gone to nothing.

228. (II.) Introduction of dramatic interest for the sake of excitement.
I have already, in the _Stones of Venice_, illustrated Tintoret's
dramatic power at so great length, that I will not, to-day, make any
farther statement to justify my assertion that it is as much beyond
Michael Angelo's as Shakspeare's is beyond Milton's--and somewhat with
the same kind of difference in manner. Neither can I speak to-day, time
not permitting me, of the abuse of their dramatic power by Venetian or
Florentine; one thing only I beg you to note, that with full half of his
strength, Tintoret remains faithful to the serenity of the past; and the
examples I have given you from his work in S. 50,[47] are, one, of the
most splendid drama, and the other, of the quietest portraiture ever
attained by the arts of the Middle Ages.

Note also this respecting his picture of the Judgment, that, in spite
of all the violence and wildness of the imagined scene, Tintoret has not
given, so far as I remember, the spectacle of any one soul under
infliction of actual pain. In all previous representations of the Last
Judgment there had at least been one division of the picture set apart
for the representation of torment; and even the gentle Angelico shrinks
from no orthodox detail in this respect; but Tintoret, too vivid and
true in imagination to be able to endure the common thoughts of hell,
represents indeed the wicked in ruin, but not in agony. They are swept
down by flood and whirlwind--the place of them shall know them no more,
but not one is seen in more than the natural pain of swift and
irrevocable death.

229. (III.) I pass to the third condition; the priority of flesh to
spirit, and of the body to the face.

In this alone, of the four innovations, Michael Angelo and Tintoret have
the Greeks with them;--in this, alone, have they any right to be called
classical. The Greeks gave them no excuse for bad workmanship; none for
temporary passion; none for the preference of pain. Only in the honor
done to the body may be alleged for them the authority of the ancients.

You remember, I hope, how often in my preceding lectures I had to insist
on the fact that Greek sculpture was essentially [Greek:
aprosopos];--independent, not only of the expression, but even of the
beauty of the face. Nay, independent of its being so much as seen. The
greater number of the finest pieces of it which remain for us to judge
by, have had the heads bro