Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/635

Rh R, O C R O C 611 them of his own invention, and designed theatrical costumes and properties, was versed in mechanics and mechanical devices, and was a very agreeable companion. For the sake of his work he lived in a most retired fashion, and even when not painting was wont to remain in his working room surrounded by casts. Here he hardly admitted any, even intimate friends, and he kept his modes of work secret, save as regards his assistants. He abounded in pleasant witty sayings whether to great personages or to others, but no smile hovered on his lips. Out of doors his wife made him wear the robe of a Venetian citizen ; if it rained she tried to indue him with an outer garment, but this he resisted. She would also when he left the house wrap up money for him in a handkerchief, and on his return expected an account of it ; Tintoret's accustomed reply was that he had spent it in alms to the poor or to prisoners. In 1574 he obtained the reversion of the first vacant broker's patent in a fondaco, with power to bequeath it, an advantage granted from time to time to pre-eminent painters. For his phenomenal energy in painting he was termed "II Furioso." An agreement is extant showing that he undertook to finish in two months two historical pictures each containing twenty figures, seven being portraits. The number of his portraits is enormous ; their merit is unequal, but the really fine ones cannot be surpassed. Sebastian del Piombo remarked that Robusti could paint in two days as much as himself in two years ; Annibale Caracci that Tintoret was in many pictures equal to Titian, in others inferior to Tintoret. This was the general opinion of the Venetians, who said that he had three pencils one of gold, the second of silver, and the third of iron. The only pictures (if we except his own portrait) on which he in- scribed his name are the Miracle of Cana in the church of the Salute (painted originally for the brotherhood of the Crociferi), the Miracle of the Slave, and the Crucifixion in the Scuola di S. Rocco ; the last was engraved in 1589 by Agostino Caracci. Generally he painted at once on to the canvas without any preliminary. Some uf his dicta on art have been recorded as follows by Ridolfi : "the art of painting remains increasingly difficult " ; "painters in youth should adhere to the best masters, these being Michelangelo and Titian, and should be strict in representing the natural forms " ; "the first glance at a picture is the crucial one"; "black and white, as developing form, are the best of colours " ; " drawing is the foundation of a painter's work, but drawing from life in the nude should only be essayed by well-practised men, as the real is often wanting in beauty." Of pupils Robusti had very few ; his two sons and Martin de Vos of Antwerp were among them. Domenico Robusti (1562-1637), whom we have already had occasion to mention, frequently assisted his father in the groundwork of great pictures. He himself painted a multitude of works, many of them on a very large scale ; they would at best be mediocre, and, coming from the son of Tintoret, are exasperating ; still, he must be regarded as a considerable sort of pictorial practitioner in his way. We conclude by naming a few of the more striking of Tintoret's very numerous works not already specified in the course of the article. In Venice (S. Giorgio Maggiore), a series of his later works, the Gathering of the Manna, Last Supper, Descent from the Cross, Resurrection, Martyrdom of St Stephen, Coronation of the Virgin, Martyrdom of St Damian ; (S. Francesco della Vigna) the Entombment ; (the Frari) the Massacre of the Innocents ; (S. Cassiano) a Crucifixion, the figures seen from behind along the hill slope ; (St Mark's) a mosaic of the Baptism of Christ, the oil-painting of this composition is in Verona. In Milan (the Brera), St Helena and other saints. In Florence (Pitti Gallery), Venus, Vulcan, and Cupid. In Cologne ( Wallraff-Richarts Museum), Ovid and Corinna. In Augsburg (the town-hall), some historical pictures, which biographers and tourists alike have unaccountably neglected, one of the siege of a fortified town is astonishingly fine. In England (Hampton Court), Esther and Ahasuerus, and the Nine Muses ; (the National Gallery) Christ washing Peter's Feet, a grand piece of colour and execution, not greatly interesting in other respects, also a spirited smallish work, St George and the Dragon. The writer who has done by far the most to establish the fame of Tintoret at the height which it ought to occupy is Professor Ruskin in his Stones of Venice and other books ; the depth and scope of the master's power had never before been adequately brought out, although his extraordinarily and somewhat arbitrarily used