urally be
supposed to have been visible from the sepulchre, and shown with the
crosses of Calvary, some portion of Jerusalem, or of the Valley of
Jehoshaphat. But Tintoret has a far higher aim. Dwelling on the peculiar
force of the event before him, as the fulfilment of the final prophecy
respecting the passion, "He made his grave with the wicked and with the
_rich_ in his death," he desires to direct the mind of the spectator to
this receiving of the body of Christ, in its contrast with the houseless
birth and the desert life. And, therefore, behind the ghastly tomb-grass
that shakes its black and withered blades above the rocks of the
sepulchre, there is seen, not the actual material distance of the spot
itself, (though the crosses are shown faintly,) but that to which the
thoughtful spirit would return in vision, a desert place, where the
foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, and against the
barred twilight of the melancholy sky are seen the mouldering beams and
shattered roofing of a ruined cattle-shed, the canopy of the nativity.

Sec. 17. The Annunciation.

Let us take another instance. No subject has been more frequently or
exquisitely treated by the religious painters than that of the
Annunciation, though as usual, the most perfect type of its pure ideal
has been given by Angelico, and by him with the most radiant
consummation (so far as I know) in a small reliquary in the sacristy of
St^a. Maria Novella. The background there, however, is altogether
decorative; but in the fresco of the corridor of St. Mark's, the
concomitant circumstances are of exceeding loveliness. The Virgin sits
in an open loggia, resembling that of the Florentine church of
L'Annunziata. Before her is a meadow of rich herbage, covered with
daisies. Behind her is seen through the door at the end of the loggia,
her chamber with its single grated window, through which a star-like
beam of light falls into the silence. All is exquisite in feeling, but
not inventive nor imaginative. Severe would be the shock and painful the
contrast, if we could pass in an instant from that pure vision to the
wild thought of Tintoret. For not in meek reception of the adoring
messenger, but startled by the rush of his horizontal and rattling
wings, the virgin sits, not in the quiet loggia, not by the green
pasture of the restored soul, but houseless, under the shelter of a
palace vestibule ruined and abandoned, with the noise of the axe and the