Читать книгу A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools - National Gallery (Great Britain) - Страница 77

Rubens (Flemish: 1577-1640). See 38.

"It is interesting to observe the difference in the treatment of this subject by the three great masters, Michael Angelo, Rubens, and Tintoret… Rubens and Michael Angelo made the fiery serpents huge boa-constrictors, and knotted the sufferers together with them. Tintoret makes … the serpents little flying and fluttering monsters, like lampreys with wings; and the children of Israel, instead of being thrown into convulsed and writhing groups, are scattered, fainting in the fields, far away in the distance. As usual, Tintoret's conception, while thoroughly characteristic of himself, is also truer to the words of Scripture. We are told that 'the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people'; we are not told that they crushed the people to death. And, while thus the truest, it is also the most terrific conception… Our instinct tells us that boa-constrictors do not come in armies; and we look upon the picture with as little emotion as upon the handle of a vase, or any other form worked out of serpents, when there is no probability of serpents actually occurring" (Stones of Venice: Venetian Index, "Rocco, Scuola di San," No. 24).