silver cloud; he thrones in an eternal morning. The deep blue sky
burns behind him, streaked across with milky bars; the white
colonnades sustain the richest canopies, under which the first
gentlemen and ladies in the world both render homage and receive
it. Their glorious garments rustle in the air of the sea and
their sun-lighted faces are the very complexion of Venice. The
mixture of pride and piety, of politics and religion, of art and
patriotism, gives a splendid dignity to every scene. Never was a
painter more nobly joyous, never did an artist take a greater
delight in life, seeing it all as a kind of breezy festival and
feeling it through the medium of perpetual success. He revels in
the gold-framed ovals of the ceilings, multiplies himself there
with the fluttering movement of an embroidered banner that tosses
itself into the blue. He was the happiest of painters and
produced the happiest picture in the world. "The Rape of Europa"
surely deserves this title; it is impossible to look at it
without aching with envy. Nowhere else in art is such a
temperament revealed; never did inclination and opportunity
combine to express such enjoyment. The mixture of flowers and
gems and brocade, of blooming flesh and shining sea and waving
groves, of youth, health, movement, desire--all this is the
brightest vision that ever descended upon the soul of a painter.
Happy the artist who could entertain such a vision; happy the
artist who could paint it as the masterpiece I here recall is
painted.

The Tintoret's visions were not so bright as that; but he had
several that were radiant enough. In the room that contains the
work just cited are several smaller canvases by the greatly more
complex genius of the Scuola di San Rocco, which are almost