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Page 78
All agreed most eagerly with Mr. Sumner's opinion of the picture. Then,
turning, Bettina caught sight of an _Annunciation_, and cried:--
"How thoroughly exquisite! See those lovely angels tumbling over each
other in their haste to tell the news to Mary! How brilliant! Surely
Tintoretto did not paint this!"
"No. This is by Titian; and it is one of his most happy religious
pictures too. I thought of it as we were coming, and am glad to have you
see it. The whole expression is admirable; and the fulness of life and
joy--the jubilation--is perfect. You can in no way more vividly feel the
difference between fourteenth-century painting in Florence, and the
sixteenth-century or High Renaissance work in Venice, than by recalling
Fra Angelico's sweet, calm, staid Annunciations, and contrasting them
with this one."
"But why do I feel that, after all, I love Fra Angelico's better, and
should care to look at them oftener?" rather timidly asked Barbara.
"I think," replied Mr. Sumner, after a little pause, "that it is
because, in them, the spiritual expression dominates the physical. We
recognize the fact that the artist has not the power to picture all that
he desires to express. His art language is weak; therefore there is
something left unsaid, and this compels our attention. We wish to
understand his full meaning, so come to his pictures again and again.
"It is this quality of the fourteenth-century painting that impelled the
Pre-Raphaelites, German and English, to discard the chief _motif_ of the
High Renaissance, which was to picture everything in its outward
perfection. They thought that this very perfection of artistic
expression led to the elimination of spiritual feeling."
"But how can artists go back now and paint as those did five centuries
ago?" queried Malcom. "Of course, if they study methods of the present
day, they must know all the principles underlying a true and artistic
representation--and it would be wrong not to practise them."
"You have at once found the weak point in the Pre-Raphaelites' principle
of work, Malcom. It is forced and artificial to do that in the
nineteenth century which was natural and charming in the fourteenth.
That which our artists of to-day must do if they desire any reform is to
so fill themselves with the comprehension of spiritual things--so strive
to understand the hidden beauty and harmony and truth of nature--that
their works may be revelations to those who do not see so clearly as do
they. To do this perfectly they must ever, in my opinion, give more
thought to the thing to be expressed than to the manner of its
expression; yet they must render this expression as perfectly as the
present conditions allow. But I think I have talked before of just this
thing. And we must turn again to Tintoretto."
Not only this forenoon, but many others, were spent in the Scuola di San
Rocco in the study of Tintoretto's paintings. At first they shuddered at
his most vivid representations of poor, sick, wretched beings that cover
these immense canvases dedicated to the memory of St. Roch, whose life
was devoted to hospital work; then were fascinated by the power that had
so ruthlessly portrayed reality. They studied his great
_Crucifixion_,--as a whole, in detailed groups, and then its separate
figures,--until they began to realize the magnitude of its conception
and rendering. Mr. Sumner had said that nowhere save in Venice can
Tintoretto be studied, and all were anxious to understand his work.
At the Academy, close by Titian's great _Assumption of the Virgin_,
they found Tintoretto's _Miracle of St. Mark_, and saw how noble could
be, at their best, his composition and drawing, and how marvellous his
coloring of sky, architecture, costume, and flesh. They went to the
various churches, notably, Santa Maria del Orto, to see good examples of
his religious painting; and to the Ducal Palace for his many
mythological pictures, and his immense _Paradiso_. Finally they were
happy in feeling that they could comprehend, in some little degree, the
spirit of this strange, powerful artist and his work.
One rainy evening, toward the close of their stay in Venice, all sat in
the parlor, discussing a most popular novel recently published. It was
written in an exceedingly clever manner; indeed, possessed an unusual
degree of literary merit. But like many other books then being sent
forth, the tale was very sad.
The hero, Richard,--poor, proud, and painfully morbid,--would not
believe it possible that the woman whom he passionately loved,--a woman
whose life was filled with luxury, and who was surrounded by
admirers,--could ever love him; and so he went out from her and all the
possibilities of happiness, never to know that her heart was his and
might have been had for the asking. The happiness of both lives was
wrecked.
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