eral informality of a midsummer outing; but he now found a line drawn that he did not remember to have noticed before. The Chatelaine received them both with a stately reserve,-she had come to think less highly of them and more highly of herself, and Aurelia, who was able to carry an air in chorus when she might have faltered in a solo, did what she could to make still more plain to the young men that if they expected to please, they might as well put forth their best endeavors -that their best would be none too good for a young woman of some position and consequence. Tempo-Rubato could read a fairly legible hand, even when the t's were not crossed nor the i's dotted; he felt, too, that the bandbox barred all levity. He was as adaptable as an eel, and he would take the pitch of any key that was struck. And if Fin-de-Siècle was too stiff in his own conceit to bend, why, a little dash of cold water would nullify almost any amount of starch. The tomb of Juliet, as all the world of travel knows, rests in a sort of little open chapel which sets snugly against the wall of an old monastic building standing in a humble kitchen-garden. In the spring you find the place brightened up by multitudinous apple-blossoms (to say nothing of the shining lettuce and the cheerful pea); warm sunlight, too, and blue sky. But to-day the sky was thinly veiled with clouds, the first yellow leaves of autumn had begun to flutter down, the peas had left their bare beds behind them, only a few lettuces spindled tallishly in a remote corner, and a mild young man with watery blue eyes was dejectedly raking up the paths. The young man leaned his rake against one of the apple-trees, and led the visitors to the small triple arcade behind which rests the poor old battered sarcophagus whose litter of calling-cards represents the élite of all Philistia. Aurelia shuddered as she recalled one of the colony who had told her that their whole party of ten had left their cards for Juliet, and blushed to recall how eager she herself had once been to do the same. Their guide drew attention to a dilapidated old portrait of a dilapidated old ecclesiastic hanging close by, and when the Governor asked him if it was a Capulet, he replied that it represented the brother of Giulietta's confessor. This young man had an ingenuous face and honest eyes, and appeared to believe what he was saying; but perhaps his researches had been incomplete, or his critical sense not fully developed, or perhaps he had been misled by hearsay, or perhaps he had innocently accepted the statement from some colleague whose pleasure it was to test how far the traveler might believe. Fin-de-Siècle flicked his card into the sarcophagus, patted the young gardener confidentially on the back, and told him that he had a precious work there which he must guard most carefully; the next time they came that way they might bring him a companion piece-a portrait of the stepmother of the second cousin of Giulietta's nurse. Every one ignored this outrageous sally. Tempo-Rubato frowned, and then stepped forward and declaimed sonorously some little verses with the refrain: the Chatelaine. On the way back to town they Io t'amo ora sempre, Romeo, il mio ben. Aurelia, too, attempted to put into Italian some portion of the celebrated controversy over the lark and the nightingale, when a distant sound of cock-crowing came to amuse the Parisian scoffer; whereupon Tempo-Rubato, with a loud promptness, declared his admiration for the great English librettist, who, however, preferred to accent "Romeo" on the first syllable, just as he accented "Desdemona" on the third. Then he assisted Aurelia to place the wreath properly, and he also found a suitable situation for the little set of elegiac stanzas that the Chatelaine had composed (she had written them in French on a tiny card and in pale violet ink). He furthermore embellished this card with his boutonnière, and the grateful Aurelia acknowledged to herself that he was really capable of civilized conduct after all. She hesitated to make the same concession in regard to Fin-de-Siècle, however much, indeed, he considered the civilized as his own peculiar forte. Certainly, if his étude showed no more tact, sympathy, insight, adaptability than its author did, it was likely to prove but sorry reading. However, he, equally with Tempo-Rubato, was beginning to show a creditable disposition to revise his style of address toward both walked with the Lady of La Trinité, and Aurelia, left behind with the Governor (a neglect which would have touched her keenly a month ago), was glad to notice the dawn of a deference which was clearly the Chatelaine's due. The attitude of these young men toward the maid of Verona was really a matter of secondary consequence; it was neither to make nor to mar the real success of Aurelia's idea, since the heroine of the poet toward whom her thoughts were most definitely turning was neither Juliet,. however permeating, nor Desdemona, however accented. No; her mind's eye was fixing a firm gaze on the gracious Lady of Belmont, and in the Chatelaine her idealizing worshiper was already beginning to see the Portia of the High Alps; while the Belmont toward which their steps were moving was not a palace on the Brenta, but a château among the snow-peaks of the Valais. The Chatelaine herself was still without an adequate realization of the rôle for which she was cast: a distinct gain, since she approximated the dignity of her lofty model without reaching, as yet, its self-consciousness. She pursued the accustomed tenor of her way, with no heed of drama or of spectacle; while Nerissa fidgeted about in her homely little room at the Albergo della Graticola, and burned with an eager desire to shift the scenery and set forth the properties of La Trinité. ITALIAN OLD MASTERS. TINTORETTO.