executive gift was acknowledged. Ridolfi (Meraviglie deWArte) gives interesting personal details ; the article by Dr Janitschek in Kunst und Kiinstler (1876) is a solid account. For an English reader the most handy narrative is that of Mr W. R. Osier (Tintoretto, 1879), in the series entitled "The Great Artists." Here the biographical facts are clearly presented ; the aesthetic criticism is enthusiastic but not perspicuous. (W. M. R.) ROC, or more correctly RUKH, a fabulous bird of enormous size which carries off elephants to feed its young. The legend of the roc, familiar to every one from the Arabian Nights, was widely spread in the East ; and in later times the home of the monster was sought in the direction of Madagascar, whence gigantic fronds of the Raphia palm very like a quill in form appear to have been brought under the name of roc's feathers (see Yule's Marco Polo, bk. iii. ch. 33, and Academy, 1884, No. 620). Such a feather was brought to the Great Khan, and we read also of a gigantic stump of a roc's quill being brought to Spain by a merchant from the China seas (Abu Hamid of Spain, in Damiri, s.v.). The roc is hardly different from the Arabian l ankd, already mentioned under PHCENIX ; it is also identified with the Persian simurgh, the bird which figures in Firdaxisi's epic as the foster-father of the hero Zal, father of Rustam. When we go farther back into Persian antiquity we find an immortal bird, amru, or (in the Minoi-khiradh} sinamrti, which shakes the ripe fruit from the mythical tree that bears the seed of all useful things. Slnamru and simurgh seem to be the same word. In Indian legend the garuda on which Vishnu rides is the king of birds (Benfey, Pantschatantra, ii. 98). In the Pahlavi translation of the Indian story as repre- sented by the Syrian Kalilag and Damnag (ed. Bickell, 1876), the simurgh takes the place of the garuda, while Ibn al-MokafiV (Calila et Dimna, ed. De Sacy, p. 126) speaks instead of the 'anka. The later Syriac, curiously enough, has behmoth, apparently the behemoth of Job transformed into a bird. For a collection of legends about the roc, see Lane's Arabian Nights, chap. xx. notes 22, 62, and Yule, ut supra. Also see Bochart, Hieroz., bk. vi. ch. xiv. ; Damm, i. 414, ii. 177 sq.; Kazwini, i. 419 sq. ; Ibn Batuta, iv. 305 sq. ; Spiegel, Eran. Alterthumsk., ii. 118. ROCH, ST (Lat. Rochus ; Ital. Rocco ; Span. Roque ; Fr. Roch or Roque), according to the Roman Breviary, was a native of Montpellier, France. The name of his father was John and that of his mother Franca or Libera. He was born with the mark of a red cross upon his person, and this was at once interpreted as signifying his future eminence. In his twelfth year he began to manifest strict asceticism and great devoutness, and on the death of his parents in his twentieth year he gave all his substance to the poor and joined the Franciscan Tertiaries. Coining to Italy during an epidemic of plague, he was very diligent in tending the sick in the public hospitals at Aquapendente, Cesena, and Rome, and effected many miraculous cures by prayer and simple contact. After similar ministries at Piacenza he himself fell ill, and would have perished as he passed through the forest had not the dog of a certain nobleman daily supplied him with bread. On his return to Montpellier he was arrested as a spy and thrown into prison, where he died, having previously obtained from God this favour, that all plague-stricken persons invoking him should be healed. The date of his death was 16th August 1327, in the thirty-second year of his age. During the sittings of the council of Constance in 1414, when the city was visited with the plague, the efficacy of St Roch's intercession was "most manifestly" experienced. His remains were removed in 1385 to Venice, where they now lie. He is commemorated, chiefly in Italy and France, as the patron of the sick, and especially of the plague-stricken. ROCHDALE, a municipal and parliamentary borough of south-east Lancashire, is situated on the river Roch and on the Lancashire and Yorkshire railway, 11 miles north-north-east of Manchester and 12 east of Bolton. By means of the Rochdale Canal, extending from the duke of Bridgewater's canal, Manchester, to the Calder and Hebble navigation at Sowerby Bridge, it has water communication with the most important towns in the north of England. Within recent years the town has largely increased. Though inhabited chiefly by the working classes, the streets generally are spacious and regular. The sanitary arrangements are very satisfactory, the main drainage having been executed on a very large scale. The gas- works and waterworks are in the hands of the corporation, which also erected public baths in 1868. There is a public cemetery belonging to the corporation, and also a public