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978-1-492-06249-3
[LSI]](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/91981-250617024158-a2d5d94b/85/Mastering-Kafka-Streams-and-ksqlDB-Building-Real-Time-Data-Systems-by-Example-1st-Edition-Mitch-Seymour-7-320.jpg)
![TINTORET.[5]
[5] First printed in The Atlantic Monthly, June, 1891.
I. HIS LIFE.
We have no authentic biography of Tintoret. The men of his epoch
hungered for fame, but it was by the splendor of their genius, and
not by the details of their personal lives, that they hoped to be
known to posterity. The days of judicious Boswells and injudicious
Froudes had not then come to pass; so that we are now as ignorant
of the lives of the painters of the great school which flourished at
Venice during the sixteenth century as of the lives of that group of
poets who flourished in England during the reigns of Elizabeth and
James I. Nevertheless, Providence sees to it that nothing essential
be lost; and, in the absence of memoirs, the masterpiece itself
becomes a memoir for those who have insight. In art, works which
proceed from the soul, and not from the skill, are truthful witnesses
to the character of the artist. “For by the greatness and beauty of
the creatures proportionably the maker of them is seen.” It is not
wholly to be regretted, therefore, that the meagreness of our
information concerning Tintoret compels us to study his paintings
the more earnestly. The lives of artists are generally scanty in those
adventures and dramatic incidents which make entertaining
biographies. Men of action express their character in deeds: poems,
statues, paintings, are the deeds of artists. Blot out a few pages of
history, and what remains of Hannibal or Scipio? But we should](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/91981-250617024158-a2d5d94b/85/Mastering-Kafka-Streams-and-ksqlDB-Building-Real-Time-Data-Systems-by-Example-1st-Edition-Mitch-Seymour-31-320.jpg)
![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.
By the time that Tintoret made his first essays in painting, the
Venetian school was the foremost in the world. The great Leonardo
had died in France, leaving behind him in Lombardy a company of](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/91981-250617024158-a2d5d94b/85/Mastering-Kafka-Streams-and-ksqlDB-Building-Real-Time-Data-Systems-by-Example-1st-Edition-Mitch-Seymour-33-320.jpg)
![places. So indefatigable, so careful, was this man, who is known to
posterity as “the thunderbolt of painters”! In his prime, he
astonished all by his power of elaborating his ideas at a speed at
which few masters can even sketch; but that power was nourished
by his infinite painstaking in those years of obscurity.
Wherever Tintoret might learn, thither he went. Now we hear of
him working with the masons at Cittadella; now taking his seat on
the bench of the journeymen painters in St. Mark’s Place; now
watching some illustrious master decorating the façade of a palace.
No commission was too humble for him: who knows how many
signboards he may have furnished in his ’prentice days? His first
recorded works were two portraits,—of himself holding a bas-relief
in his hand, and of his brother playing a cithern. As the custom then
was, he exhibited these in the Merceria, that narrow lane of shops
which leads from St. Mark’s to the Rialto. What the latest novel or
yesterday’s political speech is to us, that was a new picture to the
Venetians. Their innate sense of color and beauty and their
familiarity with the best works of art made them ready critics. They
knew whether the colors on a canvas were in harmony, as the
average Italian of to-day can tell whether a singer keeps the key,
and doubtless they were vivacious in their discussions. Tintoret’s
portraits attracted attention. They were painted with nocturnal lights
and shadows, “in so terrible a manner that they amazed every one,”
even to the degree of suggesting to one beholder the following
epigram:
“Si Tinctorectus noctis sic lucet in umbris,
Exorto faciet quid radiante die?”[7]
[7] If Tintoret shines thus in the shades of night, what will
he do when radiant day has risen?
Soon after, he displayed on the Rialto bridge another picture, by
which the surprise already excited was increased, and he began](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/91981-250617024158-a2d5d94b/85/Mastering-Kafka-Streams-and-ksqlDB-Building-Real-Time-Data-Systems-by-Example-1st-Edition-Mitch-Seymour-36-320.jpg)
![cities. At Karnak, at Constantinople, at Rome, at Paris, you will
behold stupendous ruins or imposing monuments commemorating
the pride and power of individual Pharaohs, Sultans, Cæsars, Popes,
and Napoleons, but you will not find the spirit which was worshiped
by the beautifying of the Acropolis, and of republican Florence, and
of Venice. In which modern city will the most diligent search discover
it?
Tintoret, then, had at last earned the privilege of consecrating his
genius to Venezia. His first work for her seems to have been a
portrait of the reigning Doge.[8] Then he painted two historical
subjects,—“Frederick Barbarossa being crowned by Pope Adrian,”
and “Pope Alexander III excommunicating Frederick Barbarossa;”
and “The Last Judgment,” destroyed by the fire of 1557. Not long
thereafter began his employment by the brothers of the
confraternity of San Rocco. For their church, about 1560, he painted
two scenes in the life of St. Roch, and then he joined in competition
for a ceiling painting for the Salla dell’ Albergo in the School itself.
The brothers called for designs, and upon the appointed day Paul
Veronese, Andrea Schiavone, Giuseppe Salviati, and Federigo
Zuccaro submitted theirs. But Tintoret had outsped them, and when
his design was asked for he caused a screen to be removed from the
ceiling, and lo! there was a finished picture of the specified subject.
Brothers and competitors were astonished, and not greatly pleased.
“We asked for sketches,” said the former. “That is the way I make
my sketches,” replied Tintoret. They demurred; but Tintoret
presented the picture to the School, one of whose rules made it
obligatory that all gifts should be accepted. The displeasure of the
confraternity soon passed away, and Tintoret was commissioned to
furnish whatever paintings should be required in future. An annual
salary of one hundred ducats was bestowed upon him, in return for
which he was to give at least one painting a year. Generously did he
fulfil the contract; for at his death the School possessed more than
sixty of his works, for which he had been paid but twenty-four
hundred and forty-seven ducats.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/91981-250617024158-a2d5d94b/85/Mastering-Kafka-Streams-and-ksqlDB-Building-Real-Time-Data-Systems-by-Example-1st-Edition-Mitch-Seymour-39-320.jpg)
![[8] It is interesting to know that the price regularly paid
to Titian and Tintoret for state portraits was twenty-five
ducats (about thirty-one dollars). Painters who have not a
hundredth part of the genius of either Titian or Tintoret
now receive one hundred times that sum.
In 1577 a fire in the Ducal Palace destroyed many of the
paintings, and when the edifice was restored the government looked
for artists to replace them. Titian being dead, his opposition had no
longer to be overcome; yet even now Tintoret had to compete with
men of inferior powers, but of stronger influence. Nevertheless, to
him and Paul Veronese was assigned the lion’s share of the
undertaking, and for ten years those two men labored side by side,
in noble rivalry, to eternize the beauty and the glory of Venice. In
1588, owing to the death of Paul Veronese, who with Francesco
Bassano had been commissioned to paint a “Paradise” in the Hall of
the Grand Council, the work was transferred to Tintoret, who
devoted to it the last six years of his life, and left in it the highest
expression not only of his genius, but of Italian painting.[9] Old age
robbed him of none of his energy, but added sublimity to his
imagination, and interfused serenity and mellowness throughout his
work. Still teeming with plans, he died of a gastric trouble, after a
fortnight’s illness, on the 31st of May, 1594.[10]
[9] Has any one remarked that when Tintoret was
painting the “Paradise,” Cervantes, Spain’s spokesman
before the nations, Montaigne, the largest figure in French
literature, and Shakespeare, paragon not of England only,
but of the world, were his contemporaries? Those four
might have met in his studio; and Science might have
furnished three peerless representatives,—Bacon, Galileo,
and Kepler.
[10] Tintoret is buried in the church of Santa Maria dell’
Orto.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/91981-250617024158-a2d5d94b/85/Mastering-Kafka-Streams-and-ksqlDB-Building-Real-Time-Data-Systems-by-Example-1st-Edition-Mitch-Seymour-40-320.jpg)
![With this clue, spun from the discursive records of Ridolfi (whose
Meraviglie dell’ Arte was first published in 1648), we can pass
through the labyrinth of Tintoret’s career. There are, besides, several
anecdotes which help us to know the man’s personality better: if all
be not authentic, at least all agree in attributing to him certain well-
defined traits.
As a workman, as we have seen, Tintoret was indefatigable. His
lifelong yearning was not for praise, but for opportunity to work.
Modesty he had to a degree unrecorded of any other painter,
although none seems to have been more confident of his own
powers.[11] Like Shakespeare, he wrought his masterpieces swiftly,
and left them to their fate, because his imagination, like
Shakespeare’s, was already on the wing for higher quarry. There was
in the man an inflexible dignity, born of self-respect, which neither
the allurements of popularity nor the flattery of the great could
bend. When invited by the Duke of Mantua to go to that city and
execute some paintings, Tintoret replied that wherever he went his
wife wished to accompany him; at which the Duke bade him bring
his wife and family, had them conveyed to Mantua in a state barge,
and entertained them at his palace “at magnificent expense for
many days.” He urged Tintoret to settle there; but the Venetian
could not be persuaded to renounce his allegiance to Venice. He saw
that titles would add nothing to his fame, and refused an offer of
knighthood from Henry III of France. Princes and grandees and
illustrious visitors to Venice went to his house; but though he
received them courteously, he sought no intimacy with them. His
time was too precious, his projects were too earnest, to allow of
aristocratic dissipation. He had a keen sense of humor, which
displayed itself now in some ready reply, now in genial conversation
with his familiars. Ridolfi relates that certain prelates and senators
who visited him whilst he was making sketches for the “Paradise”
asked him why he worked so hurriedly, whereas John Bellini and
Titian had been deliberate and painstaking. “The old masters,” said
Tintoret, “had not so many to bother them as I have.” At another
time, at a gathering of amateurs, a woman’s portrait by Titian was](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/91981-250617024158-a2d5d94b/85/Mastering-Kafka-Streams-and-ksqlDB-Building-Real-Time-Data-Systems-by-Example-1st-Edition-Mitch-Seymour-41-320.jpg)
![lauded. “That’s the way to paint,” said one of the critics. Tintoret
went home, took a sketch by Titian and covered it with lampblack,
painted a head in Titian’s manner on the same canvas, and showed
it at the next meeting of these amateurs. “Ah, there’s a real Titian!”
they all agreed. Tintoret rubbed off the lampblack from the original
sketch and said: “This, gentlemen, is indeed by Titian; that which
you have admired is mine. You see now how authority and opinion
prevail in criticism, and how few there are who really understand
painting.”
Pietro Aretino, that depraved adventurer and most successful
blackmailer in literature, was one of Titian’s intimates and partisans.
He wished, nevertheless, to have his portrait painted by Tintoret,
who was in no wise afraid of the scoundrel’s enmity, although most
of the prominent personages of the time quailed before it. Aretino
being posed, Tintoret furiously drew a hanger from under his coat.
