definite relation to the Heller altar-piece, is much stiffer and more
formal--much less likely to have inspired the master of Cadore. The
_Assunta_ was already in Vasari's time much dimmed, and thus difficult
to see in its position on the high altar. Joshua Reynolds, when he
visited the Frari in 1752, says that "he saw it near; it was most
terribly dark but nobly painted." Now, in the Accademia delle Belle
Arti, it shines forth again, not indeed uninjured, but sufficiently
restored to its pristine beauty to vindicate its place as one of the
greatest productions of Italian art at its highest. The sombre,
passionate splendours of the colouring in the lower half, so well
adapted to express the supreme agitation of the moment, so grandly
contrast with the golden glory of the skies through which the Virgin is
triumphantly borne, surrounded by myriads of angels and cherubim, and
awaited by the Eternal. This last is a figure the divine serenity of
which is the strongest contrast to those terrible representations of the
Deity, so relentless in their superhuman majesty, which, in the ceiling
of the Sixtine, move through the Infinite and fill the beholder with
awe. The over-substantial, the merely mortal figure of the Virgin, in
her voluminous red and blue draperies, has often been criticised, and
not without some reason. Yet how in this tremendous ensemble, of which
her form is, in the more exact sense, the centre of attraction and the
climax, to substitute for Titian's conception anything more diaphanous,
more ethereal? It is only when we strive to replace the colossal figure
in the mind's eye, by a design of another and a more spiritual
character, that the difficulty in all its extent is realised.

[Illustration: _The Assunta. Accademia delle Belle Arti, Venice_.]

Placed as the _Assunta_ now is in the immediate neighbourhood of one of
Tintoretto's best-preserved masterpieces, the _Miracolo del Schiavo_, it