360 ST. MARK’S REST

order to do justice to either painter, they should be alternately studied for a little while. In one respect, Luini greatly gains, and Carpaccio suffers by this trial; for whatever is in the least flat or hard in the Venetian is felt more violently by contrast with the infinite sweetness of the Lombard’s harmonies, while only by contrast with the vivacity of the Venetian can you entirely feel the depth in faintness, and the grace in quietness, of Luini’s chiaroscuro. But the principal point of difference is in the command which Luini has over his thoughts, every design of his being concentrated on its main purpose with quite visible art, and all accessories that would in the least have interfered with it withdrawn in merciless asceticism; whereas a subject under Carpaccio’s hand is always just as it would or might have occurred in nature; and among a myriad of trivial incidents, you are left, by your own sense and sympathy, to discover the vital one.

195. For instance, there are two small pictures of his in the Brera Gallery at Milan, which may at once be compared with the Luinis there. I find the following notice of them in my diary for 6th September, 1876:-

“Here, in the sweet air, with a whole world in ruin round me. The misery of my walk through the Brera yesterday no tongue can tell; but two curious lessons were given me by Carpaccio. The first, in his preaching of St. Stephen¹-Stephen up in the corner where nobody would think of him; the doctors, one in lecture throne, the rest in standing groups mostly-Stephen’s face radiant with true soul of heaven,-the doctors, not monsters of iniquity at all, but superbly true and quiet studies from the doctors of Carpaccio’s time; doctors of this world-not one with that look of heaven, but respectable to the uttermost, able, just, penetrating: a complete assembly of highly trained old Oxford men, but with more intentness. The second, the

¹ [The picture at Milan is one of a series done by Carpaccio between 1511 and 1515 for the Scuola di San Stefano. Others of the series are in the galleries of the Louvre, Berlin, and Stuttgart respectively.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]