Aretino was terrified lest he should be punished for his malicious
tongue, and cried out, “Jacopo, what are you about?” “I am only
going to take your measure,” said Tintoret complacently; and,
measuring him from head to foot, he added, “your height is just two
and a half hangers.” Aretino’s impudence returned. “You’re a great
madman,” he said, “and always up to your pranks.” But this grim hint
sufficed; the rascal never after dared to slander Tintoret, but, on the
contrary, tried to ingratiate himself into his friendship.
[11] Two instances are worthy of record. Having agreed to
paint a large historical picture for the Doges’ Palace, he said
to the procurators, “If any other shall, within the space of
two years, paint a better picture of this subject, you shall
take his and reject Footnote: mine.” At first his enemies
spoke so censuringly of his “St. Mark Freeing the Fugitive
Slave” that the brethren hesitated whether to accept it;
whereupon Tintoret had it brought back to his studio.
Afterwards the brethren repented, begged for its return,
and ordered three other pictures.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/91981-250617024158-a2d5d94b/85/Mastering-Kafka-Streams-and-ksqlDB-Building-Real-Time-Data-Systems-by-Example-1st-Edition-Mitch-Seymour-42-320.jpg)
![In his home Tintoret enjoyed tranquillity. His wife, Faustina de’
Vescovi, was thrifty and dignified, and perhaps she was not a little
annoyed by the “unpracticalness” of her husband. According to
tradition, when he went out she tied up money for him in his
handkerchief, and bade him give an exact account of it on his return.
Having spent his afternoon and money with congenial spirits at some
rendezvous whose name, unlike that of the Mermaid, where
Elizabethan wits caroused, has been lost, he playfully assured
Madonna Faustina that her allowance had gone to help the poor. She
was particular that he should wear the dress of a Venetian citizen;
but if he happened to go abroad in rainy weather, she called out to
him from an upper window to come back and put on his old clothes.
We have glimpses of him passing to and fro in Venice with Marietta,
his favorite daughter, a painter of merit, whose early death
saddened his later years.[12] Of his other children, two daughters
entered a nunnery; a third married Casser, a German; his eldest son,
Domenico, adopted his father’s profession, and assisted him in his
work; another son went to the bad, and was cut off from an
inheritance by his father’s will. In spite of his habit of giving away
pictures, or of charging a small price for them, Tintoret bequeathed
a comfortable fortune to his heirs.
[12] Marietta was born in 1560, and died in 1590.
A few of his precepts and suggestions concerning art have come
down to us through Ridolfi, who had them from Aliense, one of
Tintoret’s pupils.
“The study of painting is arduous,” he used to say; “and to him
who advances farthest in it more difficulties appear, the sea grows
ever larger.”
“Students must never fail to profit by the example of the great
masters, Michael Angelo and Titian.”](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/91981-250617024158-a2d5d94b/85/Mastering-Kafka-Streams-and-ksqlDB-Building-Real-Time-Data-Systems-by-Example-1st-Edition-Mitch-Seymour-43-320.jpg)
![contemporaries, should baffle the interpreters of art grammars and
the pedagogues of technique.
Again, Tintoret’s pigments have suffered more than those of any
other master. The darker colors, in many cases, have become almost
black; the lighter have faded, and sometimes completely changed.
[13] How far this is due to an original defect in the paints, how far to
exposure and neglect, I cannot say. It must always be remembered
that, as popular canvases have been frequently varnished and
restored, many Titians and Raphaels are as fresh to-day as they
were when they left the easel. How much remains of the original
painting is another question. Directors of galleries aim at pleasing
the public, not at respecting the preferences of connoisseurs, and
the public craves lively colors. It would feel itself imposed upon if it
traveled to Dresden only to find the “Sixtine Madonna” as dark as
would probably be the case if the restorer had not interfered. In
every gallery you will observe that the crowds flock to the brightest
pictures, irrespective of their merits. The fact that they have been
kept bright is an advertisement that they are deemed precious; and
besides, it requires less time to glance at a clean canvas and pass on
than to recover, after patient scrutiny and an effort of the
imagination, some of the beauty which time and dust conceal. It is
significant that the one painting by Tintoret which is most commonly
mentioned by all classes of tourists—“St. Mark Freeing a Fugitive
Slave”—is precisely that one which the directors of the Venice
Academy keep polished as good as new.
[13] In some of the paintings at San Giorgio the blues are
now milky splotches.
I cannot dismiss this subject without alluding to another cause for
the slight attention given to Tintoret: his pictures are almost
invariably condemned to oblivion by the position in which they have
been hung. You must look for them in dark corners near the ceiling,
or in cross-lights which render an examination impossible. Of those
which still exist in the churches for which they were painted, some](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/91981-250617024158-a2d5d94b/85/Mastering-Kafka-Streams-and-ksqlDB-Building-Real-Time-Data-Systems-by-Example-1st-Edition-Mitch-Seymour-46-320.jpg)
![have been injured by the drippings from candles; others have been
partly hidden by tabernacles, reliquaries, and other objects of church
ceremonial. Travelers in Venice a generation ago record that rain
leaked through the roof of the School of San Rocco, and soaked
some of the canvases; others, hung near windows, have had to
suffer from the strong sunlight for centuries. In the Ducal Palace,
one series of ceiling paintings have succumbed to the daubing of
restorers, and are now hardly recognizable as being Tintoret’s; while
the matchless “Paradise,” when I recently saw it,[14] was falling
rapidly to decay. The seams where the vast canvas was originally
joined had rotted in many places; the canvas itself was warped and
rumpled, forming little shelves and unevennesses on which the dust
had collected so as to hide the colors; and from the ceiling dangled a
ragged fringe of cobwebs, in some places two or three feet long.
[14] In August, 1889.
A few generations hence, when these incomparable works have
been irretrievably damaged, posterity will wonder—with a wonder
intensified by indignation—that we allowed them to perish. Early
Christians, who mutilated pagan works of art because they believed
them to be pernicious, may be excused; but what excuse has our
age to offer? We pretend to cherish all manifestations of culture, and
we have ample means to preserve them; yet whilst our museums
are daily adding to their collections of half-barbarous antiquities, dug
up in Arizona, in Mexico, in Yucatan, in Peru, in Asia Minor, in
Mesopotamia, there are surely hastening to destruction scores of the
works of the mightiest genius who ever honored painting. During the
past twenty years, New York millionaires have paid more for the
immoralities and inanities of modern French painters than would be
necessary to erect a separate gallery in Venice for the proper
preservation of Tintoret’s masterpieces. If there were but a single
manuscript of Hamlet in the world, and no printing-presses, what
should we say to those who allowed it to perish through neglect? Yet
there are many of Tintoret’s pictures, each of them as precious in its
way as a page of Hamlet, which we raise no voice to save. In our](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/91981-250617024158-a2d5d94b/85/Mastering-Kafka-Streams-and-ksqlDB-Building-Real-Time-Data-Systems-by-Example-1st-Edition-Mitch-Seymour-47-320.jpg)
![selfishness, we forget that the treasures which we have inherited
from the past are not ours to dissipate and destroy; we hold them in
trust for the future, and woe unto us if, unmindful of our
responsibility, we prove careless stewards.[15]
[15] So long as the originals exist, copies of great
paintings are as unsatisfactory as a Beethoven symphony or
a Wagner opera on the piano; but when the originals have
perished, copies may serve a worthy purpose in
perpetuating at least the concept and general treatment of
the painter. It is greatly to be desired that some capable
student should do for Tintoret what Toschi has done for
Correggio at Parma. A series of faithfully executed sketches
would enable posterity to judge of Tintoret’s range of
imagination and inexhaustible powers of treatment,
although his coloring and drawing could not be reproduced.
Many of his paintings have never been engraved, and not
one has been well engraved.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/91981-250617024158-a2d5d94b/85/Mastering-Kafka-Streams-and-ksqlDB-Building-Real-Time-Data-Systems-by-Example-1st-Edition-Mitch-Seymour-48-320.jpg)
![in somewhat similar manner. Titian conceives the scene as follows:
In front of a stately pile of buildings, two flights of steps lead up to
the threshold of the Temple, where stands a venerable high priest;
near him are two other ecclesiastics and a youth. Spectators look out
from the windows and balconies of the adjoining edifice upon Mary,
a pretty little maiden, who has reached the first step of the second
staircase, and, looking up at the high priest, prepares to finish the
ascent. Immediately back of her figure is an ornate Corinthian
column. Her mother and a friend wait at the foot of the staircase,
and a goodly company of Venetian nobles is gathered near them,—
like pleasure-seekers taking a stroll, who stop for a moment to
witness a chance episode. An old woman with a basket of eggs sits
in the foreground. A colonnade and pyramid close in the picture on
the left,[16] and a pleasing view of mountains stretches out behind.
[16] I use left and right to denote the positions as the
spectator faces the picture.
This is Tintoret’s conception: A high priest, patriarchal in dignity,
stands at the top of a flight of steps leading to the door of the
Temple. Just below him Mary is mounting, her slight form and dress
being beautifully contrasted with the sky beyond. Behind her is a
young woman (probably her mother, Anne) carrying a young child.
At the foot of the steps, in the centre of the painting, another
mother (one of Tintoret’s matchless creations) is pointing toward
Mary, and telling her little daughter that she, too, will erelong be
presented at the Temple. Two girls recline on the steps near by. On
the left, seven or eight old men and idlers (such as one still sees at
the approach to churches in Italy, and to mosques and synagogues
in the Orient) are ranged along the stairs, indolently watching the
scene. The shadow of the building falls upon them, and prevents
their figures from being too prominent. There is no suggestion of
Venice or Venetian nobles. The attention is not distracted by costly
apparel or imposing architecture, but is fixed upon the chief actors,
—upon the venerableness of the high priest, the simplicity and](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/91981-250617024158-a2d5d94b/85/Mastering-Kafka-Streams-and-ksqlDB-Building-Real-Time-Data-Systems-by-Example-1st-Edition-Mitch-Seymour-52-320.jpg)
![confidingness of the little maiden, and the magnificent forms and
naturalness of the women.
Critics have disputed whether Titian’s picture or Tintoret’s be the
earlier. The presumption is in favor of the former,[17] but there is no
reason to cry plagiarism against either, because each master has
worked out a similar conception with characteristic independence.
The central idea—the youthful Virgin ascending the steps of the
Temple to be received by the high priest—may be seen in one of
Giotto’s frescoes.[18] What we admire is the originality of treatment
in both pictures. To me, Tintoret’s conception seems the more nobly
appropriate; and I know not in which of Titian’s works to look for a
counterpart of that woman in Tintoret’s foreground, so easy, so
living, so superb.
[17] Crowe and Cavalcaselle give 1539 as the date of
Titian’s “Presentation;” 1545–46 is usually assigned as the
date of Tintoret’s.
[18] At the Arena, Padua.
As an example of Tintoret’s insight into the spiritual world, turn to
his picture of Lucifer.[19] From early Christian times, the Evil One has
been represented by very crude and vulgar symbols. A hideous face,
horns, a tail, and cloven hoofs have come to be his accepted signs.
