With this key to the general distribution, the student who has Tintoret’s “Paradise” before him can recognize scores of other figures. He will compare Tintoret’s portrayal of each saint, or prophet, or martyr with conceptions other painters have drawn; and if he reflect that any one of these groups, and many of these figures singly, would have sufficed to establish the renown of an artist less masterly than Tintoret, his astonishment will swell into admiration, and this into awe, when he surveys the work as a whole. Who can describe the effect of the innumerable multitude? Cast your eyes almost anywhere upon the canvas, and lo! out of the deeper, distant spaces angelic countenances loom up. Forms, though distinctly outlined, by some magic seem diaphanous; and the farther your gaze penetrates, the brighter is the light which radiates throughout heaven from the throne of Christ. Still more marvelous is the sense of infinite tranquillity, even in those figures which are moving. These are veritable spirits, though they have human bodies, and they move or rest with equal ease. In this heavenly ether there is no effort. Even those rushing seraphim, whose majestic pinions seem to beat melody from air in their rhythmic flight, suggest a certain grand repose begotten of motion itself,--a repose akin to that produced by the sight of the sea, whose myriad little waves dance and glisten, or of Niagara, whose falling flood seems stationary. The spectator who has risen to this conception will not fail to note the light of a joy, not vehement but profound, which bathes every face; and how the action of every individual and of every group is in some manner addressed to Christ, and would be incomplete but for that divine centre. Christ and the Madonna, and the dove of the Holy Spirit floating between them, he will look at first and turn from last,--the noblest personification of ideal manhood and ideal womanhood that ever painter expressed. The embodiment and essence of _Love_, which is the author of all good, they are enthroned amid the serenity of the highest heaven. Round them wheels the inner circle of the archangels and the angels, the symbols of divine _Power_. Then, in ever-widening circles, the saints and apostles and prophets, and the elect of every clime and condition, all children of _Faith_ and exemplars of _Charity_, float and revolve in bliss forevermore. And it needs no strain of the imagination to hear the hosannas which the morning stars sing together, and all the sons of God shout for joy.[26] [26] In the execution of the “Paradise” he was assisted by his son Domenico. If Tintoret was born in 1512, most of the work was done after his eightieth year, an indication of physical vigor almost unparalleled. A rapid study for another “Paradise,” in which the groups are arranged on a different plan, reminding one of Dante’s description of the Celestial Rose, is now in the Louvre. * * * * *