Among painters, Tintoret only has, like Dante, swept through the full circuit of human experience and aspiration. He has shown us the anguish of the damned in his “Last Judgment,” and the peace and bliss of the blessed in his “Paradise.” That “The Last Judgment” should be Michael Angelo’s masterpiece, and that he should have painted it on the altar wall of the Pope’s favorite chapel, are fatally appropriate. In that terrific scene, the judge is not Christ, but Michael Angelo himself; a righteous man, who looked out upon the iniquities of his time and dared to condemn them; a religious man, who, coming to Rome, the religious centre of Christendom, discovered there a second Sodom, in which pope, cardinals, and bishops were the most shameless offenders; a patriotic man, who had fought for the liberty of his beloved Florence, and had beheld her, through the treachery of some and the apathy of others, become the slave of a corrupt master. No wonder that the terror and anguish, the depravity and hopelessness, of life should have eaten into Michael Angelo’s soul. As he worked solitarily in the Sixtine Chapel, no wonder that a vision of the retribution which shall overtake the wicked should have possessed his imagination, and transformed the artist into the judge. Day by day, a spirit mightier than theirs painted the protest which Savonarola, Zwingli, Luther, and Calvin had preached,--the spirit of a Job united to that of an Isaiah. Not less appropriate was it that the genius of Tintoret and of Venetian art should culminate in the representation of Paradise. Of all commonwealths, Venice had enjoyed the longest prosperity; of all peoples, hers had been the most sensitive to the joy of life. Even at the end of the sixteenth century, when her power abroad had been curtailed, and when luxury at home was slowly enervating the integrity of her citizens, she was still outwardly imposing, magnificent. No pope had ever succeeded, either by guile or by force, in ravishing her independence. Her immemorial glory blazed across the past and irradiated the present, as the setting sun spreads an avenue of splendor upon the ocean and fills the heavens with golden and purple light. Venice was indeed the abode of Joy; and Tintoret, at the close of a long career, in which he had witnessed all the aspects and pondered all the possibilities of human life, was filled, like Dante, with hope, and felt Joy and Love to be the supreme realities, the everlasting fulfilments, of mankind’s desires.