Such a monster could never tempt even the frailest striver after
righteousness; for this conception illustrates the loathsomeness of
the results of sin, and not the allurements by which sin entraps us. It
would be equally appropriate to show to a lover a crumbling
skeleton as the effigy of the woman whom he loves. The Devil would
make no converts if he announced himself to be the Devil, and
dangled before men’s eyes the despair, the degradation, the infinite
remorse, which are his actual merchandise, instead of the fleeting
pleasures and deceitful promises under which he masks them. He is
no bungler or fool, but supremely skilful in proportioning his
enticement to the strength of his victim, and very alert in choosing](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/91981-250617024158-a2d5d94b/85/Mastering-Kafka-Streams-and-ksqlDB-Building-Real-Time-Data-Systems-by-Example-1st-Edition-Mitch-Seymour-53-320.jpg)
![the moment most favorable for attack. Goethe, in his
Mephistopheles, has portrayed the enemy of good under one of his
aspects, emphasizing the cynical and wicked rather than the
seductive and plausible qualities. Tintoret has depicted the latter. His
Lucifer is still an angel, though fallen. He has a commanding and
beautiful form, and a countenance which at first fascinates, until, on
searching it more deeply, you fancy you discern a suggestion of
duplicity, a hint of sensuality, in it. Bright-hued and strong are the
plumes of his wings, and a circlet of jewels sparkles on his left arm,
the sole emblem of the wearer’s wealth. Here is indeed a being
whose beauty might seduce, whose guile might deceive,—one
whose presence dazzles and attracts, for it has majesty and grace
and charm. Here is a fit embodiment of that ambition which shrinks
not from crime in order to possess power; or of that false pleasure
which decoys men from duty, and, still flying beyond reach, leads its
prisoner deeper and deeper into the abominations of the abyss.
[19] At the School of San Rocco, Venice.
With equal originality and truth, Tintoret has illustrated the
allegory of the temptation of St. Anthony.[20] This subject is usually
treated either absurdly or grotesquely; as when the saint is
discovered in a grotto through which bats, mice, witches, and imps
flit and gambol. Not one of these ridiculous creatures, we may safely
say, would frighten or tempt anybody. But who are the enemies that
a man whose life is dedicated to holiness, and who has taken the
three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, must resist?
Tintoret’s picture gives the answer. In it one of the figures, typifying
Riches, offers gold and precious gems. “Why live a beggar?” she
pleads softly; “take these and have power.” A second figure,
Voluptuousness, is that of a woman fair in body. “Come with me,”
she urges; “let us taste of joy together while there is still time.” A
third, who (I think) represents Unbelief or Heresy, has already
dashed the saint’s missal and rosary to the ground, has snatched up
his scourge, and, endeavoring to drag him away, has plucked off his
mantle. “Come with me,” this tempter seems to say; “there will be](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/91981-250617024158-a2d5d94b/85/Mastering-Kafka-Streams-and-ksqlDB-Building-Real-Time-Data-Systems-by-Example-1st-Edition-Mitch-Seymour-54-320.jpg)
![no more scourging, and fasting, and mortification; with me your life
shall be without care and unrestrained.” Nevertheless, Anthony, thus
hard beset, looks heavenward, uttering a prayer for succor. Are not
these apt personifications of those lower impulses to which even
men of high resolve have succumbed? All the witches of the Brocken
and all the bats in a Pharaoh’s tomb have nothing alluring about
them.
[20] In the church of San Trovaso, Venice.
There are few of Tintoret’s paintings which will not make similar
revelations, if you look attentively. Often what appears to be only a
casual accessory is the key to the whole composition. Let me cite
two instances of his imaginative use of color. The first occurs in “The
Martyrdom of St. Stephen.”[21] The saint has fallen on his knees
beneath the stoning of his persecutors, but there is no melodramatic
spurting of blood or sign of physical pain. His face betokens
fortitude, resignation, and forgiveness of his tormentors. He gazes
up steadfastly into heaven, and sees the glory of God, and Jesus
standing on the right hand of God. The Almighty is clothed in a robe
of red and a black mantle. In the background on earth, behind the
martyr, a crowd watch the persecution; they are too far away for us
to distinguish faces, but one of them, who is seated, is clothed in
black and red. It is Paul, soon to acknowledge Christ and put on the
livery of God. Again, in the “Paradise,” Tintoret gives profound
significance to color as a symbol: Moses, the witness to the Old
Covenant, and Christ, the witness to the New Covenant, have robes
of similar colors.
[21] In the church of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice. Mr.
Ruskin was the first to point out this stroke of genius.
The Doges’ Palace contains a score of Tintoret’s imaginative
paintings and many of his portraits, and there are few churches in
Venice which have not at least one altar-piece by him. His best
portraits, as I think, outrank even Titian’s best: they have a vital](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/91981-250617024158-a2d5d94b/85/Mastering-Kafka-Streams-and-ksqlDB-Building-Real-Time-Data-Systems-by-Example-1st-Edition-Mitch-Seymour-55-320.jpg)
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- 5. Mastering Kafka Streams and ksqlDB Building Real-Time Data Systems by Example Mitch Seymour
- 6. Mastering Kafka Streams and ksqlDB by Mitch Seymour Copyright © 2021 Mitch Seymour. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Published by O’Reilly Media, Inc., 1005 Gravenstein Highway North, Sebastopol, CA 95472. O’Reilly books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use. Online editions are also available for most titles (http://oreilly.com). For more information, contact our corporate/institutional sales department: 800-998-9938 or [email protected]. Acquisitions Editor: Jessica Haberman Development Editor: Jeff Bleiel Production Editor: Daniel Elfanbaum Copyeditor: Kim Cofer Proofreader: JM Olejarz Indexer: Ellen Troutman-Zaig Interior Designer: David Futato Cover Designer: Karen Montgomery Illustrator: Kate Dullea February 2021: First Edition
- 7. Revision History for the First Edition 2021-02-04: First Release See http://oreilly.com/catalog/errata.csp?isbn=9781492062493 for release details. The O’Reilly logo is a registered trademark of O’Reilly Media, Inc. Mastering Kafka Streams and ksqlDB, the cover image, and related trade dress are trademarks of O’Reilly Media, Inc. The views expressed in this work are those of the author, and do not represent the publisher’s views. While the publisher and the author have used good faith efforts to ensure that the information and instructions contained in this work are accurate, the publisher and the author disclaim all responsibility for errors or omissions, including without limitation responsibility for damages resulting from the use of or reliance on this work. Use of the information and instructions contained in this work is at your own risk. If any code samples or other technology this work contains or describes is subject to open source licenses or the intellectual property rights of others, it is your responsibility to ensure that your use thereof complies with such licenses and/or rights. 978-1-492-06249-3 [LSI]
- 8. Foreword Businesses are increasingly built around events—the real-time activity data of what is happening in a company—but what is the right infrastructure for harnessing the power of events? This is a question I have been thinking about since 2009, when I started the Apache Kafka project at LinkedIn. In 2014, I cofounded Confluent to definitively answer it. Beyond providing a way to store and access discrete events, an event streaming platform needs a mechanism to connect with a myriad of external systems. It also requires global schema management, metrics, and monitoring. But perhaps most important of all is stream processing—continuous computation over never-ending streams of data—without which an event streaming platform is simply incomplete. Now more than ever, stream processing plays a key role in how businesses interact with the world. In 2011, Marc Andreessen wrote an article titled “Why Software Is Eating the World.” The core idea is that any process that can be moved into software eventually will be. Marc turned out to be prescient. The most obvious outcome is that software has permeated every industry imaginable. But a lesser understood and more important outcome is that businesses are increasingly defined in software. Put differently, the core processes a business executes—from how it creates a product, to how it interacts with customers, to how it delivers services—are increasingly specified, monitored, and executed in software. What has changed because of that dynamic? Software, in this new world, is far less likely to be directly interacting with a human. Instead, it is more likely that its purpose is to programmatically trigger actions or react to other pieces of software that carry out business directly. It begs the question: are our traditional application architectures, centered around existing databases, sufficient for this emerging world? Virtually all databases, from the most established relational databases to the newest key-value stores, follow a paradigm in which data is passively stored and the database waits for commands
- 9. to retrieve or modify it. This paradigm was driven by human-facing applications in which a user looks at an interface and initiates actions that are translated into database queries. We think that is only half the problem, and the problem of storing data needs to be complemented with the ability to react to and process events. Events and stream processing are the keys to succeeding in this new world. Events support the continuous flow of data throughout a business, and stream processing automatically executes code in response to change at any level of detail—doing it in concert with knowledge of all changes that came before it. Modern stream processing systems like Kafka Streams and ksqlDB make it easy to build applications for a world that speaks software. In this book, Mitch Seymour lucidly describes these state-of-the-art systems from first principles. Mastering Kafka Streams and ksqlDB surveys core concepts, details the nuances of how each system works, and provides hands-on examples for using them for business in the real world. Stream processing has never been a more essential programming paradigm—and Mastering Kafka Streams and ksqlDB illuminates the path to succeeding at it. Jay Kreps Cocreator of Apache Kafka, Cofounder and CEO of Confluent
- 10. Preface For data engineers and data scientists, there’s never a shortage of technologies that are competing for our attention. Whether we’re perusing our favorite subreddits, scanning Hacker News, reading tech blogs, or weaving through hundreds of tables at a tech conference, there are so many things to look at that it can start to feel overwhelming. But if we can find a quiet corner to just think for a minute, and let all of the buzz fade into the background, we can start to distinguish patterns from the noise. You see, we live in the age of explosive data growth, and many of these technologies were created to help us store and process data at scale. We’re told that these are modern solutions for modern problems, and we sit around discussing “big data” as if the idea is avant-garde, when really the focus on data volume is only half the story. Technologies that only solve for the data volume problem tend to have batch-oriented techniques for processing data. This involves running a job on some pile of data that has accumulated for a period of time. In some ways, this is like trying to drink the ocean all at once. With modern computing power and paradigms, some technologies actually manage to achieve this, though usually at the expense of high latency. Instead, there’s another property of modern data that we focus on in this book: data moves over networks in steady and never-ending streams. The technologies we cover in this book, Kafka Streams and ksqlDB, are specifically designed to process these continuous data streams in real time, and provide huge competitive advantages over the ocean-drinking variety. After all, many business problems are time-sensitive, and if you need to enrich, transform, or react to data
- 11. as soon as it comes in, then Kafka Streams and ksqlDB will help get you there with ease and efficiency. Learning Kafka Streams and ksqlDB is also a great way to familiarize yourself with the larger concepts involved in stream processing. This includes modeling data in different ways (streams and tables), applying stateless transformations of data, using local state for more advanced operations (joins, aggregations), understanding the different time semantics and methods for grouping data into time buckets/windows, and more. In other words, your knowledge of Kafka Streams and ksqlDB will help you distinguish and evaluate different stream processing solutions that currently exist and may come into existence sometime in the future. I’m excited to share these technologies with you because they have both made an impact on my own career and helped me accomplish technological feats that I thought were beyond my own capabilities. In fact, by the time you finish reading this sentence, one of my Kafka Streams applications will have processed nine million events. The feeling you’ll get by providing real business value without having to invest exorbitant amounts of time on the solution will keep you working with these technologies for years to come, and the succinct and expressive language constructs make the process feel more like an art form than a labor. And just like any other art form, whether it be a life-changing song or a beautiful painting, it’s human nature to want to share it. So consider this book a mixtape from me to you, with my favorite compilations from the stream processing space available for your enjoyment: Kafka Streams and ksqlDB, Volume 1. Who Should Read This Book This book is for data engineers who want to learn how to build highly scalable stream processing applications for moving, enriching, and transforming large amounts of data in real time. These skills are often needed to support business intelligence initiatives, analytic
- 12. pipelines, threat detection, event processing, and more. Data scientists and analysts who want to upgrade their skills by analyzing real-time data streams will also find value in this book, which is an exciting departure from the batch processing space that has typically dominated these fields. Prior experience with Apache Kafka is not required, though some familiarity with the Java programming language will make the Kafka Streams tutorials easier to follow. Navigating This Book This book is organized roughly as follows: Chapter 1 provides an introduction to Kafka and a tutorial for running a single-node Kafka cluster. Chapter 2 provides an introduction to Kafka Streams, starting with a background and architectural review, and ending with a tutorial for running a simple Kafka Streams application. Chapters 3 and 4 discuss the stateless and stateful operators in the Kafka Streams high-level DSL (domain-specific language). Each chapter includes a tutorial that will demonstrate how to use these operators to solve an interesting business problem. Chapter 5 discusses the role that time plays in our stream processing applications, and demonstrates how to use windows to perform more advanced stateful operations, including windowed joins and aggregations. A tutorial inspired by predictive healthcare will demonstrate the key concepts. Chapter 6 describes how stateful processing works under the hood, and provides some operational tips for stateful Kafka Streams applications.
