ROCCO, SCUOLA DI SAN 417

piece of the rock itself, but that they are broken in upon by one of the limbs of Lazarus, bandaged and in full light, which, to my feeling, sadly injures the picture, both as a disagreeable object, and a light in the wrong place. The grass and weeds are, throughout, carefully painted, but the lower figures are of little interest, and the face of the Christ a grievous failure.

18. The Ascension. I have always admired this picture, though it is very slight and thin in execution, and cold in colour; but it is remarkable for its thorough effect of open air, and for the sense of motion and clashing in the wings of the angels which sustain the Christ: they owe this effect a good deal to the manner in which they are set, edge on; all seem like sword-blades cutting the air. It is the most curious in conception of all the pictures in the Scuola, for it represents, beneath the Ascension, a kind of epitome of what took place before the Ascension. In the distance are two apostles walking, meant, I suppose, for the two going to Emmaus; nearer are a group round a table, to remind us of Christ appearing to them as they sat at meat: and in the foreground is a single reclining figure of, I suppose, St. Peter, because we are told that “He was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve:¹ but this interpretation is doubtful; for why should not the vision by the Lake of Tiberias be expressed also? And the strange thing of all is the scene, for Christ ascended from the Mount of Olives; but the disciples are walking, and the table is set, in a little marshy and grassy valley, like some of the bits near Maison Neuve on the Jura, with a brook running through it, so capitally expressed, that I believe it is this which makes me so fond of the picture. The reflections are as scientific in the diminution, in the image, of large masses of bank above, as any of Turner’s, and the marshy and reedy ground looks as if one would sink into it; but what all this has to do with the Ascension I cannot see. The figure of Christ is not undignified, but by no means either interesting or sublime.

19. Pool of Bethesda. I have no doubt the principal figures have been repainted; but as the colours are faded, and the subject disgusting, I have not paid this picture sufficient attention to say how far the injury extends; nor need any one spend time upon it, unless after having first examined all the other Tintorets in Venice. All the great Italian painters appear insensible to the feeling of disgust at disease;² but this study of the population of an hospital is without any points of contrast, and I wish Tintoret had not condescended to paint it. This and the six preceding paintings have all been uninteresting, -I believe chiefly owing to the observance in them of Sir Joshua’s rule for the heroic, “that drapery is to be mere drapery, and not silk, nor satin, nor brocade.”³ However wise such a rule may be when

¹ [1 Corinthians xv. 5.]

² [See above, p. 402.]

³ [A quotation from memory; see the Discourses, iv.: “In the same manner as the historical painter never enters into the detail of colour, so neither does he debase his conceptions with minute attention to the discriminations of drapery. It is the inferior style that marks the variety of stuffs. With him, the clothing is neither woollen, nor linen, nor silk, stain, or velvet; it is drapery; it is nothing more.”]

XI. 2 D

[Version 0.04: March 2008]