One fact impresses us immediately,--Tintoret’s originality. Previous painters had used all the familiar Christian themes so often, that there had grown up a conventional form of representing each; but, although Tintoret used these themes, his treatment of them rarely recalls that of any other painters, and always demands fresh study. Giotto may be said to have fixed the norm which his successors generally followed, diverging from it only in details. Tintoret established a new norm. Moreover, he never copied himself; his inexhaustible imagination refused to repeat. It represented the same subject under different aspects, never twice alike. We have many replicas of Raphael’s and Titian’s works, but none, so far as I know, of Tintoret’s. In rare cases where two copies of a painting by him exist, one is the sketch. In one famous instance he is brought into direct comparison with his rival, Titian. They both painted “The Presentation of the Virgin,” in somewhat similar manner. Titian conceives the scene as follows: In front of a stately pile of buildings, two flights of steps lead up to the threshold of the Temple, where stands a venerable high priest; near him are two other ecclesiastics and a youth. Spectators look out from the windows and balconies of the adjoining edifice upon Mary, a pretty little maiden, who has reached the first step of the second staircase, and, looking up at the high priest, prepares to finish the ascent. Immediately back of her figure is an ornate Corinthian column. Her mother and a friend wait at the foot of the staircase, and a goodly company of Venetian nobles is gathered near them,--like pleasure-seekers taking a stroll, who stop for a moment to witness a chance episode. An old woman with a basket of eggs sits in the foreground. A colonnade and pyramid close in the picture on the left,[16] and a pleasing view of mountains stretches out behind. [16] I use _left_ and _right_ to denote the positions as the spectator faces the picture.