- 13. Chapter 7 dives into Kafka Streams’ lower-level Processor API, which can be used for scheduling periodic functions, and provides more granular access to application state and record metadata. The tutorial in this chapter is inspired by IoT (Internet of Things) use cases. Chapter 8 provides an introduction to ksqlDB, and discusses the history and architecture of this technology. The tutorial in this chapter will show you how to install and run a ksqlDB server instance, and work with the ksqlDB CLI. Chapter 9 discusses ksqlDB’s data integration features, which are powered by Kafka Connect. Chapters 10 and 11 discuss the ksqlDB SQL dialect in detail, demonstrating how to work with different collection types, perform push queries and pull queries, and more. The concepts will be introduced using a tutorial based on a Netflix use case: tracking changes to various shows/films, and making these changes available to other applications. Chapter 12 provides the information you need to deploy your Kafka Streams and ksqlDB applications to production. This includes information on monitoring, testing, and containerizing your applications. Source Code The source code for this book can be found on GitHub at https://github.com/mitch-seymour/mastering-kafka-streams-and- ksqldb. Instructions for building and running each tutorial will be included in the repository.
- 14. Kafka Streams Version At the time of this writing, the latest version of Kafka Streams was version 2.7.0. This is the version we use in this book, though in many cases, the code will also work with older or newer versions of the Kafka Streams library. We will make efforts to update the source code when newer versions introduce breaking changes, and will stage these updates in a dedicated branch (e.g., kafka-streams-2.8). ksqlDB Version At the time of this writing, the latest version of ksqlDB was version 0.14.0. Compatibility with older and newer versions of ksqlDB is less guaranteed due to the ongoing and rapid development of this technology, and the lack of a major version (e.g., 1.0) at the time of this book’s publication. We will make efforts to update the source code when newer versions introduce breaking changes, and will stage these updates in a dedicated branch (e.g., ksqldb-0.15). However, it is recommended to avoid versions older than 0.14.0 when running the examples in this book. Conventions Used in This Book The following typographical conventions are used in this book: Italic Indicates new terms, URLs, email addresses, filenames, and file extensions. Constant width Used for program listings, as well as within paragraphs to refer to program elements such as variable or function names, databases, data types, environment variables, statements, and keywords.
- 15. Constant width bold Shows commands or other text that should be typed literally by the user. Constant width italic Shows text that should be replaced with user-supplied values or by values determined by context. TIP This element signifies a tip or suggestion. NOTE This element signifies a general note. WARNING This element indicates a warning or caution. Using Code Examples Supplemental material (code examples, exercises, etc.) can be found on the book’s GitHub page, https://github.com/mitch- seymour/mastering-kafka-streams-and-ksqldb. If you have a technical question or a problem using the code examples, please email [email protected]. This book is here to help you get your job done. In general, if example code is offered with this book, you may use it in your
- 16. programs and documentation. You do not need to contact us for permission unless you’re reproducing a significant portion of the code. For example, writing a program that uses several chunks of code from this book does not require permission. Selling or distributing examples from O’Reilly books does require permission. Answering a question by citing this book and quoting example code does not require permission. Incorporating a significant amount of example code from this book into your product’s documentation does require permission. We appreciate, but generally do not require, attribution. An attribution usually includes the title, author, publisher, and ISBN. For example: “Mastering Kafka Streams and ksqlDB by Mitch Seymour (O’Reilly). Copyright 2021 Mitch Seymour, 978-1-492-06249-3.” If you feel your use of code examples falls outside fair use or the permission given above, feel free to contact us at [email protected]. O’Reilly Online Learning NOTE For more than 40 years, O’Reilly Media has provided technology and business training, knowledge, and insight to help companies succeed. Our unique network of experts and innovators share their knowledge and expertise through books, articles, and our online learning platform. O’Reilly’s online learning platform gives you on-demand access to live training courses, in-depth learning paths, interactive coding environments, and a vast collection of text and video from O’Reilly and 200+ other publishers. For more information, visit http://oreilly.com.
- 17. How to Contact Us Please address comments and questions concerning this book to the publisher: O’Reilly Media, Inc. 1005 Gravenstein Highway North Sebastopol, CA 95472 800-998-9938 (in the United States or Canada) 707-829-0515 (international or local) 707-829-0104 (fax) We have a web page for this book, where we list errata, examples, and any additional information. You can access this page at https://oreil.ly/mastering-kafka-streams. Email [email protected] to comment or ask technical questions about this book. For news and information about our books and courses, visit http://oreilly.com. Find us on Facebook: http://facebook.com/oreilly. Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/oreillymedia. Watch us on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/oreillymedia. Acknowledgments First and foremost, I want to thank my wife, Elyse, and my daughter, Isabelle. Writing a book is a huge time investment, and your patience and support through the entire process helped me
- 18. immensely. As much as I enjoyed writing this book, I missed you both greatly, and I look forward to having more date nights and daddy-daughter time again. I also want to thank my parents, Angie and Guy, for teaching me the value of hard work and for being a never-ending source of encouragement. Your support has helped me overcome many challenges over the years, and I am eternally grateful for you both. This book would not be possible without the following people, who dedicated a lot of their time to reviewing its content and providing great feedback and advice along the way: Matthias J. Sax, Robert Yokota, Nitin Sharma, Rohan Desai, Jeff Bleiel, and Danny Elfanbaum. Thank you all for helping me create this book, it’s just as much yours as it is mine. Many of the tutorials were informed by actual business use cases, and I owe a debt of gratitude to everyone in the community who openly shared their experiences with Kafka Streams and ksqlDB, whether it be through conferences, podcasts, blogs, or even in- person interviews. Your experiences helped shape this book, which puts a special emphasis on practical stream processing applications. Nitin Sharma also provided ideas for the Netflix-inspired ksqlDB tutorials, and Ramesh Sringeri shared his stream processing experiences at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, which inspired the predictive healthcare tutorial. Thank you both. Special thanks to Michael Drogalis for being a huge supporter of this book, even when it was just an outline of ideas. Also, thank you for putting me in touch with many of this book’s reviewers, and also Jay Kreps, who graciously wrote the foreword. The technical writings of Yeva Byzek and Bill Bejeck have also set a high bar for what this book should be. Thank you both for your contributions in this space. There have been many people in my career that helped get me to this point. Mark Conde and Tom Stanley, thank you for opening the doors to my career as a software engineer. Barry Bowden, for
- 19. helping me become a better engineer, and for being a great mentor. Erin Fusaro, for knowing exactly what to say whenever I felt overwhelmed, and for just being a rock in general. Justin Isasi, for your continuous encouragement, and making sure my efforts don’t go unrecognized. Sean Sawyer, for a suggestion you made several years ago, that I try a new thing called “Kafka Streams,” which has clearly spiraled out of control. Thomas Holmes and Matt Farmer, for sharing your technical expertise with me on many occasions, and helping me become a better engineer. And to the Data Services team at Mailchimp, thanks for helping me solve some really cool problems, and for inspiring me with your own work. Finally, to my friends and family, who continue to stick by me even when I disappear for months at a time to work on a new project. Thanks for sticking around, this was a long one.
- 20. Part I. Kafka
- 21. Chapter 1. A Rapid Introduction to Kafka The amount of data in the world is growing exponentially and, according to the World Economic Forum, the number of bytes being stored in the world already far exceeds the number of stars in the observable universe. When you think of this data, you might think of piles of bytes sitting in data warehouses, in relational databases, or on distributed filesystems. Systems like these have trained us to think of data in its resting state. In other words, data is sitting somewhere, resting, and when you need to process it, you run some query or job against the pile of bytes. This view of the world is the more traditional way of thinking about data. However, while data can certainly pile up in places, more often than not, it’s moving. You see, many systems generate continuous streams of data, including IoT sensors, medical sensors, financial systems, user and customer analytics software, application and server logs, and more. Even data that eventually finds a nice place to rest likely travels across the network at some point before it finds its forever home. If we want to process data in real time, while it moves, we can’t simply wait for it to pile up somewhere and then run a query or job at some interval of our choosing. That approach can handle some business use cases, but many important use cases require us to process, enrich, transform, and respond to data incrementally as it becomes available. Therefore, we need something that has a very different worldview of data: a technology that gives us access to data in its flowing state, and which allows us to work with these
- 22. continuous and unbounded data streams quickly and efficiently. This is where Apache Kafka comes in. Apache Kafka (or simply, Kafka) is a streaming platform for ingesting, storing, accessing, and processing streams of data. While the entire platform is very interesting, this book focuses on what I find to be the most compelling part of Kafka: the stream processing layer. However, to understand Kafka Streams and ksqlDB (both of which operate at this layer, and the latter of which also operates at the stream ingestion layer), it is necessary to have a working knowledge of how Kafka, as a platform, works. Therefore, this chapter will introduce you to some important concepts and terminology that you will need for the rest of the book. If you already have a working knowledge of Kafka, feel free to skip this chapter. Otherwise, keep reading. Some of the questions we will answer in this chapter include: How does Kafka simplify communication between systems? What are the main components in Kafka’s architecture? Which storage abstraction most closely models streams? How does Kafka store data in a fault-tolerant and durable manner? How is high availability and fault tolerance achieved at the data processing layers? We will conclude this chapter with a tutorial showing how to install and run Kafka. But first, let’s start by looking at Kafka’s communication model.
