er. Above all, there
are a dozen mythological and allegorical paintings by Tintoret and
Veronese, of such brilliancy and such intoxicating fascination that a
veil seems to fall from our eyes and we discover an unknown world, a
paradise of delights situated beyond all imagination and all dreams.
When the Old Man of the Mountain transported into his harem his sleeping
youths to render them capable of extreme devotion, doubtless it was such
a spectacle that he furnished.

Upon the coast at the margin of the infinite sea, serious Ariadne
receives the ring of Bacchus, and Venus, with a crown of gold, has come
through the air to celebrate their marriage. Here is the sublime beauty
of bare flesh, such as it appears coming out of the water, vivified by
the sun and touched with shadows. The goddess is floating in liquid
light and her twisted back, her flanks and her curves are palpitating,
half enveloped in a white, diaphanous veil. With what words can we paint
the beauty of an attitude, a tone, or an outline? Who will describe the
healthy and roseate flesh under the amber transparency of gauze? How
shall we represent the soft plenitude of a living form and the curves of
limbs which flow into the leaning body? Truly she is swimming in the
light like a fish in its lake, and the air, filled with vague
reflections, embraces and caresses her.

_Voyage en Italie_ (Paris, 1866).

FOOTNOTES:

[28] Painted by Veronese and by Zelotti and Bazzaco under his direction.

BACCHUS AND ARIADNE

ANONYMOUS

Titian's magnificent pictures in the Ducal Palace were, all but one,
destroyed by fire the year after his death; but his impetuous rival,
Tintoretto, is abundantly represented there. With regard to _him_, as
usual, our admiration for frequent manifestations of extraordinary power
is but too commonly checked and chilled by coarse, heavy painting, and
the unexpressive wholly uninteresting character of many of his
allegorical or celestial groups, which seem introduced merely as
exercises or exhibitions of technical skill, rather than as appeals to
our imagination or finer feelings.... On the whole you are again tempted
to be somewhat out of conceit with Tintoretto, till you pause in the
Ante Collegio, or guard-room, before a picture of his so poetically
conceived and admirably wrought, indeed so pleasing in all respects,
that you wonder still more at the dull, uninteresting character of so
many of the others. Yes, here _Il Fu