Venice: Tintoretto's Paradise.

 On his visit to the Doge's palace Edward Hutton saw Tintoretto's Paradise but expressed his disappointment. *

I confess at once that while in the Antecollegio Tintoretto seems to me to be one of the great painters in the world, a true poet and creator of beauty, here I am altogether at a loss. The vast canvas, almost black and altogether without order or arrangement in its composition, means absolutely nothing to me, it moves me not at all, I get from it no pleasure, nor do I understand it…. For others this picture may be, as I gather it was for Ruskin, a profound revelation of beauty and joy. Me it cannot affect. I am, let me confess it, merely confused and tired by its dim ocean of figures… and if this be Heaven I had looked for a happier place and one full of light. Who for a moment would exchange this our dear world for that far ocean of murky gloom? Let us go to the great window and standing there look at the sunlight lying on the city, the dancing waves of the lagoon, the happy morning joyful along the Schiavone, the shady trees of the gardens, the adventurous Fortuna, the cold magnificent Salute, the joy of S. Giorgio of the rosy tower, the life of the ships at the Zattere quays, the ways of the little people in the Piazzeta. Is not this a heaven of heavens in comparison with that solemn  black chaos within doors?—that pretentious and prideful study in anatomy and movement that has no thought at all of anything in the world or above it save the wonderful capacity of Messer Jacopo Tintoretto? Yet he is but typical of them all. After the Bellini Venice neve possessed a religious painter. Not one of them all, even the greatest, Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese, is anything but a mediocrity beside Angelico, or Gentile da Fabriano, or Sassetta, or half a dozen Sienese I could name. **

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* I can certainly understand his feelings. Often, I have stood in Museums in Italy and elsewhere and preferred to turn my eyes from the masterpieces on the walls to look our the windows at the scenery. The view from the Uffizi in Florence is one example, as is the view from the Ca' Doro in Venice.

**Edward Hutton, Venice and Venetia,  London, third edition, 1929, first published 1911, p. 82.