828
PARTISAN REVIEW
IX
Transi·tion .
If
we pass from the pnmltlves and the Re–
naissance toward Velasquez, we find in the Venetians, but especially
in Tintoretto and EI Greco, an intermediate stage. How shall we
define it?
In Tintoretto and EI Greco two epochs meet. Hence the anxiety,
the restlessness that marks the work of both. These are the last repre–
sentatives of painting in bulk, and they already sense the future prob–
lems of painting in hollow space without, however, coming to grips
with them.
Venetian art, from the beginning, tends to a distant view of
things. In Giorgione and Titian, the bodies seem to wish to lose their
hard contours, and float like clouds or some diaphanous fabric. How–
ever, the will to abandon the proximate and analytic point of view is
still lacking. For a century, there is a struggle between both principles,
with victory for neither. Tintoretto is an extreme example of this
inner tension, in which distant vision is already on the point of victory.
In the canvases of the Escorial he constructs great empty spaces.
But in this undertaking he is forced to lean on architectonic perspec–
tive as on a crutch. Without those columns and cornices that flee
into the background, Tintoretto's brush would fall into the abyss
of that hollow space he aspired to create.
EI Greco represents something of a regression. I believe that
his modernity and his nearness to Velasquez has been exaggerated.
EI Greco is still chiefly preoccupied with volume. The proof is that
he may be accounted the last great foreshortener. He does not seek
empty space; in him there remains the intention to capture the corp–
oreal, filled volume. While Velasquez, in
The Ladies in Waiting
and
The Spinners,
groups his human figures at the right and left, leaving
the central space more or less free- as if space were the true pro–
tagonist-EI Greco piles up solid masses over the whole canvas that
completely displace the air. His works are usually stuffed with flesh.
However, pictures like
The Resurrection, The Crucified
(Prado)
and
Pentecost,
pose the problems of painting in depth with rare power.
But it is a mistake to confuse the painting of depth with that of
hollow space or empty concavity. The former is only a more learned
way of asserting volume. On the other hand, the latter is a total in–
version of pictorial intention.
