But he fails in
that artistic arrangement of the whole and in that nobility of motives
in the parts which are necessary exponents of a really high ideal. His
compositions are achieved less by finely studied degrees of
participation in the principal action than by great masses of light and
shade. Attitudes and movements are taken immediately from common life,
not chosen from the best models. With Titian the highest ideal of
earthly happiness in existence is expressed by beauty; with Tintoretto
in mere animal strength, sometimes of an almost rude character.

For a short time he was a pupil of Titian, but for some unknown reason
he soon left him, and struck out for himself. In the studio which he
occupied in his youth he had inscribed, as a definition of the style he
professed, "The drawing of Michelangelo, the colouring of Titian." He
copied the works of the latter, and also designed from casts of
Florentine and antique sculpture, particularly by lamplight--as did
Romney a couple of centuries later--to exercise himself in a more
forcible style of relief. He also made models for his works, which he
lighted artificially, or hung up in his room, in order to master
perspective. By these means he united great strength of shadow with the
Venetian colouring, which gives a peculiar character to his pictures,
and is very successful when limited to the direct imitation of nature.
But apart from the impossibility of combining two such totally different
excellences as the colouring of Titian and the drawing of Michelangelo,
it appears that Tintoretto's acquaintance with the works of the latter
only developed his tendency to a naturalistic style. That which with
Michelangelo was the symbol of a higher power in nature was adopted by
Tintoretto in its literal form. Most of his defects, it is probable,
arose from his indefatigable vigour, which earned for him the nickname
of _Il Furioso_. Sebastian del Piombo said that Tintoretto could paint
as much in two days as would occupy him two years. Other sayings were
that he had three brushes, one of gold, one of silver, and a third of
brass, and that if he was sometimes equal to Titian he was often
inferior to Tintoretto! In this last category Kugler puts two of his
earliest works, the enormous _Last Judgment_, and _The Golden Calf_, in
the church of S. Maria dell'Orto, while on his much later _Last Supper_
he is still more severe. "Nothing more utterly derogatory," he writes,
"both to the dig