see the Tintoret. You admire him, you adore him, you think him
the greatest of painters, but in the great majority of cases your
eyes fail to deal with him. This is partly his own fault; so many
of his works have turned to blackness and are positively rotting
in their frames. At the Scuola di San Rocco, where there are
acres of him, there is scarcely anything at all adequately
visible save the immense "Crucifixion" in the upper story. It is
true that in looking at this huge composition you look at many
pictures; it has not only a multitude of figures but a wealth of
episodes; and you pass from one of these to the other as if you
were "doing" a gallery. Surely no single picture in the world
contains more of human life; there is everything in it, including
the most exquisite beauty. It is one of the greatest things of
art; it is always interesting. There are works of the artist
which contain touches more exquisite, revelations of beauty more
radiant, but there is no other vision of so intense a reality, an
execution so splendid. The interest, the impressiveness, of that
whole corner of Venice, however melancholy the effect of its
gorgeous and ill-lighted chambers, gives a strange importance to
a visit to the Scuola. Nothing that all travellers go to see
appears to suffer less from the incursions of travellers. It is
one of the loneliest booths of the bazaar, and the author of
these lines has always had the good fortune, which he wishes to
every other traveller, of having it to himself. I think most
visitors find the place rather alarming and wicked-looking. They
walk about a while among the fitful figures that gleam here and
there out of the great tapestry (as it were) with which the
painter has hung all the walls, and then, depressed and
bewildered by the portentous solemnity of these objects, by
strange glimpses of unnatural scenes, by the echo of their lonely