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CHRISTMAS WITH TINTORETTO

Canon Jeremy Davies, Precentor (Thursday 5th December 2002)

A trip to Venice is always magical. I can see why novelists (as well as artists, poets and film makers are drawn there to give atmosphere, character and substance to their narratives.

On a recent visit to the Serenissima, I returned to the Scuola San Rocco, one of the ten great Scuolas whose fraternities sustained the cultural, commercial and religious life of Venice at the height of its power and prestige. Many of the Scuolas have been fabulously adorned by paintings of great masters and you can see them today in situ as they were originally intended to be seen. The finest is San Rocco, where for 24 years of his life (1564 to 1588) Tintoretto (so called because his father was a silk dyer and he himself was a small man) painted a series of biblical scenes from the Old and New Testaments.

It’s clear that Tintoretto was not only a master of his craft he was also an innovator, learning from his master Titian, and pushing the use of colour and perspective and light and form beyond their traditional limits. But that compared with a profound spirituality and a theological intelligence. He not only paints biblical scenes as narratives he also probed their religious significance.

His Nativity, for example, is a lesson in discipleship. Steps and stairways always evident in Tintoretto’s work are an invitation not only to the characters in the paintings but to us who look on to enter into the scene. The girl who welcomes the shepherds and points them to the entrance is beckoning us also. There is a ladder at the back of the cow shed indicating the path we have to follow to get to the first floor where Mary and Joseph and Jesus rest upon the straw.

Above them the pitched roof is untiled and we see a golden sky (and peering angels) through the roof timbers – timbers we can’t fail to notice which form three crosses over the nativity scene. Below the holy family, at the back of the shed (rather incongruously with the cow and the hen) is a peacock – a symbol of resurrection. Tintoretto deliberately places his nativity in the context of the saga of redemption, and we with the shepherds are invited to enter it.

We may begin with the arduous climb up rickety stairs to find the child and his parents – and some in the picture have already made the ascent. But on the left hand side, by a trick of perspective, are two youths who in their exuberance and enthusiasm to get there offer up what look like fresh laid eggs (signs of the new life), and reach in a single movement from ground level to the first floor. They are like impetuous Peters whose generosity of heart gets closer to the truth than the rest of us who are more painstaking in our discipleship.

This Christmas, as we come to the crib in our Christmas procession, I shall have Tintoretto’s procession to the birth very much in mind.

Jeremy Davies

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