406 VENETIAN INDEX

restorer has daubed over with whitish blue, so that it looks like a bit of the wall; luckily he has not touched the outlines of the angel’s black wings, on which the whole expression of the picture depends. This angel and the group of small cherubs above form a great swinging chain, of which the dove representing the Holy Spirit forms the bend. The angels in their flight seem to be attached to this as the train of fire is to a rocket; all of them appearing to have swooped down with the swiftness of a falling star.

2. Adoration of the Magi. The most finished picture in the Scuola except the “Crucifixion,” and perhaps the most delightful of the whole.¹ It unites every source of pleasure that a picture can possess; the highest elevation of principal subject, mixed with the lowest detail of picturesque incident; the dignity of the highest ranks of men, opposed to the simplicity of the lowest; the quietness and serenity of an incident in cottage life, contrasted with the turbulence of troops of horsemen and the spiritual power of angels. The placing of the two doves as principal points of light in the front of the picture, in order to remind the spectator of the poverty of the mother whose child is receiving the offerings and adoration of three monarchs, is one of Tintoret’s master touches; the whole scene, indeed, is conceived in his happiest manner. Nothing can be at once more humble or more dignified than the bearing of the kings: and there is a sweet reality given to the whole incident by the Madonna’s stooping forward and lifting her hand in admiration of the vase of gold which has been set before the Christ, though she does so with such gentleness and quietness that her dignity is not in the least injured by the simplicity of the action. As if to illustrate the means by which the Wise Men were brought from the East, the whole picture is nothing but a large star, of which the Christ is the centre; all the figures, even the timbers of the roof, radiate from the small bright figure on which the countenances of the flying angels are bent, the star itself, gleaming through the timbers above, being quite subordinate. The composition would almost be too artificial were it not broken by the luminous distance, where the troop of horsemen are waiting for the kings. These, with a dog running at full speed, at once interrupt the symmetry of the lines, and form a point of relief from the over-concentration of all the rest of the action.

3. Flight into Egypt. One of the principal figures here is the donkey.² I have never seen any of the nobler animals-lion, or leopard, or dragon-made so sublime as this quiet head of the domestic ass, chiefly owing to the grand motion in the nostril and writhing in the ears. The space of the picture is chiefly occupied by a lovely landscape, and the Madonna and St. Joseph are pacing their way along a shady path upon the banks of a river at the side of the picture. I had not

¹ [Ruskin noticed other points in this picture in later volumes-Modern Painters, vol. iii. ch. vii. §§ 2, 3, where it is instanced for “general ideal treatment of the human form”; ch. ix. § 18, for the painting of “the black bark on the birch trunks”; and ibid., vol. iv. ch. iv. § 15, where he speaks of the awe with which the picture filled him. For Ruskin’s studies from it, see Plates 6, 7, and 11 in Vol. IV.]

² [This picture is also described in Modern Painters, vol. ii. (Vol. IV. p. 274), and again, with special reference to the donkey, in a letter cited at Vol. IV. p. xxxix.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]