- 23. Communication Model Perhaps the most common communication pattern between systems is the synchronous, client-server model. When we talk about systems in this context, we mean applications, microservices, databases, and anything else that reads and writes data over a network. The client-server model is simple at first, and involves direct communication between systems, as shown in Figure 1-1. Figure 1-1. Point-to-point communication is simple to maintain and reason about when you have a small number of systems For example, you may have an application that synchronously queries a database for some data, or a collection of microservices that talk to each other directly. However, when more systems need to communicate, point-to-point communication becomes difficult to scale. The result is a complex web of communication pathways that can be difficult to reason
- 24. about and maintain. Figure 1-2 shows just how confusing it can get, even with a relatively small number of systems. Figure 1-2. The result of adding more systems is a complex web of communication channels, which is difficult to maintain Some of the drawbacks of the client-server model include: Systems become tightly coupled because their communication depends on knowledge of each other. This makes maintaining and updating these systems more difficult than it needs to be. Synchronous communication leaves little room for error since there are no delivery guarantees if one of the systems goes offline. Systems may use different communication protocols, scaling strategies to deal with increased load, failure-handling strategies, etc. As a result, you may end up with multiple species of systems to maintain (software speciation), which
- 25. hurts maintainability and defies the common wisdom that we should treat applications like cattle instead of pets. Receiving systems can easily be overwhelmed, since they don’t control the pace at which new requests or data comes in. Without a request buffer, they operate at the whims of the applications that are making requests. There isn’t a strong notion for what is being communicated between these systems. The nomenclature of the client- server model has put too much emphasis on requests and responses, and not enough emphasis on the data itself. Data should be the focal point of data-driven systems. Communication is not replayable. This makes it difficult to reconstruct the state of a system. Kafka simplifies communication between systems by acting as a centralized communication hub (often likened to a central nervous system), in which systems can send and receive data without knowledge of each other. The communication pattern it implements is called the publish-subscribe pattern (or simply, pub/sub), and the result is a drastically simpler communication model, as shown in Figure 1-3.
- 26. Figure 1-3. Kafka removes the complexity of point-to-point communication by acting as a communication hub between systems If we add more detail to the preceding diagram, we can begin to identify the main components involved in Kafka’s communication model, as shown in Figure 1-4.
- 27. Figure 1-4. The Kafka communication model, redrawn with more detail to show the main components of the Kafka platform Instead of having multiple systems communicate directly with each other, producers simply publish their data to one or more topics, without caring who comes along to read the data. Topics are named streams (or channels) of related data that are stored in a Kafka cluster. They serve a similar purpose as tables in a database (i.e., to group related data). However, they do not impose a particular schema, but rather store the raw bytes of data, which makes them very flexible to work with.1
- 28. Consumers are processes that read (or subscribe) to data in one or more topics. They do not communicate directly with the producers, but rather listen to data on any stream they happen to be interested in. Consumers can work together as a group (called a consumer group) in order to distribute work across multiple processes. Kafka’s communication model, which puts more emphasis on flowing streams of data that can easily be read from and written to by multiple processes, comes with several advantages, including: Systems become decoupled and easier to maintain because they can produce and consume data without knowledge of other systems. Asynchronous communication comes with stronger delivery guarantees. If a consumer goes down, it will simply pick up from where it left off when it comes back online again (or, when running with multiple consumers in a consumer group, the work will be redistributed to one of the other members). Systems can standardize on the communication protocol (a high-performance binary TCP protocol is used when talking to Kafka clusters), as well as scaling strategies and fault- tolerance mechanisms (which are driven by consumer groups). This allows us to write software that is broadly consistent, and which fits in our head. Consumers can process data at a rate they can handle. Unprocessed data is stored in Kafka, in a durable and fault- tolerant manner, until the consumer is ready to process it. In other words, if the stream your consumer is reading from suddenly turns into a firehose, the Kafka cluster will act as a buffer, preventing your consumers from being overwhelmed.
- 29. A stronger notion of what data is being communicated, in the form of events. An event is a piece of data with a certain structure, which we will discuss in “Events”. The main point, for now, is that we can focus on the data flowing through our streams, instead of spending so much time disentangling the communication layer like we would in the client-server model. Systems can rebuild their state anytime by replaying the events in a topic. One important difference between the pub/sub model and the client- server model is that communication is not bidirectional in Kafka’s pub/sub model. In other words, streams flow one way. If a system produces some data to a Kafka topic, and relies on another system to do something with the data (i.e., enrich or transform it), the enriched data will need to be written to another topic and subsequently consumed by the original process. This is simple to coordinate, but it changes the way we think about communication. As long as you remember the communication channels (topics) are stream-like in nature (i.e., flowing unidirectionally, and may have multiple sources and multiple downstream consumers), it’s easy to design systems that simply listen to whatever stream of flowing bytes they are interested in, and produce data to topics (named streams) whenever they want to share data with one or more systems. We will be working a lot with Kafka topics in the following chapters (each Kafka Streams and ksqlDB application we build will read, and usually write to, one or more Kafka topics), so by the time you reach the end of this book, this will be second nature for you. Now that we’ve seen how Kafka’s communication model simplifies the way systems communicate with each other, and that named streams called topics act as the communication medium between systems, let’s gain a deeper understanding of how streams come into play in Kafka’s storage layer.
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- 31. TINTORET.[5] [5] First printed in The Atlantic Monthly, June, 1891. I. HIS LIFE. We have no authentic biography of Tintoret. The men of his epoch hungered for fame, but it was by the splendor of their genius, and not by the details of their personal lives, that they hoped to be known to posterity. The days of judicious Boswells and injudicious Froudes had not then come to pass; so that we are now as ignorant of the lives of the painters of the great school which flourished at Venice during the sixteenth century as of the lives of that group of poets who flourished in England during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. Nevertheless, Providence sees to it that nothing essential be lost; and, in the absence of memoirs, the masterpiece itself becomes a memoir for those who have insight. In art, works which proceed from the soul, and not from the skill, are truthful witnesses to the character of the artist. “For by the greatness and beauty of the creatures proportionably the maker of them is seen.” It is not wholly to be regretted, therefore, that the meagreness of our information concerning Tintoret compels us to study his paintings the more earnestly. The lives of artists are generally scanty in those adventures and dramatic incidents which make entertaining biographies. Men of action express their character in deeds: poems, statues, paintings, are the deeds of artists. Blot out a few pages of history, and what remains of Hannibal or Scipio? But we should
- 32. know much about Michael Angelo or Raphael from their paintings, had no written word about either come down to us. The year of Tintoret’s birth is variously stated as 1512 and 1518. Even his name has been a cause of dispute to antiquaries; but since he was content to call and sign himself Jacopo (or Giacomo) Robusti, we may accept this as correct. His father was a dyer of silk (tintore), and as the boy early helped at that trade he got the nickname il tintoretto, “the little dyer.” Vasari, also born in 1512, is the only contemporary who furnishes an account of Tintoret. Unsatisfactory and well-nigh ridiculous it is, if we remember that by 1574, when Vasari died, Tintoret had already produced many of his masterpieces. Yet the Florentine painter-historian did not accord to him so much as a separate chapter in his “Lives of the Most Excellent Painters,” but inserted his few pages of criticism and gossip, as if by an afterthought, in the sketch of the forgotten Battista Franco. Since much that has been subsequently written about Tintoret is merely a repetition of Vasari’s shallow opinions, which created a mythical Tintoret, just as English reviewers created a mythical “Johnny Keats,” long believed to be the real Keats, I quote a few sentences from Vasari. “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
- 33. 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. By the time that Tintoret made his first essays in painting, the Venetian school was the foremost in the world. The great Leonardo had died in France, leaving behind him in Lombardy a company of
- 34. pupils who were rapidly enslaved by a graceless mannerism. Even earlier than this, the best talents of Umbria had wandered into feeble eccentricities, or had been absorbed by Raphael’s large humanism. Raphael himself was dead, at the height of his popularity and in the prime of his powers, and his disciples were hurrying along the road of imitation into the desert of formalism. Michael Angelo alone survived in central Italy, a Titan too colossal, too individual, to be a schoolmaster, although there were many of the younger brood (Vasari among them) who called him Maestro, and fancied that the grimaces and contortions they drew sprang from force and grandeur such as his. But in Venice painting was flourishing; there it had the exuberance and the strength, the joyousness and the splendor, of an art approaching its meridian. John Bellini, the eldest of the great Venetians, had died; but not before there had issued from his studio a wonderful band of disciples, some of whom were destined to surpass him. Giorgione, one of these, had been cut off in his thirty- fourth year, having barely had time to give to the world a few handsels of his genius. The fame of Titian had risen to that height where it has ever since held its station. A troop of lesser men—lesser in comparison with him—were embellishing Venice, or carrying the magic of her art to other parts of Italy. The tradition runs that the boy Tintoret amused himself by drawing charcoal figures on the wall, then coloring them with his father’s dyes: whence his parents were persuaded that he was born to be a painter. Accordingly, his father got permission for him to work in Titian’s studio, the privilege most coveted by every apprentice of the time. His stay there was brief, however; hardly above ten days, if the legend be true which tells how Titian returned one day and saw some strange sketches, and how, learning that Tintoret had made them, he bade another pupil send him away. Some say that Titian already foresaw a rival in the youthful draughtsman; others, that the figures were in a style so contrary to the master’s that he discerned no good in them, and judged that it would be useless for Tintoret to pursue an art in which he could never excel. Let the dyer’s son go back to his vats: there he could at
- 35. least earn a livelihood. We are loth to believe that Titian, whose reputation was established, could have been moved by jealousy of a mere novice: we must remember, nevertheless, that even when Tintoret had come to maturity, and was reckoned among the leading painters of Venice, Titian treated him coldly, and apparently thwarted and disparaged him. Few artists, indeed, have risen quite above the marsh-mists of jealousy. Their ambition regards fame as a fixed quantity, and, like Goldsmith, they look upon any one who acquires a part of this treasure as having diminished the amount they can appropriate for themselves. But in Tintoret’s great soul envy could find no place. “Enmities he has none,” as Emerson says of Goethe. “Enemy of him you may be: if so, you shall teach him aught which your good-will cannot, were it only what experience will accrue from your ruin. Enemy and welcome, but enemy on high terms. He cannot hate anybody; his time is worth too much.” Under whom Tintoret studied, after being thrust off by Titian, we are not told. Probably he had no acknowledged preceptor except himself. Already his aim was at the highest. On the wall of his studio he blazoned the motto, “The drawing of Michael Angelo and the coloring of Titian.” To blend the excellence of each in a supreme unity,—that was his ambition. Titian might shut him out from personal instruction, but Titian’s works in the churches and palaces were within reach. Tintoret studied them, copied them, and conjured from them the secret their master wished to hide. Having procured casts of Michael Angelo’s statues in the Medicean Chapel at Florence, he made drawings of them in every position. Far into the night he worked by lamplight, watching the play of light and shade, the outlines and the relief. He drew also from living models, and learned anatomy by dissecting corpses. He invented “little figures of wax and of clay, clothing them with bits of cloth, examining accurately, by the folds of the dresses, the position of the limbs; and these models he distributed among little houses and perspectives composed of planks and cardboard, and he put lights in the windows.” From the rafters he suspended other manikins, and thereby learned the foreshortening proper to figures painted on ceilings and on high
