a window; they represent Time; Concord or Union, holding a bundle of rods; with Patience and Faith; and in all these figures he acquitted himself so well that too much could not be said of their merit.
No long time after the completion of these works, another picture being required for the same Hall, Tintoretto took such steps, by the intervention of friends and other means, that the commission to execute the work was given to him, when he completed it in a manner that was most admirable; and this picture merits to be enumerated among the best he ever executed: so powerful in this artist was the will with which he then set himself to equal, if not to surpass, such of his competitors as had also laboured in that place. And the subject of the work which he thus depicted, (to the end that the same may be recognized, even by those who are not of the art,) was Pope Alexander excommunicating Barbarossa and laying his dominions under the interdict, with the same Barbarossa, who nevertheless emboldens his people to refuse all further obedience to the papal mandate.[1]
Among other singular things in this picture may be remarked as beautifully executed, the part where Pope and Cardinals are seen casting candles and flaming torches from a high place, as is ever done when any one is excommunicated, while a vast crowd of nude figures are seen below struggling and fighting to obtain those torches: all which is rendered in the most admirable manner.[2] There are besides various relics of antiquity, as pedestals and other objects, with portraits of different gentlemen dispersed over the pictures; these last are extremely well done, and the work is altogether such as to have won grace and favour for Tintoretto from ail who have seen it.
It followed in consequence that this artist received a commission for two paintings in oil, to be placed beneath the work of Pordenone in the principal chapel of the Church of San Rocco; these were to be of extent equal to the entire
- ↑ And recalling what that “interdict” was, we perceive that obedience was not refused without good and sufficient cause.
- ↑ These paintings were destroyed in the conflagrations of 1573 and 1577> but there is still a picture by Tintoretto in the ancient Hall of the Great Council; this represents the Ambassadors before Frederick Barbarossa. There is also the famous picture of the Paradise by that master, with some others in the ceiling. —Note to the Venetian Edition of Vasari.
