e descending dove hardly affects us, because its constant
symbolical occurrence hardens us, and makes us look on it as a mere type
or letter, instead of the actual presence of the Spirit; and by all the
sacred painters the power that might be put into the landscape is lost,
for though their use of foliage and distant sky or mountain is usually
very admirable, as we shall see in the fifth chapter, yet they cannot
deal with near water or rock, and the hexagonal and basaltic
protuberances of their river shore are I think too painful to be endured
even by the most acceptant mind, as eminently in that of Angelico, in
the Vita di Christo, which, as far as I can judge, is a total failure in
action, expression, and all else; and in general it is in this subject
especially, that the greatest painters show their weakness. For this
reason, I suppose, and feeling the difficulty of it, Tintoret has thrown
into it his utmost strength, and it becomes noble in his hands by his
most singularly imaginative expression, not only of the immediate fact,
but of the whole train of thought of which it is suggestive; and by his
considering the baptism not only as the submission of Christ to the
fulfilment of all righteousness, but as the opening of the earthly
struggle with the prince of the powers of the air, which instantly
beginning in the temptation, ended only on the cross.

Sec. 19. By Tintoret.

The river flows fiercely under the shadow of a great rock. From its
opposite shore, thickets of close, gloomy foliage rise against the
rolling chasm of heaven, through which breaks the brightness of the
descending Spirit. Across these, dividing them asunder, is stretched a
horizontal floor of flaky cloud, on which stand the hosts of heaven.
Christ kneels upon the water, and does not sink; the figure of St. John
is indistinct, but close beside his raised right arm there is a spectre
in the black shade; the fiend, harpy-shaped, hardly seen, glares down
upon Christ with eyes of fire, waiting his time. Beneath this figure
there comes out of the mist a dark hand, the arm unseen, extended to a
net in the river, the spars of which are in the shape of a cross.
Behinds this the roots and under stems of the trees are cut away by the
cloud, and beneath it, and through them, is seen a vision of wild,
melancholy, boundless light, the sweep of the desert, and the figure of
Christ is seen therein alone, with his arms lifted as in supplication or
ecstacy, born