St. Roch was the Physician Saint who cared for the plague stricken. Thus the upper hall was pictured with examples of miraculous mercy and deliverance chosen from the Old Testament. The lower hall was devoted to the more familiar stories of the life of Christ and of His Mother. Sadly darkened and neglected, often in impossible light, these pictures baffle all but the enthusiast. One needs all the vicarious enthusiasm that may be drawn from a Ruskin to do San Rocco with any thoroughness. Whoever persists will be rewarded, for while Tintoretto is by no means at his greatest as a painter in this work, it reveals his inexhaustible inventiveness, his warmth and tenderness, and power, as no other series does, whereas it has in the little moonlit landscapes with St. Mary Magdalen and St. Mary of Egypt faery refinements elsewhere lacking in the master. Everybody knows at least the great Calvary, with its sense of cosmic disaster. Marvellous is the storm which sweeps towards the cross from behind, superb alike the cluster of faithful friends at the foot of the cross and the proud riders at the flanks. Hate, love and indifference mingle in the scene. It gets its profound tragedy on terms of fact, is free from all mystical sentimentality. What was it like on that awful evening? is the only question the artist asks himself, and his answer, a sheer gift of the imagination, transcends all the lyrical sweetness and measured solemnity of the ritual crucifixions. Humanism and religion unite for once in this masterpiece. [Illustration: FIG. 297. Tintoretto. Christ Tempted by Satan.—_Scuola di S. Rocco._ ]