Driven out by the best master in Venice, Tintoretto was reduced to the process of self-education, in which he was aided by that brilliant decorative colorist and ever luckless artist, Andrea Schiavone. Tintoretto’s earliest work of note is the decoration of his own parish church of the Orto, which he undertook about the year 1546 for the costs. The gigantic canvases of the Deluge and Worship of the Golden Calf in the Choir made his fame, but we see his peculiar quality better in the Presentation in the Temple, Figure 295. It was finished only a few years after Titian’s masterpiece in the Scuola della Carità, hence the contrast between the two works on the same theme is enlightening. Titian’s picture is fundamentally a spectacle and a ceremony. Everything goes as arranged and expected. Tintoretto’s picture is a sudden and thrilling event full of unexpected graces. The little Virgin is well within the picture, but keeps her prominence through her position against the sky and even more by reason of the focusing of intense interest on her by all the persons in the composition. It is a charming invention that three mothers and their infant daughters on the steps should share in the glory of her consecration. At the left a prophetic figure suddenly grasps the import of the moment and sways with wide stretched arms towards the hope. From him to the head of the steps rises a pathetic line of cripples and beggars mercifully veiled in half light. These are witnesses to the human misery that the Virgin through her Son is to assuage. The unifying principle, apart from the fine linear design, is the light which floods out of the picture over the beautifully carved steps. Everything is conceived in depth, while Titian’s Presentation is relatively on one plane. Golden browns and yellows of great luminosity are prevailing colors, the crimsons and blues serving merely as relief and accent. With all its richness of illustrative content, the thing is a noble decoration.