CHAPTER XII

THE FINE ARTS AT VENICE

_Masons--Painters--Glass-workers--Printers_

Some prefer the pure design: Give me my gorge of colour, glut of gold In a glory round the Virgin made for me! Titian’s the man, not monk Angelico Who traces you some timid chalky ghost That turns the church into a charnel.

--_Browning._

Owing to the absorption of her energies in commerce and the eastern trend of her interests and activities Venice lagged behind the Tuscan masters in the practice of the finer arts. Her earliest craftsmen were Byzantines, and St Mark’s was modelled on the Church of the Holy Apostles at Constantinople and adorned by mosaicists from the same city. They were artists, rich in invention, and endowed with a perfect sense of beauty in design. The reliefs imbedded in the façades of St Mark’s and in scores of houses about the city of Venice bear ample testimony to their greatness. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries Byzantine art had become degenerate, and traces of native Venetian sculpture as early as the twelfth century have been argued from the rude carvings on the pillars which support the tabernacle of the high altar of St Mark’s. But it is not till we reach the masters of the characteristic Gothic, Transitional, and early Renaissance styles, that the important place due to Venice in the history of the mason’s craft is made clear. It is doubtful whether any of the Pisani actually worked at Venice, though their influence is beyond dispute. But Nicolo Lamberti, a Tuscan sculptor, worked on the decorations of the main archivolt of St Mark’s, Florentine artists carved some of the best figures and capitals in the façades of the Ducal Palace, and wrought one of the finest tombs in S. Zanipolo; Michelozzo is said to have built the Medici library at the monastery of St Giorgio Maggiore; and the design so often met with in monumental sculpture in Venice, two angels, one at either end of the tomb drawing aside a curtain to display the recumbent effigy of the dead was invented by a Florentine, Arnolfo di Cambio. Of the earliest Venetian masters it may be truly said that their works live after them, for little beyond their works is known of the Massegne and the Buoni who reached a comparatively higher stage of excellence in sculpture than their contemporaries did in painting. Jacobello and Piero delle Massegne (_dei Macigni_[62]), thus called because of their craft, were working in Venice towards the close of the fourteenth century. The statues of the apostles, the Virgin, and St Mark over the choir-screen, and others in the choir chapels of St Mark’s, the main portal of S. Stefano, the beautiful lunette over the Friar’s door at the Frari, and the tomb of Simone Dandolo in the same church are excellent examples of the style of these great artists. How much of the sculpture on the façades of the Ducal Palace was due to the Buoni it is difficult to say. The Buoni seem to have been Giovanni, the father, his son, Bartolomeo, and a certain Pantaleone Buon, once believed to be another son, but actually of no kinship with him. To Bartolomeo, sometimes known as Bartolomeo della Madonna dell’Orto, is ascribed the Porta della Carta of the Ducal Palace (1439) on the strength of an inscription _opera Bartholomei_. The reliefs of the Lion and of Doge Foscari are modern reproductions, but the original head of Foscari, preserved in the palace still, bears witness to the genius of this great craftsman.[63] He must not be confounded with another Bartolomeo Buon, known as Master Bartolomeo of Bergamo, also claimed as a native of Venice, who in 1493 superintended the painters in the Ducal Palace, and in 1500 presided over the works designed by Pietro Lombardo for the Procuratie Vecchie.

