o was but an inspired Gustave Dore.
Between that quiet canvas of the Presentation, so modest in its cool
greys and subdued gold, and the tumult of flying, ruining, ascending
figures in the Judgment, what an interval there is! How strangely the
white lamb-like maiden, kneeling beside her lamb in the picture of S.
Agnes, contrasts with the dusky gorgeousness of the Hebrew women
despoiling themselves of jewels for the golden calf! Comparing these
several manifestations of creative power, we feel ourselves in the grasp
of a painter who was essentially a poet, one for whom his art was the
medium for expressing before all things thought and passion. Each
picture is executed in the manner suited to its tone of feeling, the key
of its conception.

Elsewhere than in the Madonna dell'Orto there are more distinguished
single examples of Tintoretto's realising faculty. The Last Supper in
San Giorgio, for instance, and the Adoration of the Shepherds in the
Scuola di San Rocco illustrate his unique power of presenting sacred
history in a novel, romantic frame-work of familiar things. The
commonplace circumstances of ordinary life have been employed to portray
in the one case a lyric of mysterious splendour; in the other, an idyll
of infinite sweetness. Divinity shines through the rafters of that
upper chamber, where round a low large table the Apostles are assembled
in a group translated from the social customs of the painter's days.
Divinity is shed upon the straw-spread manger, where Christ lies
sleeping in the loft, with shepherds crowding through the room beneath.

A studied contrast between the simplicity and repose of the central
figure and the tumult of passions in the multitude around, may be
observed in the Miracle of S. Agnes. It is this which gives dramatic
vigour to the composition. But the same effect is carried to its highest
fulfilment, with even a loftier beauty, in the episode of Christ before
the judgment-seat of Pilate, at San Rocco. Of all Tintoretto's religious
pictures, that is the most profoundly felt, the most majestic. No other
artist succeeded as he has here succeeded in presenting to us God
incarnate. For this Christ is not merely the just man, innocent, silent
before his accusers. The stationary, white-draped figure, raised high
above the agitated crowd, with tranquil forehead slightly bent, facing
his perplexed and fussy judge, is more than man. We cannot say perhaps
precisely why he is divine. But Tinto