of
much singularity or energy in composition. It was always a favorite
one with Veronese, because it gave dramatic interest to figures in gay
costumes and of cheerful countenances; but one is surprised to find
Tintoret, whose tone of mind was always grave, and who did not like to
make a picture out of brocades and diadems, throwing his whole
strength into the conception of a marriage feast; but so it is, and
there are assuredly no female heads in any of his pictures in Venice
elaborated so far as those which here form the central light. Neither
is it often that the works of this mighty master conform themselves to
any of the rules acted upon by ordinary painters; but in this instance
the popular laws have been observed, and an academy student would be
delighted to see with what severity the principal light is arranged in
a central mass, which is divided and made more brilliant by a vigorous
piece of shadow thrust into the midst of it, and which dies away in
lesser fragments and sparkling towards the extremities of the picture.
This mass of light is as interesting by its composition as by its
intensity. The cicerone who escorts the stranger round the sacristy in
the course of five minutes, and allows him some forty seconds for the
contemplation of a picture which the study of six months would not
entirely fathom, directs his attention very carefully to the "bell'
effetto di prospettivo," the whole merit of the picture being, in the
eyes of the intelligent public, that there is a long table in it, one
end of which looks farther off than the other; but there is more in
the "bell' effetto di prospettivo" than the observance of the common
laws of optics. The table is set in a spacious chamber, of which the
windows at the end let in the light from the horizon, and those in the
side wall the intense blue of an Eastern sky. The spectator looks all
along the table, at the farther end of which are seated Christ and the
Madonna, the marriage guests on each side of it,--on one side men, on
the other women; the men are set with their backs to the light, which
passing over their heads and glancing slightly on the tablecloth,
falls in full length along the line of young Venetian women, who thus
fill the whole centre of the picture with one broad sunbeam, made up
of fair faces and golden hair. Close to the spectator a woman has
risen