Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 5.djvu/66

54 all the details, as he has to the general whole, this picture, expressing the amazement, terror, and confusion of that day, would have been a most wonderful production. He who does but glance at it for a moment is even now astonished at the power displayed; but if it be examined minutely, the work has all the appearance of having been painted as a jest.

For the same church, on the doors which close the organ that is to say, Tintoretto painted Our Lady ascending the steps of the Temple; this work, which is in oil, is the most carefully executed, most delicately finished, and most cheerful looking picture to be found in all the church. Our artist likewise painted the doors of the organ in Santa Maria Sebenigo; the subject of that work was the Conversion of St. Paul, but it was not executed with much care. In the Carita is a Deposition from the Cross by the same hand; and in the Sacristy of San Sebastiano, Tintoretto painted Moses in the Wilderness, with other stories on the presses of that place; this he did in competition with Paolo of Verona, who executed numerous pictures on the ceiling and walls of the church. The works thus commenced were continued at a subsequent period, by the Venetian painter Natalino, and by others.

In the church of San Jobbe, Tintoretto painted the three Maries, with San Francesco, San Sebastiano, and San Giovanni, as he did a Landscape at the altar of the Pietà; and on the doors of the organ in the church of the Servites he