small lights, by which he might thus regulate his own lights and shades. The models themselves he suspended from the ceiling by cords, placing them in a variety of positions, and designing them from different points of view, the better to acquire a mastery of the _sotto in sù_, or foreshortening on the ceiling, a science not so familiar to his school as to that of Lombardy. Nor did he neglect the study of anatomy, to obtain a thorough knowledge of the muscles, and the structure of the human frame. He designed also the naked parts, as much as possible, in various shortenings and attitudes, in order to render his compositions as diversified as nature herself. By such studies he prepared himself to introduce the true method to be pursued by his followers, beginning with designing from the best models, and having obtained the idea of a correct style, proceeding to copy the naked parts, and to correct their defects.[65] To such aids he united a genius which extorted the admiration of Vasari, one of his severest critics, who pronounced it the most terrible of which the art could boast--an imagination fertile in new ideas, and a pictorial fire which inspired him with vigour to conceive well the boldest character of the passions, and continued to support him until he had given full expression to them on his canvass. Yet to what did it amount?--what is the noblest genius, and all the rarest qualities meeting in a single artist, without diligence, a virtue which of itself, says Cicero, seems to include all the rest. Tintoretto possessed it for a period, and produced works in which the most captious of critics could not find a shade of defect. Of such kind is that Miracle of the Slave, adorning the college of St. Mark, a piece he executed in his thirty-sixth year, and which is held up as one of the wonders of Venetian art. The colours are Titian's; the chiaroscuro extremely strong; the composition correct and sober; select forms; studied draperies; while equally varied, appropriate, and animated beyond conception, are the attitudes of the men assisting at the spectacle, in particular of the saint who flies to succour, giving an idea of the swiftness of an aërial being. There, too, he painted other beautiful pieces, whose merit extorted from the lips of Pietro da Cortona these words: "Did I reside in Venice, not a festival should pass without still resorting to this spot, in order to feast my eyes with such objects, and above all, with the design!" His picture of the Crucifixion at the college of San Rocco, is also esteemed a work of singular merit; displaying as it does, so much novelty upon so hackneyed a subject. Nor are other examples of his sovereign power wanting in the same place, filled with pictures as various as new; but, for brevity's sake, I shall merely record, in the third place, his Supper of our Lord, now at the Salute, having been removed from the refectory of the Crociferi, for which it was drawn. Those who have beheld it in its