Certain craftsmen dubbed Riccio or Rizzo (Curly pate) now claim attention. Their identity is much canvassed by Italian authorities. Before the use of surnames became common it was the custom to refer to contemporaries by their Christian or nicknames to the confusion of biographers and critics. We meet with three Ricci who are stated to have worked at Venice, (1) Andrea Riccio of Padua living about 1400, who is said by Vasari to have executed the statues of Adam and Eve to be referred to presently. (2) Antonio Riccio or Rizzo, sometimes called Briosco, of Verona, who, according to Zanotto[64] was employed by the Republic to assist Antonio Loredan at the siege of Scutari.[65] He returned, after most effective service, covered with wounds, and the grateful Senate voted him and his sons in 1483 a pension for twenty years, and appointed him architect of the Ducal Palace after the fire in the same year, authorising him to draw for funds on the salt office. To him, and not to Andrea, are ascribed by Zanotto the masterly statues of Adam and Eve in the niches opposite the Scala dei Giganti, the Scala itself and the adjoining façade in the cortile and the rio façade. These on Francesco Sansovino’s authority are more commonly attributed to Antonio Bregno (also called Il Riccio or Rizzo). He is said to have been a contemporary of Scarpagnino (Antonio Scarpagni), who, in 1514, submitted designs for the new stone Rialto Bridge, and succeeded Sante Lombardo in the erection of the Scuola di S. Rocco. Bregno, however, is a mysterious figure who, so Zanotto declares, either never existed or was none other than Riccio the Veronese. It is clear, however, from the annals of Malipiero that in 1498, one Antonio Riccio or Rizzo, architect of the Ducal Palace, after spending 80,000 ducats left the work not half done, that he had by forged vouchers defrauded the Salt Office to the extent of 12,000 ducats, and bolted to Foligno, where he soon died.[66] To the family of Venetian masters (or, according to some authorities, Lombard immigrants from Carona on Lake Lugano), known as the Lombardi, are due the most beautiful and original of the early renaissance architecture and sculpture in Venice. Pietro Lombardo, said to have been the son of a mason named Martino, was working in Venice in 1462. In 1481 his design for the Church of the Miracoli was chosen, and the building was erected under his superintendence. When Ant. Riccio fled from Venice, Pietro succeeded him at the Ducal Palace, with a salary of 120 ducats, and for twelve years was the official architect of the Republic. Among his works in Venice are the fine statues of St Anthony and three other saints in S. Stefano. The altars of St James and St Paul in St Mark’s are also attributed to him. He is probably best known as the sculptor of the Dante Memorial at Ravenna. Antonio Lombardi, born before 1453, assisted his father at the Miracoli and on the tomb of Doge Pietro Mocenigo at S. Zanipolo. He collaborated with Aless. Leopardi on the bronze work in the Cappella Zen at St Mark’s. The statue of St Thomas Aquinas in S. Zanipolo is attributed to him. Martino Lombardo, whose relationship is unknown, was architect of the Scuola di San Marco after 1485, and was believed by Temanza to have built S. Zaccaria.[67] Moro Lombardo, probably a son of Martino, assisted his father in the Scuola di S. Marco. In 1524-7, Giulio Lombardo, probably son of Pietro, was acting in an advisory capacity to Sante or Zante Lombardo, a son of Pietro, born 1504, in the works at the Scuola di S. Rocco. The Church of S. Giorgio dei Greci ascribed to Sansovino is now attributed to Sante and one named Chiona.

Tullio Lombardi (1453-1537) was the son of Pietro, and the best sculptor of the family. Beside his work in the interior of the Miracoli, he executed the reliefs on the façade of the Scuola di S. Marco and the monument to Giov. Mocenigo in S. Zanipolo. He also collaborated with Leopardi on the Vendramin tomb in the same church. To the Lombardi school we owe the beautiful Cappella Giustiniano at S. Francesco della Vigna, and a fine relief in S. Giov. Grisostomo (Coronation of the Virgin and the Twelve Apostles).

Aless. Leopardi (1450-1521) raised Venetian sculpture to its highest plane of technical perfection. The Venetian artist was peculiarly privileged. Unlike the Pisani and other Tuscans who drew their inspiration from Roman antiques, he was able to draw from the fountain-head. The lands of Hellas were subject to the Republic, and, doubtless, many a young apprentice spent his _Wanderjahre_ there. Enthusiasm gave insight, and both in technique and design we seem to trace in Tullio Lombardo and Aless. Leopardi the influence of Greek originals. To Leopardi are due the Vendramin tomb in S. Zanipolo, the finest of renaissance sepulchral monuments, and the completion of the Colleoni statue. He modelled the Six Virtues and the Madonna Della Scarpa in the Cappella Zen. The three magnificent bronze bases for the flagstaffs in front of St Mark’s were wrought by him. But soon aversion from the study of nature, and the growing pomp of private and public life reacted on the renaissance artists; their work became mannered and feeble; they lost individuality and character. They found in Venice a rich field for exploitation. She was not only the wealthiest, she was the most tranquil of European states. Imperial in policy, oligarchical in government, she sought by the splendour of the arts and by magnificent pageantry to feed the pride of her nobles, and lay any spirit of political freedom that might have survived in her people.

