XXXIV

THE CRUCIFIXION

THE treatment of this subject was, in Giotto’s time, so rigidly fixed by tradition that it was out of his power to display any of his own special modes of thought; and, as in the Bearing of the Cross, so here, but yet more distinctly, the temporary circumstances are little regarded, the significance of the event being alone cared for. But even long after this time, in all the pictures of the Crucifixion by the great masters, with the single exception perhaps of that by Tintoret in the Church of San Cassiano at Venice,¹ there is a tendency to treat the painting as a symmetrical image, or collective symbol of sacred mysteries, rather than as a dramatic representation. Even in Tintoret’s great Crucifixion in the School of St. Roch,² the group of fainting women forms a kind of pedestal for the Cross. The flying angels in the composition before us are thus also treated with a restraint hardly passing the limits of decorative symbolism. The fading away of their figures into flame-like cloud may perhaps be founded on the verse, “He maketh His angels spirits; His ministers a flame of fire” (though erroneously, the right reading of that verse being, “He maketh the winds His messengers, and the flaming fire His servant”);³ but it seems to me to give a greater sense of

¹ [Described in Vol. XI. p. 366.]

² [See, again, Vol. XI. p. 428.]

³ [Psalms civ. 4 (quoted in Hebrews i. 7). The meaning is probably as Ruskin says. The Revised Version translates the verse (in the Psalm), “Who maketh winds his messengers; his ministers a flaming fire”; and Cheyne, “He maketh his messengers of wind, his ministers of fire and flame.” The writer of Hebrews follows the erroneous translation of the Septuagint, o poiwn touV aggelouV autou pneumata kai touV leitourgouV autou pur flegon.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]