SEBASTIAN-STEFANO 433

An upright picture, some ten feet wide by fifteen high; the top of it is arched, representing the Father supported by angels. It requires little knowledge of Tintoret to see that these figures are not by his hand. By returning to the opposite side of the nave, the join in the canvas may be plainly seen, the upper part of the picture having been entirely added on: whether it had this upper part before it was repainted, or whether originally square, cannot now be told, but I believe it had an upper part which has been destroyed. I am not sure if even the dove and the two angels which are at the top of the older part of the picture are quite genuine. The rest of it is magnificent, though both the figures of the Saviour and the Baptist show some concession on the part of the painter to the imperative requirement of his age, that nothing should be done except in an attitude; neither are there any of his usual fantastic imaginations. There is simply the Christ in the water and the St. John on the shore, without attendants, disciples, or witnesses of any kind; but the power of the light and shade, and the splendour of the landscape, which on the whole is well preserved, render it a most interesting example. The Jordan is represented as a mountain brook, receiving a tributary stream in a cascade from the rocks, in which St. John stands: there is a rounded stone in the centre of the current; and the parting of the water at this, as well as its rippling among the roots of some dark trees on the left, are among the most accurate remembrances of nature to be found in any of the works of the great masters. I hardly know whether most to wonder at the power of the man who thus broke through the neglect of nature which was universal at his time; or at the evidences, visible throughout the whole of the conception, that he was still content to paint from slight memories of what he had seen in hill countries, instead of following out to its full depth the fountain which he had opened. There is not a stream among the hills of Priuli which in any quarter of a mile of its course would not have suggested to him finer forms of cascade than those which he has idly painted at Venice.

SIMEONE, PROFET, CHURCH OF ST. very important, though small, possessing the precious statue of St. Simeon, above noticed, X. 361, XI. 87. The rare early Gothic capitals of the nave are only interesting to the architect; but in the little passage by the side of the church, leading out of the Campo, there is a curious Gothic monument built into the wall, very beautiful in the placing of the angels in the spandrils, and rich in the vine-leaf moulding above.

SIMEONE, PICCOLO, CHURCH OF ST. One of the ugliest churches in Venice or elsewhere. Its black dome, like an unusual species of gasometer, is the admiration of modern Italian architects.

SOSPIRI, PONTE DE’. The well-known “Bridge of Sighs,” a work of no merit, and of a late period (see Vol. X. 355), owing the interest it possesses chiefly to its pretty name, and to the ignorant sentimentalism of Byron.¹

SPIRITO SANTO, CHURCH OF THE. Of no importance.

STEFANO, CHURCH OF ST. [IX. 315, 337, 341, 342, XI. 13.] An interesting building of central Gothic, the best ecclesiastical example of it in

¹ [See Vol. X. p. 8; XI. pp. 232, 234.]

XI. 2 E

[Version 0.04: March 2008]