If the Last Judgment is an “unimaginable” theme, as Mr. Ruskin remarks, how much more so is Paradise! Men have always found it easier to represent grief than happiness, villainy than virtue, shadows than sunshine; for the former are by their nature limited, and draw their own outlines, while the latter have a quality of boundlessness which to define abridges it. Moreover, pleasure is oftenest unconscious, and always individual; pain, on the contrary, is too conscious of self, and is manifest in attributes common to many. Nevertheless, Tintoret has achieved the seeming impossibility of representing, so far as painting may, the happiness, unmixed and eternal, of the celestial host. His painting is known to most visitors at Venice as being the largest in the world. The ordinary traveler, after reading the dimensions in his guidebook, looks up at the canvas, and sees crowds of figures and colors grown dark; wonders what it all means, and why the janitor does not sweep down the dust and cobwebs; and then turns away to devote equal attention to the black panel where Marino Faliero’s portrait would be had he not died a traitor’s death. In like manner, I have seen intelligent strangers exhaust the treasures of the Acropolis of Athens in a quarter of an hour, and return to their hotel to read the last English newspaper. But let him who would commune with one of the few supreme masterpieces of art sit down patiently and reverently before Tintoret’s “Paradise,” and he will be rewarded by revelations proportioned to his study. As soon as his eyes grow used to the dimness of the hall, the tones of the canvas begin to be intelligible to him: it is as if he heard a symphony played in a lower key than the composer intended; many of the original effects are lost, but harmony interpenetrates and unifies all the parts. When he has adjusted his eyes to this pitch, he can examine the figures separately; until, little by little, in what seemed a vast confused multitude, he will be aware of the presence of an all-controlling order; and he will gaze at last understandingly, as in a vision, upon the congregations of heaven as they are unfolded in Tintoret’s design.