ROCCO, SCUOLA DI SAN 407

any conception, until I got near, how much pains had been taken with the Virgin’s head; its expression is as sweet and as intense as that of any of Raffaelle’s, its reality far greater.¹ The painter seems to have intended that everything should be subordinate to the beauty of this single head; and the work is a wonderful proof of the way in which a vast field of canvas may be made conducive to the interest of a single figure. This is partly accomplished by slightness of painting, so that on close examination, while there is everything to astonish in the masterly handling and purpose, there is not much perfect or very delightful painting; in fact, the two figures are treated like the living figures in a scene at the theatre, and finished to perfection, while the landscape is painted as hastily as the scenes, and with the same kind of opaque size colour. It has, however, suffered as much as any of the series, and it is hardly fair to judge of its tones and colours in its present state.

4. Massacre of the Innocents. The following account of this picture, given in Modern Painters, may be useful to the traveller, and is therefore here repeated. “I have before alluded to the painfulness of Raffaelle’s treatment of the Massacre of the Innocents. Fuseli affirms of it, that, ‘in dramatic gradation he disclosed all the mother through every image of pity and of terror.’ If this be so, I think the philosophical spirit has prevailed over the imaginative. The imagination never errs; it sees all that is, and all the relations and bearings of it: but it would not have confused the mortal frenzy of maternal terror with various development of maternal character. Fear, rage, and agony, at their utmost pitch, sweep away all character: humanity itself would be lost in maternity, the woman would become the mere personification of animal fury or fear. For this reason all the ordinary representations of this subject are, I think, false and cold: the artist has not heard the shrieks, nor mingled with the fugitives; he has sat down in his study to convulse features methodically, and philosophize over insanity. Not so Tintoret. Knowing, or feeling, that the expression of the human face was, in such circumstances, not to be rendered, and that the effort could only end in an ugly falsehood, he denies himself all aid from the features, he feels that if he is to place himself or us in the midst of that maddened multitude, there can be no time allowed for watching expression. Still less does he depend on details of murder or ghastliness of death; there

¹ [In an earlier and shorter draft of this description Ruskin wrote:-

“The Madonna is full of sweetness, but a little English-Reynolds-like-owing perhaps in some measure to her hair being curled in vertical ringlets over the brow.”

In letters to his father from Venice (March 19, April 9, 1852) he writes:-

“I am getting a good study of Tintoret, and am going to-day to the Scuola di San Rocco to try if I can get the feeblest likeness of the most noble piece of animal painting ever produced by man-the donkey’s head in the Flight into Egypt. I like the Madonna there better than any of Raphael’s, and I like the donkey all but as well as the Madonna.

“Tintoret seems never to have liked horses. The Ass in the Flight into Egypt is painted with as much respect as if he had been a Senator; but the horses are always neglected and, as far as it is possible for Tintoret to draw ill, even ill-drawn.”]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]