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much vaunted, are indeed as feeble as they are monstrous;¹ but the small Titian, “St. Mark, with Sts. Cosmo and Damian,” was, when I first saw it, to my judgment, by far the first work of Titian’s in Venice. It has since been restored by the Academy, and it seemed to me entirely destroyed, but I had not time to examine it carefully.

At the end of the larger sacristy is the lunette which once decorated the tomb of the Doge Francesco Dandolo (see above, page 92); and, at the side of it, one of the most highly finished Tintorets in Venice,² namely:

The Marriage in Cana. An immense picture, some twenty-five feet long by fifteen high, and said by Lazari to be one of the few which Tintoret signed with his name. I am not surprised at his having done so in this case. Evidently the work has been a favourite with him, and he has taken as much pains as it was ever necessary for his colossal strength to take with anything. The subject is not one which admits of much singularity or energy in composition. It was always a favourite one with Veronese, because it gave dramatic interest to figures in gay costumes and of cheerful countenances; but one is surprised to find Tintoret, whose tone of mind was always grave, and who did not like to make a picture out of brocades and diadems, throwing his whole strength into the conception of a marriage feast; but so it is, and there are assuredly no female heads in any of his pictures in Venice elaborated so far as those which here form the central light. Neither is it often that the works of this mighty master conform themselves to any of the rules acted upon by ordinary painters; but in this instance the popular laws have been observed, and an Academy student would be delighted to see with what severity the principal light is arranged in a central mass, which is divided and made more brilliant by a vigorous piece of shadow thrust into the midst of it, and which dies away in lesser fragments and sparkling towards the extremities of the picture. This mass of light is as interesting by its composition as by its intensity. The cicerone, who escorts the stranger round the sacristy in the course of five minutes, and allows him some forty seconds for the contemplation of a picture which the study of six months would not entirely fathom, directs him attention very carefully to the “bell” effetto di prospettivo,” the whole merit of the picture being, in the eyes of the intelligent public, that there is a long table in it, one end of which looks farther off than the other; but there is more in the “bell” effetto di prospettivo” than the observance of the common laws of optics. The table is set in a spacious chamber, of which the windows at the end let in the light from the horizon, and

¹ [“Death of Abel,” “Sacrifice of Isaac,” and “David and Goliath:” see, however, Guide to the Academy at Venice, for another and more favourable reference to Titian’s work on the roof of the sacristy here. The picture by Titian-an early work of his “Giorgionesque” period-was painted about 1512, to commemorate the steadfastness of the Republic when confronted by the League of Cambrai. On one side, below St. Mark, stand St. Sebastian and St. Roch; on the other, SS. Cosmos and Damianus. A photograph of the picture is reproduced at p. 48 of The Earlier Work of Titian, by Claude Phillips.]

² [This is one of two pictures by Tintoret which Ruskin hoped to secure for the National Gallery: see above, p. 366 n.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]