A giant among the sixteenth century masters who were attracted to Venice was Jacopo Tatti (1477-1570) of Florence, the bosom friend and colleague of Andrea del Sarto, known as Sansovino, from his intimate association with his master, Andrea Contucci, of Monte Sansovino. Jacopo, while sketching from the antique at Rome, attracted the notice of Bramante, who was charmed by a wax model of the Laocoon executed by the young student, and judged by Raphael to be the best of four others. It was cast in bronze, and subsequently found its way to the Signory of Venice. In 1527, after the sack of Rome, he came to Venice, and was employed by Doge Gritti to strengthen the domes of St Mark’s. He did his work so amazingly well (_fece stupire Venezia_, says Vasari) that he was appointed in 1529 chief architect, with a house and a salary of 80 ducats, afterwards increased to 180. In 1536 the Senate decreed the erection of a library to contain the books left to the Republic by Petrarch and Cardinal Bassarione. Sansovino was charged with the building, now known as the _Libreria Vecchia_, and esteemed by Palladio to be probably the richest and most ornate edifice erected since the time of the ancients. The Signory were royal pay-masters, but intolerant of bad work; and when, on December 18, 1545, part of the vaulting fell, Sansovino was imprisoned, fined a thousand crowns, and deprived of his office. He succeeded, however, in proving his innocence, and was released and compensated by a solatium of 900 crowns, and restored to his former position. Sansovino’s work, however, ends at the sixteenth arch from the Campanile corner. Twelve years after his death it was finished by Scamozzi. He was a most lovable artist, ever ready with help and counsel to those who entreated him; the friend of every great man of his time; in youth a most winning personality; in age venerable and alert. At ninety-three, if we may trust Vasari, his eyes were undimmed, and he bore himself erect as ever. Among other works by him at Venice may be specified the beautiful loggia destroyed by the collapse of the Campanile, in July 1902, and the bronze doors leading to the sacristy, St Mark’s, on which he is said to have worked during a period of twenty years; the six bronze reliefs in the choir of the same church; the colossal statues of Mars and Neptune at the top of the giants’ staircase, and the Scala d’Oro in the Ducal Palace, and many mansions and churches, the choicest of which, S. Geminiano, no longer exists.

Of all his followers, Girolamo Campagna is the most talented. Good examples of his works are the bronze statues of St Mark and St Francis in the Redentore, the small statues of St Francis and St Clare in the Miracoli, and the reclining figure of Doge Cicogna (1595) in the Gesuiti. Aless. Vittoria of Trent (1525-1603) was a facile artist. Among his works are the statue of St Sebastian in S. Salvatore, the fine bust of Cardinal Gasparo in the Madonna dell’ Orto, the ruined chapel of the Rosary in S. Zanipolo, and his own tomb in S. Zaccaria. Michele Sammichele (1484-1559), the great Veronese master and famous military engineer, was employed by the Republic between 1530 and 1550, and designed the great fortifications in the mainland provinces, on the Dalmatian coast, at Corfù, Cyprus and Romania, many of which remain to this day. On his return to Venice, he constructed the magnificent fortress of S. Andrea del Lido, a stupendous work, now threatened with ruin, owing to erosion by currents set up by the new dykes near the Lido. The Palazzo Grimani on the Grand Canal, the Ponte del Bucintoro at the Arsenal are by this master, whose architecture so dominates Verona. He was an earnest, God-fearing man, of grave, subdued, yet cheerful disposition, generous and tender-hearted.

The once famous, but now depreciated, Andrea Palladio of Vicenza (1518-80), came to Venice about 1550, where he designed, among other edifices, the noble cloister of the Carità; the refectory, cloister and church[68] of S. Giorgio Maggiore (1556-79); and the Redentore, the greatest of his ecclesiastical buildings (1578-80). The interiors of Palladio’s churches, by their austere beauty, their symmetry and proportion, are among the greatest achievements of the later Renaissance. He had an extraordinary vogue in Venice, and designed many patrician villas on the mainland.

Vicenzo Scamozzi of Vicenza (1552-1616) was attracted to Venice by the fame of Sansovino and Palladio, under whom he studied; like his masters he spent much time at Rome. On returning to Venice he was employed to complete the Libreria Vecchia in 1582, and two years later carried on the Procuratie Nuove, spoiling Sansovino’s beautiful design by adding a storey. The _porta dell’ anticollegio_ and other works on the Ducal Palace are by him. He, too, was in much demand as a designer of palaces in Venice and on the mainland.

