of it into a subdued pale
color, as if it were crossed by a sunbeam. Tintoret is the only
painter who plays these tricks with transparent light, the only man
who seems to have perceived the effects of sunbeams, mists, and
clouds, in the far away atmosphere; and to have used what he saw on
towers, clouds, or mountains, to enhance the sublimity of his figures.
The whole upper part of this picture is magnificent, less with respect
to individual figures, than for the drift of its clouds, and
originality and complication of its light and shade; it is something
like Raffaelle's "Vision of Ezekiel," but far finer. It is difficult
to understand how any painter, who could represent floating clouds so
nobly as he has done here, could ever paint the odd, round, pillowy
masses which so often occur in his more carelessly designed sacred
subjects. The lower figures are not so interesting, and the whole is
painted with a view to effect from below, and gains little by close
examination.

25. _Fall of Manna._ In none of these three large compositions has the
painter made the slightest effort at expression in the human
countenance; everything is done by gesture, and the faces of the
people who are drinking from the rock, dying from the serpent-bites,
and eating the manna, are all alike as calm as if nothing was
happening; in addition to this, as they are painted for distant
effect, the heads are unsatisfactory and coarse when seen near, and
perhaps in this last picture the more so, and yet the story is
exquisitely told. We have seen in the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore
another example of his treatment of it, where, however, the gathering
of mann