For there is nothing particular in this cold and conventional
temple to gaze at save the great Tintoretto of the sacristy, to
which we quickly pay our respects, and which we are glad to have
for ten minutes to ourselves. The picture, though full of beauty,
is not the finest of the master's; but it serves again as well
as another to transport--there is no other word--those of his
lovers for whom, in far-away days when Venice was an early
rapture, this strange and mystifying painter was almost the
supreme revelation. The plastic arts may have less to say to us
than in the hungry years of youth, and the celebrated picture in
general be more of a blank; but more than the others any fine
Tintoret still carries us back, calling up not only the rich
particular vision but the freshness of the old wonder. Many
things come and go, but this great artist remains for us in
Venice a part of the company of the mind. The others are there in
their obvious glory, but he is the only one for whom the
imagination, in our expressive modern phrase, sits up. "The
Marriage in Cana," at the Salute, has all his characteristic and
fascinating unexpectedness--the sacrifice of the figure of our
Lord, who is reduced to the mere final point of a clever
perspective, and the free, joyous presentation of all the other
elements of the feast. Why, in spite of this queer one-sidedness,
does the picture give us no impression of a lack of what the
critics call reverence? For no other reason that I can think of
than because it happens to be the work of its author, in whose
very mistakes there is a singular wisdom. Mr. Ruskin has spoken
with sufficient eloquence of the serious loveliness of the row of
heads of the women on the right, who talk to each other as they
sit at the foreshortened banquet. There could be no better
example of the roving independence of the painter's vision, a