- 36. places. So indefatigable, so careful, was this man, who is known to posterity as “the thunderbolt of painters”! In his prime, he astonished all by his power of elaborating his ideas at a speed at which few masters can even sketch; but that power was nourished by his infinite painstaking in those years of obscurity. Wherever Tintoret might learn, thither he went. Now we hear of him working with the masons at Cittadella; now taking his seat on the bench of the journeymen painters in St. Mark’s Place; now watching some illustrious master decorating the façade of a palace. No commission was too humble for him: who knows how many signboards he may have furnished in his ’prentice days? His first recorded works were two portraits,—of himself holding a bas-relief in his hand, and of his brother playing a cithern. As the custom then was, he exhibited these in the Merceria, that narrow lane of shops which leads from St. Mark’s to the Rialto. What the latest novel or yesterday’s political speech is to us, that was a new picture to the Venetians. Their innate sense of color and beauty and their familiarity with the best works of art made them ready critics. They knew whether the colors on a canvas were in harmony, as the average Italian of to-day can tell whether a singer keeps the key, and doubtless they were vivacious in their discussions. Tintoret’s portraits attracted attention. They were painted with nocturnal lights and shadows, “in so terrible a manner that they amazed every one,” even to the degree of suggesting to one beholder the following epigram: “Si Tinctorectus noctis sic lucet in umbris, Exorto faciet quid radiante die?”[7] [7] If Tintoret shines thus in the shades of night, what will he do when radiant day has risen? Soon after, he displayed on the Rialto bridge another picture, by which the surprise already excited was increased, and he began
- 37. thenceforward to get employment in the smaller churches and convents. Important commissions which brought wealth and honors were reserved for Titian and a few favorites; but Tintoret rejected no offer. Only let him express those ideas swarming in his imagination: he asked no further recompense. He seems to have been early noted for the practice of taking no pay at all, or only enough to provide his paints and canvas,—a practice which brought upon him the abuse of his fellows, who cried out that he would ruin their profession. But there was then no law to prohibit artist or artisan from working for any price he chose, and Tintoret, as usual, took his own course. At last a great opportunity offered. On each side of the high altar of the Church of Sta. Maria dell’ Orto was a bare space, nearly fifty feet high and fifteen or twenty feet broad. “Let me paint you two pictures,” said Tintoret to the friars, who laughed at the extravagant proposal. “A whole year’s income would not suffice for such an undertaking,” they replied. “You shall have no expense but for the canvas and colors,” said Tintoret. “I shall charge nothing for my work.” And on these terms he executed “The Last Judgment” and “The Worship of the Golden Calf.” The creator of those masterpieces could no longer be ignored. Here was a power, a variety, which hostility and envy could not gainsay: they must note, though they refused to admire. It was in 1546, or thereabouts, that Tintoret uttered this challenge. In a little while he had orders for four pictures for the School of St. Mark; one of which, “St. Mark Freeing a Fugitive Slave,” soon became popular, and has continued so. “Here is coloring as rich as Titian’s, and energy as daring as Michael Angelo’s!” visitors still exclaim. Other commissions followed, until there came that which the Venetian prized above all others,—an order to paint for the Ducal Palace. As the patriotic Briton aspires to a monument in Westminster Abbey, as the Florentine covets a memorial in Santa Croce, so the Venetian artist coveted for his works a place in the Palace of the Doges. That was his Temple of Fame. His dream, however, soared
- 38. beyond the gratification of personal ambition: he desired that through him the glory and beauty of Venice might be enhanced and immortalized. This devotion to the ideal of a city, this true patriotism, has unfortunately almost disappeared from the earth. The very conception of it is now unintelligible to most persons. The city where you live—New York, Boston, London—you value in proportion as it affords advantages for your business, objects for your comfort and amusement; but you quit it without compunction if taxes be lower and trade brisker elsewhere. You are interested in its affairs just in so far as they affect your own. When you build a dwelling or a factory, you do not inquire whether it will improve or injure your neighbor’s property, much less whether it will be an ornament to the city; you need not even abate a nuisance until compelled to do so by the law. But to the noble-minded Venetian, his city was not merely a convenience: it was a personality. Venezia was a spiritual patroness, a goddess who presided over the destiny of the State; he and every one of his fellow-citizens shared the honor and blessing of her protection. She had crowned with prosperity the energy and piety, the rectitude and justice, of his ancestors through many centuries. Every act of his had more than a personal, more even than a human, bearing. How would it affect her?—that was his test. He could do nothing unto himself alone; for good or for ill, what he did reacted upon the community, upon the ideal Venezia. The outward city—the churches, palaces, and dwellings—was but the garment and visible expression of that ideal city. Venezia had blessed him, and he was grateful; she was beautiful, and he loved her. His gratitude impelled him to deeds worthy of her protection; his love blossomed in gifts that should increase her beauty. This reverence and devotion have, as I remarked, vanished from among men; yet in this ideal beams the conception of the true commonwealth. Observe that those three cities which held such an ideal before them have bequeathed to us the most precious works of beauty. Athens, Florence, Venice,—these are the Graces among the
- 39. cities. At Karnak, at Constantinople, at Rome, at Paris, you will behold stupendous ruins or imposing monuments commemorating the pride and power of individual Pharaohs, Sultans, Cæsars, Popes, and Napoleons, but you will not find the spirit which was worshiped by the beautifying of the Acropolis, and of republican Florence, and of Venice. In which modern city will the most diligent search discover it? Tintoret, then, had at last earned the privilege of consecrating his genius to Venezia. His first work for her seems to have been a portrait of the reigning Doge.[8] Then he painted two historical subjects,—“Frederick Barbarossa being crowned by Pope Adrian,” and “Pope Alexander III excommunicating Frederick Barbarossa;” and “The Last Judgment,” destroyed by the fire of 1557. Not long thereafter began his employment by the brothers of the confraternity of San Rocco. For their church, about 1560, he painted two scenes in the life of St. Roch, and then he joined in competition for a ceiling painting for the Salla dell’ Albergo in the School itself. The brothers called for designs, and upon the appointed day Paul Veronese, Andrea Schiavone, Giuseppe Salviati, and Federigo Zuccaro submitted theirs. But Tintoret had outsped them, and when his design was asked for he caused a screen to be removed from the ceiling, and lo! there was a finished picture of the specified subject. Brothers and competitors were astonished, and not greatly pleased. “We asked for sketches,” said the former. “That is the way I make my sketches,” replied Tintoret. They demurred; but Tintoret presented the picture to the School, one of whose rules made it obligatory that all gifts should be accepted. The displeasure of the confraternity soon passed away, and Tintoret was commissioned to furnish whatever paintings should be required in future. An annual salary of one hundred ducats was bestowed upon him, in return for which he was to give at least one painting a year. Generously did he fulfil the contract; for at his death the School possessed more than sixty of his works, for which he had been paid but twenty-four hundred and forty-seven ducats.
- 40. [8] It is interesting to know that the price regularly paid to Titian and Tintoret for state portraits was twenty-five ducats (about thirty-one dollars). Painters who have not a hundredth part of the genius of either Titian or Tintoret now receive one hundred times that sum. In 1577 a fire in the Ducal Palace destroyed many of the paintings, and when the edifice was restored the government looked for artists to replace them. Titian being dead, his opposition had no longer to be overcome; yet even now Tintoret had to compete with men of inferior powers, but of stronger influence. Nevertheless, to him and Paul Veronese was assigned the lion’s share of the undertaking, and for ten years those two men labored side by side, in noble rivalry, to eternize the beauty and the glory of Venice. In 1588, owing to the death of Paul Veronese, who with Francesco Bassano had been commissioned to paint a “Paradise” in the Hall of the Grand Council, the work was transferred to Tintoret, who devoted to it the last six years of his life, and left in it the highest expression not only of his genius, but of Italian painting.[9] Old age robbed him of none of his energy, but added sublimity to his imagination, and interfused serenity and mellowness throughout his work. Still teeming with plans, he died of a gastric trouble, after a fortnight’s illness, on the 31st of May, 1594.[10] [9] Has any one remarked that when Tintoret was painting the “Paradise,” Cervantes, Spain’s spokesman before the nations, Montaigne, the largest figure in French literature, and Shakespeare, paragon not of England only, but of the world, were his contemporaries? Those four might have met in his studio; and Science might have furnished three peerless representatives,—Bacon, Galileo, and Kepler. [10] Tintoret is buried in the church of Santa Maria dell’ Orto.
- 41. With this clue, spun from the discursive records of Ridolfi (whose Meraviglie dell’ Arte was first published in 1648), we can pass through the labyrinth of Tintoret’s career. There are, besides, several anecdotes which help us to know the man’s personality better: if all be not authentic, at least all agree in attributing to him certain well- defined traits. As a workman, as we have seen, Tintoret was indefatigable. His lifelong yearning was not for praise, but for opportunity to work. Modesty he had to a degree unrecorded of any other painter, although none seems to have been more confident of his own powers.[11] Like Shakespeare, he wrought his masterpieces swiftly, and left them to their fate, because his imagination, like Shakespeare’s, was already on the wing for higher quarry. There was in the man an inflexible dignity, born of self-respect, which neither the allurements of popularity nor the flattery of the great could bend. When invited by the Duke of Mantua to go to that city and execute some paintings, Tintoret replied that wherever he went his wife wished to accompany him; at which the Duke bade him bring his wife and family, had them conveyed to Mantua in a state barge, and entertained them at his palace “at magnificent expense for many days.” He urged Tintoret to settle there; but the Venetian could not be persuaded to renounce his allegiance to Venice. He saw that titles would add nothing to his fame, and refused an offer of knighthood from Henry III of France. Princes and grandees and illustrious visitors to Venice went to his house; but though he received them courteously, he sought no intimacy with them. His time was too precious, his projects were too earnest, to allow of aristocratic dissipation. He had a keen sense of humor, which displayed itself now in some ready reply, now in genial conversation with his familiars. Ridolfi relates that certain prelates and senators who visited him whilst he was making sketches for the “Paradise” asked him why he worked so hurriedly, whereas John Bellini and Titian had been deliberate and painstaking. “The old masters,” said Tintoret, “had not so many to bother them as I have.” At another time, at a gathering of amateurs, a woman’s portrait by Titian was
- 42. lauded. “That’s the way to paint,” said one of the critics. Tintoret went home, took a sketch by Titian and covered it with lampblack, painted a head in Titian’s manner on the same canvas, and showed it at the next meeting of these amateurs. “Ah, there’s a real Titian!” they all agreed. Tintoret rubbed off the lampblack from the original sketch and said: “This, gentlemen, is indeed by Titian; that which you have admired is mine. You see now how authority and opinion prevail in criticism, and how few there are who really understand painting.” Pietro Aretino, that depraved adventurer and most successful blackmailer in literature, was one of Titian’s intimates and partisans. He wished, nevertheless, to have his portrait painted by Tintoret, who was in no wise afraid of the scoundrel’s enmity, although most of the prominent personages of the time quailed before it. Aretino being posed, Tintoret furiously drew a hanger from under his coat. Aretino was terrified lest he should be punished for his malicious tongue, and cried out, “Jacopo, what are you about?” “I am only going to take your measure,” said Tintoret complacently; and, measuring him from head to foot, he added, “your height is just two and a half hangers.” Aretino’s impudence returned. “You’re a great madman,” he said, “and always up to your pranks.” But this grim hint sufficed; the rascal never after dared to slander Tintoret, but, on the contrary, tried to ingratiate himself into his friendship. [11] Two instances are worthy of record. Having agreed to paint a large historical picture for the Doges’ Palace, he said to the procurators, “If any other shall, within the space of two years, paint a better picture of this subject, you shall take his and reject Footnote: mine.” At first his enemies spoke so censuringly of his “St. Mark Freeing the Fugitive Slave” that the brethren hesitated whether to accept it; whereupon Tintoret had it brought back to his studio. Afterwards the brethren repented, begged for its return, and ordered three other pictures.
