one of natural richness, unconscious of the means by which that richness is attained.

"The picture is built up in colours, the landscape is not a symbol, but scenic, and the men and palaces and hills are seen living or life-like in sun and shade and air. In this gorgeous yet masculine and robust realism Titian shows his great originality and claims to be the noblest representative of the Venetian school of colour.”—(C. and C.)

St. Mark Rescuing a Slave is an early Tintoret in his full Titianesque golden tone.

"In this picture, perhaps for the first time, Tintoretto goes beyond all the traditional Venetian aims in painting. The scene is far more living, and rather confused. The artist tries for foreshortenings of the most difficult kind, and betrays, for instance, in the ugly Saint floating head downwards, that all higher considerations are nothing to him, as long as he has the opportunity to display his mastery of external means. (Rubens studied much from this picture.) There is also an equally beautifully painted, but frivolous representation of the Adultress, who shows that she has no respect for the commonplace Christ."— (J. B.)

The Fall of Man, sometimes simply called Adam and Eve, and the Death of Abel are unfortunately rather at a disadvantage by having their quiet warm brown colouring thrust into too close proximity to the Miracle of St. Mark, and all three pictures suffer from the colour of the wall. The Death of Abel is the finer composition.

“There is no artificiality about it, no struggle for balance and symmetry, which is perhaps just evident in the other; and the result is completely satisfactory because it defies analysis. The conception is as good as the composition; the tempest of motion that the winds of passion have stirred-the sad world of sombre browns-with just a hope of better things suggested in the blue vista beyond. There is plenty of colour, nevertheless, in these

low tones, exquisitely lovely in their gradations, and the drawing is no less wonderful than the colour. Only Raphael could have drawn a figure so splendid as that of Abel. But if this pose and its contours are a marvel, what is to be said of the modelling of Adam's back in the companion picture? Many think it unsurpassed in this world."-(J. B. S. H.)

Mantegna's St. George is notable for a landscape marvellous in its detailed truthfulness:

"To which give ten minutes quietly, and examine it with a magnifying glass of considerable power. For in that you have a perfect type of the Italian methods of execution corresponding to the finish of the Dutch painters in the north; but far more intellectual and skilful. You cannot see more wonderful work, in minute drawing with the point of the brush; the virtue of it being that not only every touch is microscopically minute, but that, in this minuteness, every touch is considered and every touch right. It is to be regarded, however, only as a piece of workmanship. It is wholly without sentiment, though the distant landscape becomes affecting through its detailed truth-the winding road under the rocks, and the towered city, being as full of little pretty things to be searched out as a natural scene would be.”—(R.)

Finest of Veronese's paintings here is his grand altar-piece from San Zaccaria. The Madonna is a beautiful and high-bred Venetian lady, and the richly attired prelate bending before her has little of the saint about him. The freedom and full, broad manner of the picture, and the brilliant, though most tender, colour are altogether superb. In these respects, it is surely one of the finest of pictures.

A large Madonna Enthroned with Saints is a splendid composition in which the figures are finely modelled, especially the infant St. John.

"This is a characteristic example of the master, especially in its chromatic scheme. St. Jerome's head is of a

noble type. He is represented in a crimson velvet hood and a watered silk robe of a pale rose tint; the whole exquisitely harmonized. The marble inlay of the pedestal is carefully and delicately rendered."-(C. L. E.)

The Supper in the House of Levi was appropriately paid for, in part, with a few barrels of wine, the rest being what the poor monks could scrape together in the way of alms and penalties to replace a burned Titian in their refectory.

"Many of the figures, especially that of the master of the feast, are full of the noblest Venetian character. It was this picture that caused him to be hauled before the Inquisition for his irreverence in painting buffoons, drunkards, Germans, dwarfs, and similar indecencies, at supper with our Lord. It resembles the other feasts in the Louvre and elsewhere except that in this the architecture occupies too large a place. It not only fills the whole upper part of the composition, dividing it into arcades decorated with female bas-reliefs, but it is continued below, where, as ever, we see pages playing with big hounds in the balustered staircases, negroes bringing in beakers, and blonde Venetian ladies with golden locks.”— (C. B.)

"We could not leave Venice without going to the Academy if only to see one picture by Veronese among many others. I speak of the Virgin Presenting her Son to St. Jerome, St. Francis and St. Justine, a marvel of colour. The little St. John, who, standing on a pedestal, is giving his hand to St. Francis, is a delicious piece of morbidezza, grace and freshness. The composition is strange and lacking in unity, the personages are placed without relation to one another, or speaking to one another. The Infant Jesus is simply adorable. And what life-like heads! What an unexplicable enchantment! What irresistible magic!"-(C. B.)

By Carpaccio there are eleven important pictures, eight from the legend of St. Ursula. Ruskin recommends looking at them in the following order. "I. Maurus, the King of Brittany, receives the English

ambassadors, and has talk with his daughter touching their embassy. II. St. Ursula's Dream. III. King Maurus dismisses the English ambassadors with favourable answer from his daughter. (This is the most beautiful piece of painting in the rooms.) IV. The King of England receives the Princess's favourable answer. V. The Prince of England sets sail for Brittany, there receives his bride, and embarks with her on pilgrimage. VI. The Prince of England and his bride, voyaging on pilgrimage with the eleven thousand maidens, arrive at Rome, and are received by the Pope, who, 'with certain Cardinals,' joins their pilgrimage. (The most beautiful of all the series, next to the Dream.) VII. The Prince with his bride, and the Pope with his Cardinals, and the eleven thousand maids, arrive in the land of the Huns, and receive martyrdom there. In the second part of the picture is the funeral procession of St. Ursula. VIII. Ursula, with her maidens, and the pilgrim Pope, and certain Cardinals, in glory of Paradise. The architecture and landscape are unsurpassably fine; the rest much imperfect; but containing nobleness only to be learned by long dwelling on it."

66

In the Dream of St. Ursula

Carpaccio has taken much pains to explain to us, as far as he can, the kind of life she leads, by completely painting her little bedroom in the light of dawn, so that you can see everything in it. It is lighted by two doublyarched windows, the arches being painted crimson round their edges, and the capitals of the shafts that bear them, gilded. They are filled at the top with small round panes of glass; but beneath, are open to the blue morning sky, with a low lattice across them; and in the one at the back of the room are set two beautiful white Greek vases with a plant in each; one having rich dark and pointed green leaves, the other crimson flowers.

"These flower-pots stand on a shelf which runs all round the room, and beneath the window, at about the height of the elbow, and serves to put things on anywhere: beneath it, down to the floor, the walls are covered with green cloth; but above are bare and white. The second window is nearly opposite the bed, and in front of it is the princess's reading-table covered by a red