Greatest of the seventeenth-century masters, and one who laid the most monstrous burdens of stone on the patient Venetian soil, was Baldassari Longhena (1600-82), a native of Venice and pupil of Scamozzi. He helped to complete the Procuratie Nuove in 1638, and in 1640 was appointed the official architect of the Republic. The foundation-stone of his most famous work, S. Maria della Salute, was laid in 1631. The church was still unfinished in 1660. The curious will find the design of this edifice to have been suggested by the section and ground-plan of a temple described by Poliphilus and illustrated in the Hypnerotomachia[69]--that treasure-house of design so often looted by Renaissance and modern artists. Two massive edifices on the Grand Canal, the Pesaro and Rezzonico Palaces (1650); the high altars of S. Francesca della Vigna and S. Pietro di Castello; the interior of the Scalzi, “that pandemonium of details surpassed only by the greater delirium of Pozzo’s high altar,” were all designed by this master, whose heavy hand may also be seen in the masonry erected to Doge Pesaro in the Frari.

* * * * *

More completely than her masons were Venetian painters dominated by rigid Byzantine formalism. It seems barely credible that Jacobello del Fiore, who for twenty-one years was head of the painters’ guild in Venice, and Michele Giambono should have been the contemporaries of Masaccio and Fra Angelico. The emancipation of Venetian painting from the numbing tradition of the East did not begin until the employment of the Umbrian masters, Gentile da Fabriano and Vittore Pisano, to decorate the Ducal Palace in 1419, and the rise of the Vivarini in Murano in 1440-1500. The marked German character of the earliest work of the Vivarini is due to the association of Antonio Vivarini with Giovanni Alemano (John the German), who was trained in the Cologne school, and by some authorities is believed to be a Vivarini. Later, Antonio collaborated with his younger brother, Bartolomeo. Then the brothers separated, and each worked alone. Bartolomeo, by far the greater personality, was much influenced by Mantegna and the Paduan school, and under him Venetian painting takes a big step towards naturalism. The sacred altar-picture becomes less conventional, the figures are less cramped, the colours brighten, the decoration is richer. When Antonello da Messina, about 1473, brought the perfected Flemish method of painting in oils to Venice, Bartolomeo was not slow to adopt the new medium. Alvise Vivarini, his younger kinsman, made further use of Antonello’s innovation, and touched, moreover, by the spirit of the Bellini, the young painter, whose works cover the period between 1464-1502, begins to foreshadow the future glories of Venetian painting. The earnest, severe, almost harsh features become softened, a strange grace and gentleness comes like a breath of springtime and promise over the whole field of Venetian art.

Besides several paintings by the Vivarini in the Accademia there are in Venice fine examples of Bartolomeo’s work, the St Augustine, in S. Zanipolo; a Coronation of the Virgin by Giovanni Alemano and Antonio Vivarini, with marked German traits, in S. Pantaleone; three altar-pieces by the same two painters in S. Zaccaria; an early work (1473) in three compartments by Bartolomeo, the Meeting of Joachim and Anna, the Birth of the Virgin, and Mary as the Mater Misericordiæ in S. Maria Formosa; a Virgin between St Andrew and St John (1478), in S. Giovanni in Bragora, where are also two works by Alvise, one, the Resurrection, a masterpiece. In the Frari are two altar-pieces by Bartolomeo (1474 and 1478), and a fine example of Alvise’s work, St Ambrose Enthroned, finished after his death in 1502 by his pupil Basaiti. The beautiful Virgin and Child with two angels in the Redentore, formerly attributed to Giovanni Bellini, is now generally given to Alvise. The striking and noble figure of St Clare (No. 393) in the Accademia is by this master, to whom modern criticism assigns a very high place[70] in the history of Venetian painting. Many portraits formerly ascribed to Antonello da Messina are now recognised as Alvise’s work.