- 43. In his home Tintoret enjoyed tranquillity. His wife, Faustina de’ Vescovi, was thrifty and dignified, and perhaps she was not a little annoyed by the “unpracticalness” of her husband. According to tradition, when he went out she tied up money for him in his handkerchief, and bade him give an exact account of it on his return. Having spent his afternoon and money with congenial spirits at some rendezvous whose name, unlike that of the Mermaid, where Elizabethan wits caroused, has been lost, he playfully assured Madonna Faustina that her allowance had gone to help the poor. She was particular that he should wear the dress of a Venetian citizen; but if he happened to go abroad in rainy weather, she called out to him from an upper window to come back and put on his old clothes. We have glimpses of him passing to and fro in Venice with Marietta, his favorite daughter, a painter of merit, whose early death saddened his later years.[12] Of his other children, two daughters entered a nunnery; a third married Casser, a German; his eldest son, Domenico, adopted his father’s profession, and assisted him in his work; another son went to the bad, and was cut off from an inheritance by his father’s will. In spite of his habit of giving away pictures, or of charging a small price for them, Tintoret bequeathed a comfortable fortune to his heirs. [12] Marietta was born in 1560, and died in 1590. A few of his precepts and suggestions concerning art have come down to us through Ridolfi, who had them from Aliense, one of Tintoret’s pupils. “The study of painting is arduous,” he used to say; “and to him who advances farthest in it more difficulties appear, the sea grows ever larger.” “Students must never fail to profit by the example of the great masters, Michael Angelo and Titian.”
- 44. “Nature is always the same; in painting, therefore, muscles must not be varied by caprice.” “In judging a picture, observe if, at the first examination, the eye is satisfied, and if the author has obeyed the great principles of art; as to the details, each will fall into error. Do not go immediately to look at a new work, but wait till the darts of criticism have all been shot, and men are accustomed to the sight.” Being asked which are the most beautiful colors, he answered, “Black and white; because the former gives force to figures by deepening the shadows, the latter gives the relief.” He insisted that only the experienced artist should draw from living models, which lack, for the most part, grace and symmetrical forms. “Fine colors,” he said, “are sold in the Rialto shops; but design is got from the casket of genius, by hard study and long vigils, and is therefore understood and practiced by but few.” Odoardo Fialeti asked him what to study. “Drawing,” replied Tintoret. Somewhat later, Fialeti sought further advice. “Drawing, and again drawing,” Tintoret reiterated. “Art must perfect nature,” was his guiding rule; and he instanced that Greek artist who modeled an Aphrodite by selecting the best features of the five most beautiful women he could find. His studio was in the most retired part of his house. Few were admitted to it, and they had to find their way thither up a dark staircase and along dark passages, by the light of a candle. There he spent most of his time,—a grave man ordinarily, as must ever be the case with genius which ranges the utmost abysses and sublimities; at heart a solitary man, so far as the absence of flesh-and-blood companions constitutes solitude, but forever attended by the great associates of his imagination. Laconic, too, in speech as with his
- 45. brush; as when, in reply to a long letter from his brother, he wrote simply, “Sir: no.” But upon occasion—as that anecdote of Madonna Faustina’s allowance shows—he indulged in conviviality; and he had the gift, peculiar to a gentleman, of “being easy with persons of all ranks, and of putting them at ease.” “With his friends he preserved great affability. He was copious in fine sayings and witty hits, putting them forth with much grace, but without sign of laughter; and when he deemed it opportune, he knew also how to joke with the great.” Tintoret’s genius was only partially acknowledged during his lifetime, and his fame has suffered strange vicissitudes since his death. At times he has been extolled with meaningless extravagance; oftener condemned, after Vasari’s lukewarm fashion, or passed over without mention. Not until Mr. Ruskin came and opened the eyes of the world had Tintoret been adequately appreciated for those points of excellence wherein he has neither rival nor second. He has suffered for the same reasons that Shakespeare was long unesteemed in France: his works are bold, very rapid, often unequal, not in the least to be measured by the yardstick of conventionalism; he treats many new subjects, and the old subjects he always treats in new fashion, thereby provoking formalists to accuse him of wilful oddity or caprice; his reputation for swiftness of execution was deemed by many presumptive evidence that he was superficial; above all, his imagination was so rich and so powerful that it required a cognate imagination to follow it. Moreover, Tintoret was the last master of the great era of Italian painting. After him came schools which did not rely upon originality, but upon the inspiration of former masters. Pictures were but specimens of technique, and the models chosen for imitation were naturally those in which technique could be most easily reduced to rules. The public, as well as the painters themselves, gradually lost the power of valuing art as a spiritual expression. Word by word, sentence by sentence, the great language of painting was forgotten, until at last it became as a dead language. It was inevitable that Tintoret’s works, which had not always been understood by his
- 46. contemporaries, should baffle the interpreters of art grammars and the pedagogues of technique. Again, Tintoret’s pigments have suffered more than those of any other master. The darker colors, in many cases, have become almost black; the lighter have faded, and sometimes completely changed. [13] How far this is due to an original defect in the paints, how far to exposure and neglect, I cannot say. It must always be remembered that, as popular canvases have been frequently varnished and restored, many Titians and Raphaels are as fresh to-day as they were when they left the easel. How much remains of the original painting is another question. Directors of galleries aim at pleasing the public, not at respecting the preferences of connoisseurs, and the public craves lively colors. It would feel itself imposed upon if it traveled to Dresden only to find the “Sixtine Madonna” as dark as would probably be the case if the restorer had not interfered. In every gallery you will observe that the crowds flock to the brightest pictures, irrespective of their merits. The fact that they have been kept bright is an advertisement that they are deemed precious; and besides, it requires less time to glance at a clean canvas and pass on than to recover, after patient scrutiny and an effort of the imagination, some of the beauty which time and dust conceal. It is significant that the one painting by Tintoret which is most commonly mentioned by all classes of tourists—“St. Mark Freeing a Fugitive Slave”—is precisely that one which the directors of the Venice Academy keep polished as good as new. [13] In some of the paintings at San Giorgio the blues are now milky splotches. I cannot dismiss this subject without alluding to another cause for the slight attention given to Tintoret: his pictures are almost invariably condemned to oblivion by the position in which they have been hung. You must look for them in dark corners near the ceiling, or in cross-lights which render an examination impossible. Of those which still exist in the churches for which they were painted, some
- 47. have been injured by the drippings from candles; others have been partly hidden by tabernacles, reliquaries, and other objects of church ceremonial. Travelers in Venice a generation ago record that rain leaked through the roof of the School of San Rocco, and soaked some of the canvases; others, hung near windows, have had to suffer from the strong sunlight for centuries. In the Ducal Palace, one series of ceiling paintings have succumbed to the daubing of restorers, and are now hardly recognizable as being Tintoret’s; while the matchless “Paradise,” when I recently saw it,[14] was falling rapidly to decay. The seams where the vast canvas was originally joined had rotted in many places; the canvas itself was warped and rumpled, forming little shelves and unevennesses on which the dust had collected so as to hide the colors; and from the ceiling dangled a ragged fringe of cobwebs, in some places two or three feet long. [14] In August, 1889. A few generations hence, when these incomparable works have been irretrievably damaged, posterity will wonder—with a wonder intensified by indignation—that we allowed them to perish. Early Christians, who mutilated pagan works of art because they believed them to be pernicious, may be excused; but what excuse has our age to offer? We pretend to cherish all manifestations of culture, and we have ample means to preserve them; yet whilst our museums are daily adding to their collections of half-barbarous antiquities, dug up in Arizona, in Mexico, in Yucatan, in Peru, in Asia Minor, in Mesopotamia, there are surely hastening to destruction scores of the works of the mightiest genius who ever honored painting. During the past twenty years, New York millionaires have paid more for the immoralities and inanities of modern French painters than would be necessary to erect a separate gallery in Venice for the proper preservation of Tintoret’s masterpieces. If there were but a single manuscript of Hamlet in the world, and no printing-presses, what should we say to those who allowed it to perish through neglect? Yet there are many of Tintoret’s pictures, each of them as precious in its way as a page of Hamlet, which we raise no voice to save. In our
- 48. selfishness, we forget that the treasures which we have inherited from the past are not ours to dissipate and destroy; we hold them in trust for the future, and woe unto us if, unmindful of our responsibility, we prove careless stewards.[15] [15] So long as the originals exist, copies of great paintings are as unsatisfactory as a Beethoven symphony or a Wagner opera on the piano; but when the originals have perished, copies may serve a worthy purpose in perpetuating at least the concept and general treatment of the painter. It is greatly to be desired that some capable student should do for Tintoret what Toschi has done for Correggio at Parma. A series of faithfully executed sketches would enable posterity to judge of Tintoret’s range of imagination and inexhaustible powers of treatment, although his coloring and drawing could not be reproduced. Many of his paintings have never been engraved, and not one has been well engraved.
