all the details, as he has to the general whole, this picture, expressing the amazement, terror, and confusion of that day, would have been a most wonderful production. He who does but glance at it for a moment is even now astonished at the power displayed; but if it be examined minutely, the work has all the appearance of having been painted as a jest.
For the same church, on the doors which close the organ that is to say, Tintoretto painted Our Lady ascending the steps of the Temple; this work, which is in oil, is the most carefully executed, most delicately finished, and most cheerful looking picture to be found in all the church. Our artist likewise painted the doors of the organ in Santa Maria Sebenigo; the subject of that work was the Conversion of St. Paul, but it was not executed with much care.[1] In the Carita is a Deposition from the Cross by the same hand;[2] and in the Sacristy of San Sebastiano, Tintoretto painted Moses in the Wilderness, with other stories on the presses of that place;[3] this he did in competition with Paolo of Verona, who executed numerous pictures on the ceiling and walls of the church. The works thus commenced were continued at a subsequent period, by the Venetian painter Natalino,[4] and by others.
In the church of San Jobbe, Tintoretto painted the three Maries, with San Francesco, San Sebastiano, and San Giovanni, as he did a Landscape at the altar of the Pietà;[5] and on the doors of the organ in the church of the Servites[6] he
- ↑ There are other pictures by Tintoretto still in the Church of Santa Maria Zebenico, but not that here mentioned by Vasari.— Note to Ed. Ven.
- ↑ Even ZanettI, Pittura Veneziana, does not mention this work, which shows that it had disappeared so early as his day (1771.)
- ↑ There is no picture by Tintoretto in the Church of San Sebastiano, with the exception of the Israelites attacked by the Serpents. —Ed. Ven.
- ↑ This painter, who, according to Ridolfi, was a disciple of Titian, excelled in portrait painting. Lanzi informs us that he died young. See History of Painting (English Edition), vol. ii. p. 170.
- ↑ "No such picture has ever existed in the Church of San Jobbe,” says a Note to the Venetian Edition of our author, Vasari has perhaps been thinking of one by Giovanni Bellini on the same subject, and which was removed from San Jobbe to the Academy of the Fine Arts in Venice.
- ↑ This church is now suppressed. On the doors of the organ there were two Saints, and an Annunciation, but not Cain slaying his brother. — Note to Ed. Venet.
