Tintoretto's Thunderbolt

Last month I mentioned that James Panero of the New Criterion was writing about Tintoretto's masterpiece, The Crucifixion in Venice's Scuola Grande di San Rocco.

That piece finally ran in this weekend's Wall Street Journal, and while a subscription is required to see it, it's enough to make me glad I've kept mine despite countless provocations from the WSJ editorial board to send in a cancellation. Here's a snippet:

Like a thunderbolt from the brush, Tintoretto's "Crucifixion" can stop you in your tracks. The Victorian writer and artist John Ruskin certainly thought so. "I have been quite overwhelmed today by a man I have never dreamed of -- Tintoret," he wrote to his father on his first visit to Venice. "I always thought of him a good and clever and forcible painter, but I had not the smallest notion of his enormous powers. . . . And then to see his touch of quiet thought in his awful crucifixion -- there is an ass in the distance, feeding on the remains of strewed palm leaves. If that isn't a master's stroke, I don't know what is."

...

Tintoretto's work at the Scuola, executed over more than 20 years, became a perfect union of form, content, application and artistic intention. In Tintoretto's lifelong dedication to the Scuola, "the act of painting thus becomes a gesture of piety," writes the academic Rosand.

Due to my Fundamentalist upbringing, I'm not sure I would have even been aware of the pitch-perfect symbolism of the ass eating the recently-strewn palm leaves had I noticed it when I actually saw the painting. We just didn't talk about those things. But not much gets by Ruskin.

Anyway, if you find yourself with a day or two in Venice, take the walk over to the Scuola. The walk itself is a bit of a challenge since it goes down some twisty old streets, which is nice because you get away from the crowds a little, but it passes by several great shops and churches worth seeing (especially San Polo). It's right next to the Church of the Frari, itself a Venetian treasure. And right around there somewhere was a little Greek/ Mediterranean restaurant with a pinkish facade and a very friendly patron who liked us so much he poured us each a little dollop of a Greek dessert wine called Moscato de Limnos. We liked it so much we bought a bottle from him, and it sits unopened still in a cardboard box in a closet next to my hunting boots.

It's probably turned to vinegar. And I haven't gone hunting in years.

I'm ready for a change, you know?