flesh has the delicacy and grace of a flower.  Above all, there are a dozen mythological and allegorical paintings by Tintoret and Veronese, of such brilliancy and such intoxicating fascination that a veil seems to fall from our eyes and we discover an unknown world, a paradise of delights situated beyond all imagination and all dreams.  When the Old Man of the Mountain transported into his harem his sleeping youths to render them capable of extreme devotion, doubtless it was such a spectacle that he furnished.

Upon the coast at the margin of the infinite sea, serious Ariadne receives the ring of Bacchus, and Venus, with a crown of gold, has come through the air to celebrate their marriage.  Here is the sublime beauty of bare flesh, such as it appears coming out of the water, vivified by the sun and touched with shadows.  The goddess is floating in liquid light and her twisted back, her flanks and her curves are palpitating, half enveloped in a white, diaphanous veil.  With what words can we paint the beauty of an attitude, a tone, or an outline?  Who will describe the healthy and roseate flesh under the amber transparency of gauze?  How shall we represent the soft plenitude of a living form and the curves of limbs which flow into the leaning body?  Truly she is swimming in the light like a fish in its lake, and the air, filled with vague reflections, embraces and caresses her.

    Voyage en Italie (Paris, 1866).

FOOTNOTES: 

[28] Painted by Veronese and by Zelotti and Bazzaco under his direction.

BACCHUS AND ARIADNE

ANONYMOUS

Titian’s magnificent pictures in the Ducal Palace were, all but one, destroyed by fire the year after his death; but his impetuous rival, Tintoretto, is abundantly represented there.  With regard to him, as usual, our admiration for frequent manifestations of extraordinary power is but too commonly checked and chilled by coarse, heavy painting, and the unexpressive wholly uninteresting character of many of his allegorical or celestial groups, which seem introduced merely as exercises or exhibitions of technical skill, rather than as appeals to our imagination or finer feelings....  On the whole you are again tempted to be somewhat out of conceit with Tintoretto, till you pause in the Ante Collegio, or guard-room, before a picture of his so poetically conceived and admirably wrought, indeed so pleasing in all respects, that you wonder still more at the dull, uninteresting character of so many of the others.  Yes, here Il Furioso Tintoretto, leaving ostentatious, barren displays of technical power, has once again had the gentleness and patience to make himself thoroughly agreeable.  Ariadne, a beautiful and noble figure, is seated undraped on a rock, and Bacchus, profusely crowned with ivy, advances from the sea, and offers her the nuptial ring; whilst