The Rosary.

THE ROSARY By Garry Wills (Viking, 2005)

This is an odd book. Consider the cover: In a vibrant, arresting detail from Michelangelo's Last Judgment, an angel uses a rosary like a rope to pull two souls up into heaven. Yet inside, Garry Wills devotes page after page to the art of Tintoretto--and only Tintoretto.

Of the book's modest 185 pages, Wills has written a bit less than half. The rest are various title pages, blank pages, pages of scripture quotations, and muddy black-and-white reproductions of 17 Tintoretto paintings of gospel scenes. Yet all 17 are also provided in the middle of the book in full, deeply nuanced color.

Even though he hasn't written a lot for this small volume, Wills offers what could be thought of as four tiny but distinctly different works. He begins with an introduction, arguing that the rosary, as a form of meditation, is in tune with other faiths and with the desire of modern people to find a personal core of spirituality.

After that, he provides a how-to for saying the rosary, including its history and those of its four prayers. Then there is a devotional in which Wills, like a retreat master, walks the reader through meditations on each of the 20 mysteries of the rosary.

But interspersed in this devotional is another work entirely--one in which Wills analyzes the Tintoretto paintings for what they have to say about the meaning and power of the gospel. This is the book's greatest value and where Wills lets his words soar with poetic wonder.

Commenting, for example, on a painting of the Annunciation, Wills writes, "The dove of the Holy Spirit plunges like a dive bomber, trailing a squadron of fighter angels." Tintoretto, he notes, paints the Ascension "as a kind of mystical explosion, the angel wings and victory palms slashing the air like shrapnel from the intense energies released from Christ's rise to the Father."

Good stuff. Darned good stuff, however odd the book is.