-1518-1594. Y some critics Tintoretto is considered as marking the decline of Venetian art, in the sense of being the first example of this decline. This is unjust and untrue, whether as indicating a falling off in himself, or the decay of the school. Intellectually he was on the level of Titian; but he differed from him mentally and technically-the second as a consequence of the other, probably, but also first because he was not subjected to the very early discipline with which Titian began. That he began to paint late in life, as the old tradition went, is not proved or probable, but the internal evidence of his work points to an utter want of that vigorous early training which alone can give to execution the marvelous sub tlety we find in Titian, Michelangelo, Raphael, and so many more of the great Italian painters. The same evidence points to a refractory nature, with intense individuality and an imagination impatient of control. Tintoretto may have begun early to work, but evidently he never submitted to severe discipline; he was born and lived in an atmosphere of art, gathering the sentiment of it with his mental development, and he painted as a poet writes when his life is passed in an epoch and in surroundings charged with poetry. His father, Battista Robusti, a dyer, put him to study with Titian, and the story goes that the master was so envious of his talent that he refused to keep him in his studio-a palpable fable, for so complete a master of all that painting meant at that time in Venice had no reason to envy the best work that Tintoretto ever did. That he was sent away from Titian's studio is very probable, and it is equally probable that the cause was in the refractoriness to discipline of which his work to the latest shows evidence. Envy is the world's most ready explanation of such a dissension. The methodical and comprehensive system of Titian, providing in the first painting for the many operations to follow,―a system that had the prevision and preparation of a master's game of chess or a great general's campaign, was impossible to the overcharged temperament of Tintoretto, in whom the fury of invention could brook no kind of dictation as to the process of delivery. He could never, like Titian, have turned his canvas to the wall, and have waited a month to see it progress a step; his work mastered him, not he his work, and in this is the chief ground of the difference between his art and that of Titian. He is said to have written on the wall of his studio, "The design of Michelangelo, and the color of Titian"; but he would have understood his own case better if he had seen that it was not exactly that which he wanted, but "the invention of Tintoretto, and the patience and the system of Titian," which, if he could have combined them, would have made him the greatest painter the world ever saw. From the studio of Titian he went to that of Andrea Schiavone, a Dalmatian,1 if we may judge from his name, and clearly not one of those natures due to the temperament of the serene race of the islands of the lagoons. Schiavone's technical characteristics were more in sympathy with Tintoretto; and though we have no work of the period of his stay with that painter, Ridolfi speaks of a portrait painted in a lamplight effect which was much admired in Venice, a fact which points to the character of his subsequent painting. He had a morbid activity; he would work for nothing but the cost of his materials when he could get no commissions, a habit which was the most efficient obstacle to his getting any. He filled the schools and churches with his compositions, and the fecundity of his genius is almost incredible to men of our day; but most of the work of this period has perished, so that we can say but little of its quality. A "Circumcision," how ever, in the Church of the Carmine is attributed to this time. The drawing is stiff, the color powerful, and, as is almost invariably the case in his work, the composition inventive. A little later he painted for the Sta. Trinità five scenes from Genesis, two of which are now in the Academy, "The Fall" and "The Death of Abel." The former shows the influence of Titian, and the conception is poetical, but the Abel is hardly characteristic of Tintoretto.2 (See page 745.) The impatience of his genius craved great spaces; he longed to paint all Venice, to cover all the blank walls with huge compositions, and he did paint the fronts of several houses for the bare cost of the materials. He painted the "Feast of Nebuchadnezzar" on the arsenal, and, on the wall of a house near the Ponte S. Angelo, a battle and various other subjects, some of which are preserved in Zanetti's "Pitture a Fresco," published in Venice in 1760. He also decorated the Palazzo Zeno, and among other recorded works, in 1545, painted the ceiling of a room for Pietro Aretino. His first very important order, received in 1546, was for the decoration of the choir of the Church of S. Maria dell' Orto, and this, as might be expected by a painter who had been begging the privilege of painting for nothing in a community where the chief customers for his work were the priests, he secured by offering to do it at cost. Of the subjects here, the "Last Judgment” and the "Worship of the Golden Calf" are among his chief works. They have grown black and obscure, and show the defects of his method, but the power is amazing. The common criticism of them is that the detail is extremely defective and has no relation to the expenditure of thought in the design and the power of the whole; but the common critic does not take into consideration the vital facts of the case. Tintoretto was in the habit, as all his biographers say, of studying the place for which his pictures were to be painted; and certainly no place could be found where the elaboration of detail would have been such supererogation as in this choir, where it is difficult with any light to see what is most easily to be seen. The enormous size of the pictures, too, their height being fifty feet, makes it imperative for the observer to keep at such a distance as would render fine details invisible in almost any light, and absolutely so in the semi-obscurity of the choir. The color is not what it was in the day of their painting; it is certainly far more dusky, and the probability is that when the pictures were finished they answered perfectly their purpose of being visible where they are. The artist received a gratuity of 100 ducats for his work, and an order to decorate the organ-case. On the inside of this he painted the "Martyrdom of St. Christopher" and the "Angels bringing the Cross to St. Peter." These are now in the chapel of the high altar of the church, and are fine in color but indifferent in composition; but the subject on the outside of the organ-case, the " Presentation of the Virgin," is fine both in color and in composition. These paintings were the means of bringing Tintoretto into much repute, and 1 According to Boschini, Schiavone was born in Sebenico, Dalmatia. 