VENETIAN INDEX-
317
hardly ever seen a picture in which there was so
much
de-
and so little impetuosity, and in which so little was conceded to haste, to accident, or to weakness. It is too inbut among its minor pasfinite a work to be describable of extreme should sages beauty, especially be noticed the manner in which the accumulated forms of the human body, which fill the picture from end to end, are prevented from being felt heavy, by the grace and elasticity of two or three sprays of leafage which spring from a broken root cision,
;
and rise conspicuous in shadow against by the pale blue, grey, and golden light which the distant crowd is invested, the office of this
in the foreground, interstice filled
an in
foliage being, in an artistical point of view, correspondent to that of the trees set by the sculptors of the Ducal Palace
on its angles. But they have a far more impsrtant meaning in the picture tlian any artistical one. If the spectator will look carefully at the root which I have called broken,
he
will find that in reality, it is not broken, but cut ; the young tree having lately been cut
other branches of the
When we remember that one of the principal inciaway. dents in great San Bocco Crucifixion is the ass feeding on withered palm leaves, we shall be at no loss to understand the great painter's purpose in lifting the branch of this mutilated olive against the dim light of the distant sky ; while, close beside it, St. Joseph of Arimathea drags along
the dust a white garment observe, the principal light of the picture, stained with the blood of that King before five days before, bis garments in the way.
whom, 2.
Our Lady
of the three
crucifiers
with the Camerlenghi.
on the right of the
stance of the theoretical
had strewn
their
own
(In the centre chapel
choir.)
A remarkable
in-
manner
of representing Scriptural facts, which, at this time, as noted in the second chapter of this volume, was undermining the belief of the facts them-
Three Venetian chamberlains desired to have their portraits painted, and at the same time to express their devotion to the Madonna to that end they are painted kneeling before her, and in order to account for their all throe selves.
;