all three being together, and
to give a thread or clue to the story of the picture, they are
represented as the Three Magi; but lest the spectator should think it
strange that the Magi should be in the dress of Venetian chamberlains,
the scene is marked as a mere ideality, by surrounding the person of
the Virgin with saints who lived five hundred years after her. She has
for attendants St. Theodore, St. Sebastian, and St. Carlo (query St.
Joseph). One hardly knows whether most to regret the spirit which was
losing sight of the verities of religious history in imaginative
abstractions, or to praise the modesty and piety which desired rather
to be represented as kneeling before the Virgin than in the discharge
or among the insignia of important offices of state.

As an "Adoration of the Magi," the picture is, of course, sufficiently
absurd: the St. Sebastian leans back in the corner to be out of the
way; the three Magi kneel, without the slightest appearance of
emotion, to a Madonna seated in a Venetian loggia of the fifteenth
century, and three Venetian servants behind bear their offerings in a
very homely sack, tied up at the mouth. As a piece of portraiture and
artistical composition, the work is altogether perfect, perhaps the
best piece of Tintoret's portrait-painting in existence. It is very
carefully and steadily wrought, and arranged with consummate skill on
a difficult plan. The canvas is a long oblong, I think about eighteen
or twenty feet long, by about seven high; one might almost fancy the
painter had been puzzled to bring the piece into use, the figures
being all thrown into positions which a little diminish their height.
The nearest chamberlain is kneeling, the two behind him bowing
themselves slightly, the attendants behind bowing lower, the Madonna
sitting, the St. Theodore sitting still lower on the steps at her
feet, and the St. Sebastian leaning back, so that all the lines of the
picture incline more or less from right to left as they ascend. This
slope, which gives unity to the detached groups, is carefully
exhibited by what a mathematician would call coordinates,--the upright
pillars of the loggia and the horizontal clouds of the beautiful sky.
The color is very quiet, but rich and deep, the local tones being
brought out with intense force, and the cast shadows subdued, the
manner being much more t