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Romanino and Moretto, the two great masters of Brescia in successive generations, both alike inspired above all else by the majesty, the majestic beauty, of religion–its persons, its events, every circumstance that belongs to it–are to be seen in friendly rivalry, though with ten years’ difference of age between them, in the Church of San Giovanni Evangelista; Romanino approaching there, as near as he might, in a certain candle-lighted scene, to that harmony in black, white, and grey preferred by the younger painter. Before this or that example of Moretto’s work, in that admirably composed picture of Saint Paul’s Conversion, for instance, you might think of him as but a very noble designer in grisaille. A more detailed study would convince you that, whatever its component elements, there is a very complex tone which almost exclusively belongs to him; the “Saint Ursula” finally, that he is a great, though very peculiar colourist–a lord of colour who, while he knows the colour resources that may lie even in black and white, has really included every delicate hue whatever in that faded “silver grey,” which yet lingers in one’s memory as their final effect. For some admirers indeed he is definable as a kind of really sanctified Titian. It must be admitted, however, that whereas Titian sometimes lost a little of himself in the greatness of his designs, or committed their execution, in part, to others, Moretto, in his work, is always all there–thorough, steady, even, in his workmanship. That, again, was a result of his late-surviving religious conscience. And here, as in other instances, the supposed influence of the greater master is only a supposition. As a matter of fact, at least in his earlier life, Moretto made no visit to Venice; developed his genius at home, under such conditions for development as were afforded by the example of the earlier masters of Brescia itself; left his work there abundantly, and almost there alone, as the thoroughly representative product of a charming place. In the little Church of San Clemente he is still “at home” to his lovers; an intimately religious artist, full of cheerfulness, of joy. Upon the airy galleries of his great altar-piece, the angels dance against the sky above the Mother and the Child; Saint Clement, patron of the church, being attendant in pontifical white, with Dominic, Catherine, the Magdalen, and good, big-faced Saint Florian in complete armour, benign and strong. He knows many a saint not in the Roman breviary. Was there a single sweet-sounding name without its martyr patron? Lucia, Agnes, Agatha, Barbara, Cecilia–holy women, dignified, high-bred, intelligent– have an altar of their own; and here, as in that festal high altar-piece, the spectator may note yet another artistic alliance, something of the pale effulgence of Correggio–an approach, at least, to that peculiar treatment of light and shade, and a pre-occupation with certain tricks therein of nature itself, by which Correggio touches Rembrandt on the one hand, Da Vinci on the other. Here, in Moretto’s work, you may think that manner more delightful, perhaps because more refined, than in Correggio himself. Those pensive, tarnished, silver side-lights, like mere reflexions of natural sunshine, may be noticed indeed in many another painter of that day, in Lanini, for instance, at the National Gallery. In his “Nativity” at the Brera, Procaccini of Verona almost anticipates Correggio’s Heilige Nacht. It is, in truth, the first step in the decomposition of light, a touch of decadence, of sunset, along the whole horizon of North-Italian art. It is, however, as the painter of the white-stoled Ursula and her companions that the great master of Brescia is most likely to remain in the memory of the visitor; with this fact, above all, clearly impressed on it, that Moretto had attained full intelligence of all the pictorial powers of white. In the clearness, the cleanliness, the hieratic distinction, of this earnest and deeply-felt composition, there is something “pre-Raphaelite”; as also in a certain liturgical formality in the grouping of the virgins–the looks, “all one way,” of the closely-ranged faces; while in the long folds of the drapery we may see something of the severe grace of early Tuscan sculpture–something of severity in the long, thin, emphatic shadows. For the light is high, as with the level lights of early morning, the air of which ruffles the banners borne by Ursula in her two hands, her virgin companions laying their hands also upon the tall staves, as if taking share, with a good will, in her self-dedication, with all the hazard of battle. They bring us, appropriately, close to the grave of this manly yet so virginal painter, born in the year 1500, dead at forty-seven.