- 49. II. HIS WORKS. What, then, are some of the qualities of Tintoret’s genius? First of all, he had vast scope: Christian and classic lore, the legend and story of Venice, contemporary scenes, and portraiture,—all these lay within his province. But scope alone, unguided by rarer powers, does not suffice for the equipment of the supreme master. Rubens had scope, even Doré had it, and neither ranks among the foremost. In Tintoret it was accompanied by a most intense imagination, which penetrated to the elemental reality and understood the intertangled relations of life. Imagination operated through him with a vigor more like Nature’s own than that of any other man except Shakespeare; a vigor which seems at once inexhaustible and effortless, which never wastes and never scants. In creating a beggar or a seraph he expended just as much energy as was necessary for each; you do not feel that one was harder for him than the other. Tintoret’s creations have this further resemblance to Shakespeare’s: they live! You do not exclaim, “This is a great picture!” but, “This is a great scene!” He is like a traveler who brings back views from a strange country: albeit you have never been there, yet the views are so real, the figures are painted so freely and lifelike, and not in conscious or conventional attitudes, that you cannot doubt their faithfulness, and are absorbed by the wonders and beauties they present. Tintoret never conspires to startle you by sensational devices. Even in those works where he is most daring he is really painting what his imagination saw naturally, and is no more bent on inventing oddities and marvels than was John in the Apocalypse. Before beginning a Biblical or an historical subject, he seems to have asked himself, “How did this look to a bystander?” and he relies upon the actuality of the scene to produce the desired impression. He has been charged, sometimes, with making Christ and his disciples too vulgar. Other painters have so accustomed you to look for a kingly personage in Christ, and for princely garments on his followers, that
- 50. when you first see a “Last Supper”: by Tintoret you miss the habitual elegance; for he shows you simple and earnest but not ignoble fishermen and artisans of Judea. If you contemplate them wisely, your astonishment will deepen as you reflect that it was through and by such lowly and zealous men as these, and not by philosophers and prelates and princes, that the gospel of brotherly love was disseminated among mankind. It is legitimate for an artist to invest an historic character with emblems which bespeak the significance posterity has attached to him; but it is wholesome to see him as he probably appeared to his contemporaries, before subsequent generations have discovered a retroactive importance in his career. Tintoret employed now one method and now the other, and whosoever has been moved by the “Christ before Pilate” and “The Crucifixion” of the School of San Rocco needs not to be told that pathos and sublimity belong only to the former method. Tintoret’s versatility would have made a lesser man renowned. He counted it but an amusement, when the learned critics chided him for not obeying academic rules, to imitate the style of Titian, or Paul Veronese, or Schiavone, so that the critics themselves were deceived and confounded. He invariably adapted his treatment to the requirements of each work: if it was to be viewed from a considerable distance, he painted broadly; if it was to be seen near, no one surpassed him in the delicacy and carefulness of his finish. This sense of fitness governed his composition as well as his drawing. In a picture intended for a refectory, for instance, he introduced proportions in harmony with the dimensions of that refectory, causing it to appear more spacious and imposing. Where Tintoret’s figures are not correctly drawn, the apparent fault was often intentional: restore the picture to the position for which he designed it, and the drawing will no longer offend; for he always took into account the distance and angle from which the spectator would look, and he is not responsible for the changes in location. In studying any picture, remember that there is one, and only one, point of view where it can be seen as the artist wished it to be seen. If you stand too far or too near, you will miss his purpose. In a
- 51. portrait by Titian or Tintoret, no line, no dot of color is superfluous: you must adjust your vision until the tiniest flake of white on the tip of the chin or on the pupils of the eyes shows you its reason for being there. Try to imagine that last perfecting touch away, and you will learn its value. For these men did nothing haphazard: they would as soon have wasted diamonds and rubies as their precious colors; every hair of their pencil was a nerve through which their imagination transmitted itself to the canvas. Although it be well-nigh impossible to describe a painting so that one who has not seen it can derive profit from the description, I shall attempt to point out a few of the characteristics of some of Tintoret’s other works, in the hope of refreshing the memory of readers who are already familiar with them, and of stimulating the interest of those who may see them hereafter. It is the thought Tintoret has expressed, and not the technique of his manner, to which I would call attention, believing that this can be in some measure made real even to those who cannot refer to the paintings themselves. One fact impresses us immediately,—Tintoret’s originality. Previous painters had used all the familiar Christian themes so often, that there had grown up a conventional form of representing each; but, although Tintoret used these themes, his treatment of them rarely recalls that of any other painters, and always demands fresh study. Giotto may be said to have fixed the norm which his successors generally followed, diverging from it only in details. Tintoret established a new norm. Moreover, he never copied himself; his inexhaustible imagination refused to repeat. It represented the same subject under different aspects, never twice alike. We have many replicas of Raphael’s and Titian’s works, but none, so far as I know, of Tintoret’s. In rare cases where two copies of a painting by him exist, one is the sketch. In one famous instance he is brought into direct comparison with his rival, Titian. They both painted “The Presentation of the Virgin,”
- 52. in somewhat similar manner. Titian conceives the scene as follows: In front of a stately pile of buildings, two flights of steps lead up to the threshold of the Temple, where stands a venerable high priest; near him are two other ecclesiastics and a youth. Spectators look out from the windows and balconies of the adjoining edifice upon Mary, a pretty little maiden, who has reached the first step of the second staircase, and, looking up at the high priest, prepares to finish the ascent. Immediately back of her figure is an ornate Corinthian column. Her mother and a friend wait at the foot of the staircase, and a goodly company of Venetian nobles is gathered near them,— like pleasure-seekers taking a stroll, who stop for a moment to witness a chance episode. An old woman with a basket of eggs sits in the foreground. A colonnade and pyramid close in the picture on the left,[16] and a pleasing view of mountains stretches out behind. [16] I use left and right to denote the positions as the spectator faces the picture. This is Tintoret’s conception: A high priest, patriarchal in dignity, stands at the top of a flight of steps leading to the door of the Temple. Just below him Mary is mounting, her slight form and dress being beautifully contrasted with the sky beyond. Behind her is a young woman (probably her mother, Anne) carrying a young child. At the foot of the steps, in the centre of the painting, another mother (one of Tintoret’s matchless creations) is pointing toward Mary, and telling her little daughter that she, too, will erelong be presented at the Temple. Two girls recline on the steps near by. On the left, seven or eight old men and idlers (such as one still sees at the approach to churches in Italy, and to mosques and synagogues in the Orient) are ranged along the stairs, indolently watching the scene. The shadow of the building falls upon them, and prevents their figures from being too prominent. There is no suggestion of Venice or Venetian nobles. The attention is not distracted by costly apparel or imposing architecture, but is fixed upon the chief actors, —upon the venerableness of the high priest, the simplicity and
- 53. confidingness of the little maiden, and the magnificent forms and naturalness of the women. Critics have disputed whether Titian’s picture or Tintoret’s be the earlier. The presumption is in favor of the former,[17] but there is no reason to cry plagiarism against either, because each master has worked out a similar conception with characteristic independence. The central idea—the youthful Virgin ascending the steps of the Temple to be received by the high priest—may be seen in one of Giotto’s frescoes.[18] What we admire is the originality of treatment in both pictures. To me, Tintoret’s conception seems the more nobly appropriate; and I know not in which of Titian’s works to look for a counterpart of that woman in Tintoret’s foreground, so easy, so living, so superb. [17] Crowe and Cavalcaselle give 1539 as the date of Titian’s “Presentation;” 1545–46 is usually assigned as the date of Tintoret’s. [18] At the Arena, Padua. As an example of Tintoret’s insight into the spiritual world, turn to his picture of Lucifer.[19] From early Christian times, the Evil One has been represented by very crude and vulgar symbols. A hideous face, horns, a tail, and cloven hoofs have come to be his accepted signs. Such a monster could never tempt even the frailest striver after righteousness; for this conception illustrates the loathsomeness of the results of sin, and not the allurements by which sin entraps us. It would be equally appropriate to show to a lover a crumbling skeleton as the effigy of the woman whom he loves. The Devil would make no converts if he announced himself to be the Devil, and dangled before men’s eyes the despair, the degradation, the infinite remorse, which are his actual merchandise, instead of the fleeting pleasures and deceitful promises under which he masks them. He is no bungler or fool, but supremely skilful in proportioning his enticement to the strength of his victim, and very alert in choosing
- 54. the moment most favorable for attack. Goethe, in his Mephistopheles, has portrayed the enemy of good under one of his aspects, emphasizing the cynical and wicked rather than the seductive and plausible qualities. Tintoret has depicted the latter. His Lucifer is still an angel, though fallen. He has a commanding and beautiful form, and a countenance which at first fascinates, until, on searching it more deeply, you fancy you discern a suggestion of duplicity, a hint of sensuality, in it. Bright-hued and strong are the plumes of his wings, and a circlet of jewels sparkles on his left arm, the sole emblem of the wearer’s wealth. Here is indeed a being whose beauty might seduce, whose guile might deceive,—one whose presence dazzles and attracts, for it has majesty and grace and charm. Here is a fit embodiment of that ambition which shrinks not from crime in order to possess power; or of that false pleasure which decoys men from duty, and, still flying beyond reach, leads its prisoner deeper and deeper into the abominations of the abyss. [19] At the School of San Rocco, Venice. With equal originality and truth, Tintoret has illustrated the allegory of the temptation of St. Anthony.[20] This subject is usually treated either absurdly or grotesquely; as when the saint is discovered in a grotto through which bats, mice, witches, and imps flit and gambol. Not one of these ridiculous creatures, we may safely say, would frighten or tempt anybody. But who are the enemies that a man whose life is dedicated to holiness, and who has taken the three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, must resist? Tintoret’s picture gives the answer. In it one of the figures, typifying Riches, offers gold and precious gems. “Why live a beggar?” she pleads softly; “take these and have power.” A second figure, Voluptuousness, is that of a woman fair in body. “Come with me,” she urges; “let us taste of joy together while there is still time.” A third, who (I think) represents Unbelief or Heresy, has already dashed the saint’s missal and rosary to the ground, has snatched up his scourge, and, endeavoring to drag him away, has plucked off his mantle. “Come with me,” this tempter seems to say; “there will be
- 55. no more scourging, and fasting, and mortification; with me your life shall be without care and unrestrained.” Nevertheless, Anthony, thus hard beset, looks heavenward, uttering a prayer for succor. Are not these apt personifications of those lower impulses to which even men of high resolve have succumbed? All the witches of the Brocken and all the bats in a Pharaoh’s tomb have nothing alluring about them. [20] In the church of San Trovaso, Venice. There are few of Tintoret’s paintings which will not make similar revelations, if you look attentively. Often what appears to be only a casual accessory is the key to the whole composition. Let me cite two instances of his imaginative use of color. The first occurs in “The Martyrdom of St. Stephen.”[21] The saint has fallen on his knees beneath the stoning of his persecutors, but there is no melodramatic spurting of blood or sign of physical pain. His face betokens fortitude, resignation, and forgiveness of his tormentors. He gazes up steadfastly into heaven, and sees the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God. The Almighty is clothed in a robe of red and a black mantle. In the background on earth, behind the martyr, a crowd watch the persecution; they are too far away for us to distinguish faces, but one of them, who is seated, is clothed in black and red. It is Paul, soon to acknowledge Christ and put on the livery of God. Again, in the “Paradise,” Tintoret gives profound significance to color as a symbol: Moses, the witness to the Old Covenant, and Christ, the witness to the New Covenant, have robes of similar colors. [21] In the church of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice. Mr. Ruskin was the first to point out this stroke of genius. The Doges’ Palace contains a score of Tintoret’s imaginative paintings and many of his portraits, and there are few churches in Venice which have not at least one altar-piece by him. His best portraits, as I think, outrank even Titian’s best: they have a vital
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