Here are such harmonies as Nature strikes in her great
symphony of color. But on the other wall are the colors of the courts in
which Rubens passed so many of his days,--the dyes of tapestry, the sheen
of jewels and velvet, the glaring crimson and yellow of royal displays;
while the harmonies that he strikes out with his rapid and powerful hand
are like those of the music of some great military band.
There are noble pictures here by Giorgione, and Titian, and Tintoret, and
Paul Veronese, and Bonifazio. Look at this Musical Party by Giorgione, this
landscape by Titian, this portrait of the vile Duke of Alva by the same
great master, the greatest master of all in portraiture. It is the Duke
himself, not merely in his outward presence, but such as the insight of
one as profoundly versed in human as in external nature beheld him. The
portrait is a biography of the man, and one may read in the narrow, hard,
and wily face the history of his cruel life. The same qualities of inward
vision are displayed by Tintoret in his more hasty portraits, and one
learns as much of Venetian men and of their lives from the pencil of Titian
and of Tintoret as from the pens of contemporary chroniclers.
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