ead
visible above his book. The cows are just visible in the gloom. The
lantern is held by a man coming carefully forward, uncovering his head,
the crowd behind him. _A Halt on the Journey to Egypt_: Night. The
lantern hung on a branch. Joseph seated sleepily, with his fur cap
drawn down; the Virgin and Child resting against the packsaddle on the
ground. _An Interior_: The Virgin hugging and rocking the Child. Joseph,
outside, looks in through the window. _The Raising of Lazarus_: A vault
hung with scimitars, turbans, and quivers. Against the brilliant daylight
just let in, the figure of Christ, seen from behind, stands out in His
long robes, raising His hand to bid the dead arise. Lazarus, pale,
ghost-like in this effulgence, slowly, wearily raises his head in the
sepulchre. The crowd falls back. Astonishment, awe. This coarse Dutchman
has suppressed the incident of the bystanders holding their nose, to
which the Giottesques clung desperately. This is not a moment to think of
stenches or infection. _Entombment_: Night. The platform below the cross.
A bier, empty, spread with a winding-sheet, an old man arranging it at
the head. The dead Saviour being slipped down from the cross on a sheet,
two men on a ladder letting the body down, others below receiving it,
trying to prevent the arm from trailing. Immense solemnity, carefulness,
hushedness. A distant illuminated palace blazes out in the night. One
feels that they are stealing Him away.

I have reversed the chronological order and chosen to speak of Tintoret
after Rembrandt, because, being an Italian and still in contact with
some of the old tradition, the great Venetian can show more completely,
both what was gained and what was lost in imaginative rendering by the
liberation of the individual artist and the development of artistic
means. First, of the gain. This depends mainly upon Tintoret's handling
of light and shade, and his foreshortenings: it enables him to compose
entirely in huge masses, to divide or concentrate the interest, to throw
into vague insignificance the less important parts of a situation in
order to insist upon the more important; it gives him the power also of
impressing us by the colossal and the ominous. The masterpiece of this
style, and probably Tintoret's masterpiece therefore, is the great
Crucifixion at S. Rocco. To feel its full tragic splendour one must
think of the finest things which the early Renaissance achieved, such as
Luini's beau