2 Ruskin praises it highly as resembling grisaille. the Brotherhood of St. Mark obtained for their school the great picture of the "Miracle of St. Mark," now in the Academy, where it is not unworthily held, all elements considered, as the artist's most complete work. It is strongly dramatic, powerful in color, and has suffered less than most of the master's pictures from the blackening which, more or less, was the necessary consequence of his method of painting. The "Last Supper" in the sacristy of S. Giorgio Maggiore is more powerful, more imaginative in its composition, and vaster in its technical range; but it is less successful in its general attainment of the finer qualities of art. The execution is ruder, and the display of the knowledge of perspective is somewhat obtrusive. It gives the idea of a painter of great daring and originality, but as art it is distinctly inferior to the picture in the Academy. The painting of the "Miracle of St. Mark" (see page 747) was followed by an order from Tommaso di Ravenna for three more scenes from the life of St. Mark for the school of the saint. Of these, the "Embarkation of the Body of St. Mark at Alexandria," fine in color and architectural composition, is in the old Nicene library, with the "Rescue of a Sailor from Drowning by the Saint." The third, the "Finding of the Body of the Saint at Alexandria," is in the Church of the Angeli at Murano. When Tintoretto began his work for the republic is not clear; probably it was not till Titian had made room for him. In the interim we know only of minor works. In 1560 he began to paint in the School of S. Rocco and the Doge's Palace. The school being just completed, the painters were invited to compete for the decoration of the Sala dell' Albergo by sending in sketches; and the other competitors, Veronese among them, sent in very careful designs. Tintoretto took the measure of the palace for the picture, painted it at his studio, and presented the finished picture. When the fraternity complained, and stated that all they wanted was a design, he replied that that was the way he designed. He offered the picture as a gift to the saint, and got the order to paint the ceiling, which was the work in consideration, on the same terms. It was of course difficult for the other artists to compete under such conditions, and the conclusion was inevitable. But in the end he had his reward in the commission to paint the principal picture for the system of illustration, the great "Crucifixion," for which he received 250 ducats, as well as that for the two smaller subjects at the sides of the door opposite the "Crucifixion," the "Carrying of the Cross," and the "Christ before Pilate," for which his compensation was 131 lire. In 1567 he painted three pictures for the church of the confraternity for 135 lire. In 1565 he seems to have become a member of the confraternity, and these pictures were painted between that time and 1567. After this we are in ignorance of his occupations until 1576, when he painted the centerpiece of the ceiling of the great hall, "The Plague of Serpents," and began the "Passover" and the "Moses Striking the Rock"; but in the latter part of 1577 he proposed, for a salary of 100 ducats a year, to decorate the whole school, at the rate of three pictures annually. The proposition was accepted; but Tintoretto died before he had finished his scheme. The great "Crucifixion," which bears the date MDLXV, and is signed JACOBUS TINCTORETTUS, is generally accepted as the greatest of the painter's works; and the School of S. Rocco might well be called the School of Tintoretto, as it contains the greater number and in some respects the most instructive of his pictures. We find the first evidence of his employment by the state in the receipt, dated December 23, 1560, for 25 ducats for painting the portrait of the new Doge, Priuli; and as prior to this Titian had been the state portraitpainter, it may be supposed that Tintoretto had succeeded to the charge. In the following year the decoration of the walls of the Libreria Nuova was decreed, and Titian was appointed to overlook the younger painters who took part in the work. He seems to have thought that Tintoretto required supervision the most, which is not at all to be wondered at, but the latter succeeded in getting an independent commission for the "Diogenes." He was awarded, next, the painting of the three vacant walls of the Council-Hall. The battle of Lepanto, fought at this time, was naturally the occasion of a warm competition among the painters for the execution of the commemorative picture. The commission fell again to Tintoretto, as the result of his offer to do it at the cost of the material, an inducement which even the Senate considered conclusive. He pleaded the sacrifice, at a later epoch, as a claim for reversion to the brokership of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, and this was allowed him in 1574. The great conflagration of 1574, followed by that of 1577, in destroying the works of Bellini, Carpaccio, and Titian, left room for Tintoretto and Veronese, and the former had the greater part in the work of restoration. The list of the pictures included in this vast commission is almost bewildering; but as examples of the range of the artist, one may look at the "Paradise" (painted in 15891590), a vast canvas, full of wonderful detail of design and thought, but as a whole perplexed and confused to such a point that its system seems intentionally to have been left without key, and the "Bacchus and Ariadne" in the |