nity of art and to the nature of the subject can be
imagined. S. John is seen with folded arms, fast asleep, while others of
the Apostles with the most burlesque gestures are asking, 'Lord, is it
I?' Another Apostle is uncovering a dish which stands on the floor
without remarking that a cat has stolen in and is eating from it. A
second is reaching towards a flask; a beggar sits by, eating. Attendants
fill up the picture. To judge from an overthrown chair the scene appears
to have been a revel of the lowest description. It is strange that a
painter should venture on such a representation of this subject scarcely
a hundred years after the creation of Leonardo da Vinci's _Last
Supper_."

It was in 1548, when but thirty years old, that Tintoretto first became
famous, with the large _Miracle of S. Mark_, now in the Venice Academy.
This is perhaps his finest as well as his most celebrated work; but the
greatest monument to his industry and general ability is the Scuola
di'San Rocco, where he began to work in 1560 under a contract to produce
three pictures a year for an annuity of a hundred ducats. In all there
are sixty-two of his pictures in this building, the greater part of
them very large, the figures throughout being of the size of life. _The
Crucifixion_, painted in 1565, is the most extensive of them, and on the
whole the most perfect. In 1590, four years before his death, he
completed the enormous _Paradise_ in the Sala del Gran Consiglio,
measuring seventy-four feet in length and thirty in height.

In the National Gallery we have three characteristic examples,
fortunately on a smaller scale, namely, the _S. George_ on a white
horse, which, with its greyish flesh tones and the blue of the
princess's mantle, is cooler in tone than the generality of his
pictures; _Christ washing the Disciples' Feet_, and the very beautiful
and radiant _Origin of the Milky Way_, purchased from Lord Darnley in
1890. At Hampton Court a still finer example, _The Nine Muses_, is so
discoloured by age and hung in such a difficult light that it is
impossible to enjoy its full beauty.

PAOLO CALIARI, better known as VERONESE, was born ten years later than
Tintoretto, and died six years before him (1528-1588). He studied in his
native city of Verona till he was twenty, and after working for some
time at Mantua he came to Venice in 1555, where he was quickly
recognised by Titian and by Sansovino, the sculptor and Director of
Public Buildings,