But it is to the paintings of Gentile, and Giovanni, sons of Jacopo Bellini, that the traveller will turn again and again with increasing admiration and reverence. In 1421 Jacopo, who had worked under the Umbrian masters in the Ducal Palace, went with Gentile da Fabriano to Florence, and there for several years was his pupil in the very centre of the renaissance of art. In 1430 he set up a workshop in Venice, and about 1450, having moved with his two sons to Padua, came under the powerful influence of Mantegna, who married his daughter Nicolosa. Venice possesses but two examples of his work, No. 582 in the Accademia and a Crucifixion in Room XV. of the Correr Museum. Only from the master’s sketches in the British Museum and in the Louvre can an adequate conception of his genius be obtained. Gentile, the elder of the sons, whose name was given him in memory of Jacopo’s beloved master Gentile da Fabriano, was born in 1429, Giovanni about 1430. Vasari tells of the affectionate rivalry of the artist family; the father’s joy as the growing excellence of his sons already eclipsed his own fame; the sons, after separating each to his own workshop, holding one another, and both, the father, in great reverence, each praising his brother’s work and depreciating his own, seeking modestly to excel in kindness and courtesy as well as in the practice of his art. In 1464 Gentile painted the shutters of the organ in St Mark’s with the figures of Saints Mark, Jerome, Theodore and Francis. They still exist, but almost ruined, in the Office of Works. No. 570 in the Accademia, a faded painting, the Apotheosis of the Patriarch S. Lorenzo, is an early work, refined and dignified. In 1479 the Doge, being asked by Sultan Mahomet II. to recommend a good painter of portraits from Venice, sent Gentile and two assistants to Constantinople and appointed Giovanni to continue his brother’s work in the Ducal Palace. His remarkable portrait of the Sultan is now in the Layard Collection in Venice. Gentile returned, after a comparatively short stay, loaded with presents and honours, to rejoin his brother at the Ducal Palace. In 1487 Titian is said to have entered his workshop as an apprentice. Later, the master painted for the guild of St John the Evangelist the three scenes illustrating the miracles of the Holy Cross, now in the Accademia. Towards the end of his life he began the Preaching of St Mark, now in the Brera at Milan, and, falling sick, left his sketch-book to his brother on condition that he completed the picture. Gentile was a good draughtsman, a brilliant colourist, an alert observer, boldly making use of his Eastern experiences to add local colour to his subjects. His compositions, however, are rather crowded and wanting in central emphasis; his treatment is flat and hard. His death, February 23, 1507, is noted by Sanudo.

Giovanni, his more gifted brother, is the tenderest and noblest of Venetian painters. He gave more attention to individual figures than Gentile, uniting grace and firmness of outline with warmth and splendour of colouring; dignity and strength with variety and beauty of form. His creations, once seen, haunt us like memories of beloved friends. In early life Giovanni was much dominated by the personality of his brother-in-law Mantegna, to whom some of his works[71] have been attributed. A good example painted in _tempera_ of his early Madonnas may be seen (No. 583) in the Accademia. An apocryphal story is told of the artist going to Antonello to have his portrait painted in order to learn the secret of painting in oils. But the new method must have been too well known to have made the trick necessary. Venice possesses several altar-pieces by Giovanni, besides the collection in the Accademia, now conveniently placed in Room XVIII. The altar-piece in the Frari and that in S. Zaccaria are the finest examples of the master’s art in Europe, painted in the maturity of his genius--1488 and 1505. They are held by Ruskin to be the two finest pictures in the world. In S. Pietro Martire at Murano is another of the same period. In 1474, says the annalist Malipiero, Zuano and Zentil Bellini, brothers, were employed at the Ducal Palace to restore the pictures of the meeting of Pope Alexander and the Emperor Barbarossa, which had fallen from the walls because of damp and old age. The brothers promised that their work should last two hundred years. They reckoned without the demon of fire, for a hundred years later it was devoured by the conflagration of 1577. An altar-piece in S. Giovanni Grisostomo, painted when Giovanni was eighty-seven years of age, proves that the old craftsman was ever a learner. Albert Dürer, when in Venice, was profoundly impressed by the veteran painter and wrote that although very old, he was still the best in his art. He died in 1516, full of years and rich in fame. Dürer was well treated at Venice. The Doge and the Patriarch came to see his paintings. Bellini praised him highly and offered to buy one of his works. His only complaint was that the Painters’ Guild summoned him three times before the magistrates, who ordered him to pay four ducats to the guild for permission to practise his art.

Vittore Carpaccio is the chief of the newer generation of painters trained under the influence of the Bellini. His talent for telling a story with richness of detail and quaint simplicity has never been surpassed. The series painted for the Guild of S. Ursula (1490-95) are admirable examples of his power, and of capital importance for the study of contemporary Venetian costume and architecture. Smaller in scale but equally charming and naive are the St George and the Dragon, and St Jerome series of paintings in the lower hall of S. Giorgio degli Schiavoni and the St George and the Dragon in the Sala del Conclave at the Salute. The well-known Presentation at the Temple, a noble work, No. 44 in the Accademia (1510), is obviously inspired by Giovanni Bellini. The altar-piece in S. Vitale (1514) and three paintings in the Accademia, Nos. 89, 90, 91, painted in 1515, are later works telling all too plainly of declining power. Little is known of Carpaccio’s life. He travelled in the East, was working at Venice in 1479, and died in 1525.

