“There still lives in Venice,” he says, “a painter called Jacopo Tintoretto, who has amused himself with all accomplishments, and particularly with playing music and several instruments, and is, besides, pleasing in all his actions; but in matters of painting he is extravagant, full of caprice, dashing, and resolute, the most terrible brain that painting ever had, as you may see in all his works, and in his compositions of fantastic subjects, done by him diversely and contrary to the custom of other painters. Nay, he has capped extravagance with the novel and whimsical inventions and odd devices of his intellect, which he has used haphazard and without design, as if to show that this art is a trifle.... And because in his youth he showed himself in many fair works of great judgment, if he had recognized the great endowment which he received from nature, and had fortified it with study and judgment, as those have done who have followed the fine manner of his elders, and if he had not (as he has done) cut loose from practiced rules, he would have been one of the greatest painters that ever Venice had; yet, for all this, we would not deny that he is a proud and good painter, with an alert, capricious, and refined spirit.”[6]
[6] Vasari’s condescending estimate of Tintoret may remind some readers of Voltaire’s patronizing estimate of Shakespeare: “It seems as though nature had mingled in the brain of Shakespeare the greatest conceivable strength and grandeur with whatever witless vulgarity can devise that is lowest and most detestable;” and much more of the same kind about the “intoxicated barbarian,” which will seem pitiful or amusing according to the humor of the reader.
Evidently, the originality of this “terrible” Tintoret could not be understood by Vasari, who imagined that he followed successfully the fine manner of his elders in the academic proprieties. But there is no hint that Tintoret heeded this generous advice. Perhaps it came too late,--at threescore years one’s character and methods are no longer plastic; perhaps it had been too often reiterated, for Tintoret had been assured from his youth up that, if he would only be instructed by his fellow-artists, he might hope to become a great painter like them. But, from the first glimpse we get of this perverse Tintoret to the last, one characteristic dominates all,--obedience to his own genius. Censure, coaxing, fashion, envy, popularity, seem never to have swerved him. Like every consummate genius, he drew his inspiration directly from within. “Conform! conform! or be written down a fool!” has always been the greeting of the world to the self-centred, spirit-guided few. “Right or wrong, I cannot otherwise,” has been their invariable reply.