penetrative." I reproduce a
detail showing the soldiers with the ropes and the group of women at the
foot of the cross.

The same room has Tintoretto's noble picture of Christ before Pilate and
the fine tragic composition "The Road to Calvary," and on the ceiling is
the S. Rocco of which I have already spoken--the germ from which sprang
the whole wonderful series.

The story of this, the most Venetian of the Venetian painters and the
truest to his native city (for all his life was spent here), may more
fittingly be told in this place, near his masterpiece and his portrait
(which is just by the door), than elsewhere. He was born in 1518, in the
ninth year of our Henry VIII's reign, the son of a dyer, or tintore,
named Battista Robusti, and since the young Jacopo Robusti helped his
father in his trade he was called the little dyer, or il tintoretto. His
father was well to do, and the boy had enough leisure to enable him to
copy and to frequent the arcades of S. Mark's Square, under which such
artists as were too poor to afford studios were allowed to work.

The greatest name in Venetian art at that time, and indeed still, was
that of Titian, and Tintoretto was naturally anxious to become his
pupil. Titian was by many years Tintoretto's senior when, at the age of
seventeen, the little dyer obtained leave to study under him. The story
has it that so masterly were Tintoretto's early drawings that Titian,
fearing rivalry, refused to teach him any longer. Whether this be true
or not, and one dislikes to think of Titian in this way, Tintoretto left
the studio and was thrown upon his own resources and ambition.
Fortunately he did not need money: he was able even to form a collection
of casts from the antique and also from Michael Angelo, the boy's other
idol, who when Tintoretto was seventeen was sixty-one. Thus supplied,
Tintoretto practised drawing and painting, day and night, his motto
being "Titian's colour and Michael Angelo's form"; and he expressed
himself as willing to paint anything anywhere, inside a house or
outside, and if necessary for nothing, rather than be idle. Practice was
what he believed in: practice and study; and he never tired. All
painting worth anything, he held, must be based on sound drawing. "You
can buy colours on the Rialto," he would remark, "but drawing can come
only by labour." Some say that he was stung by a sarcasm of his Tuscan
hero that the Venetians could not draw; be that as it may, he ma