in amazement, and stretches across the table to show the wine in
her cup to those opposite; her dark red dress intercepts and enhances
the mass of gathered light. It is rather curious, considering the
subject of the picture, that one cannot distinguish either the bride
or the bridegroom; but the fourth figure from the Madonna in the line
of women, who wears a white head-dress of lace and rich chains of
pearls in her hair, may well be accepted for the former, and I think
that between her and the woman on the Madonna's left hand the unity of
the line of women is intercepted by a male figure; be this as it may,
this fourth female face is the most beautiful, as far as I recollect,
that occurs in the works of the painter, with the exception only of
the Madonna in the "Flight into Egypt." It is an ideal which occurs
indeed elsewhere in many of his works, a face at once dark and
delicate, the Italian cast of feature moulded with the softness and
childishness of English beauty some half a century ago; but I have
never seen the ideal so completely worked out by the master. The face
may best be described as one of the purest and softest of Stothard's
conceptions, executed with all the strength of Tintoret. The other
women are all made inferior to this one, but there are beautiful
profiles and bendings of breasts and necks along the whole line. The
men are all subordinate, though there are interesting portraits among
them; perhaps the only fault of the picture being that the faces are a
little too conspicuous, seen like balls of light among the crowd of
minor figures which fill the background of the picture. The tone of
the whole is sober and majestic in the highest degree; the dresses are
all broad masses of color, and the only parts of the picture which lay
claim to the expression of wealth or splendor are the head-dresses of
the women. In this respect the conception of the scene differs widely
from that of Veronese, and approaches more nearly to the probable
truth. Still the marriage is not an unimportant one; an immense crowd,
filling the background, forming superbly rich mosaic of color against
the distant sky. Taken as a whole, the picture is perhaps the most
perfect example which human art has produced of the utmost possible
force and sharpness of shadow united with richness of local color. In
all the other works of Tintoret,