Sebastiani (Lazzaro Bastiani), his contemporary, worked with Gentile Bellini, Benedetto Diana and Mansueti in the decoration of the Guild of St John the Evangelist. The Offering of the Relic to the Brotherhood, No. 561 in the Accademia is by his hand. His works are rare. Three pictures in the Accademia; a Pietà in S. Antonino, much influenced by Squarcione; a more pleasing work, the S. Donato, at Murano--are all that Venice can show by this not greatly inspired artist. He was chosen by Giovanni Bellini, 1508, to value Giorgione’s frescoes on the façade of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, and died in 1512.

To Mansueti are due two of the Guild of St John pictures, rich in examples of Venetian costume and architecture, and two scenes from the life of St Mark painted for the guild of that name, now placed in the apse of Room XV. in the Accademia. He and his colleague Benedetto Diana, who painted one of the legends of the Holy Cross for the Guild of St John, were influenced by Gentile Bellini and Carpaccio. Benedetto’s masterpiece, the Virgin Enthroned, an early work, is in the Accademia, No. 82. The much-disputed Christ at Emmaus in S. Salvatore has been attributed to him. Only scraps of the biographies of these two artists are known. The former was lame, and died in 1530; the latter once competed successfully with Carpaccio for the painting of a gonfalone for the Guild of Charity, of which he was a member, and died in 1525. Marco Marziale, a follower of Carpaccio, was much influenced by Albert Dürer during his stay at Venice, as may be seen in the Supper at Emmaus, No. 76, the only work by him in the Accademia. Little is known of his life. He was painting in the Ducal Palace in 1492, and still living in 1507.

Cima, Giovanni Battista, da Conegliano, son of a cloth-dresser (_Cimatore di panni_), a pupil of Alvise Vivarini, and one of the many painters from the mainland to whom Venetian art owes so much, is a great typical colourist of the Bellini School. To a feeling for colour he brings the expression of his love for natural scenery. The beautiful background of mountain landscape, the dignity and warmth of the saintly figures, the romantic architecture with tufts of the _erba della Madonna_[72] growing from its crevices, in his altar-piece in the Madonna dell’ Orto, make it, though technically immature, one of the most delightful examples of Venetian art. Other maturer works by him are in S. Giovanni in Bragora and the Carmine. The Accademia possesses seven of his paintings. He was born in 1460, settled in Venice in 1490, and died about 1517. His Virgin and Child, with St Michael and St Andrew, now in the Parma Gallery, was long admired as a masterpiece by Da Vinci.

Marco Basaiti, a pupil of Alvise, and influenced by Bellini, is a good colourist and a lover of natural scenery; but his work lacks refinement, strength and character. The Accademia has five of his works, of which the Agony in the Garden, No. 69, is the best; another and later one, Peter Enthroned, is in S. Pietro di Castello. He was working between 1490 and 1521.

Catena (Vincenzio di Biagio), yet another of Giovanni Bellini’s school, is a sweet and graceful painter. The Martyrdom of S. Cristina in S. Maria Mater Domini is an early work of much charm. The church of S. Simeon Profeta has a picture by this master; two are in the Accademia and one in the Ducal Palace. The Judith in the Quirini-Stampalia and a Virgin and Child with the Baptist and a female saint, in the Palazzo Giovanelli are assigned to him by Mr Berenson. This noble and ingenuous artist has suffered much from the attribution of many of his best creations to Giovanni Bellini and Giorgione. He was working between 1495 and 1531.

Another of the mainland painters attracted to Venice by the fame of the Bellini was Andrea Previtali of Bergamo, of whose works the Accademia possesses two, a Crucifixion and a Nativity. He, like Cima and Catena, loves to introduce landscape, giving it, however, more prominence, and adding classic details. In the Sacristy of S. Giobbe is a good early work, the Marriage of St Catherine, formerly attributed to Giovanni Bellini. He died in 1525.

Bissolo, Pier Francesco, pupil and assistant of Giovanni Bellini, is a capable artist, the last of the school, whose best work, Christ offering the Crown of Thorns to St Catherine, is in the Accademia (No. 79) with three others. The Virgin and Child with St John and St Catherine in the Redentore, formerly attributed to Bellini, is now assigned to Bissolo. He died in 1554.

The advent of the romantic, almost mysterious, personality of Giorgione (Georgio Barbarelli) marks an epoch in the story of Venetian painting. Few artists in so short a life wrought so great a work. He lifted Venetian painting to the highest sphere of poetic inspiration and technical perfection, and influenced the whole of its subsequent progress. Yet paintings by his hand are rare. One alone, the Castelfranco altar-piece, is beyond dispute, and that, says Morelli, is daubed over by a Venetian restorer. Of the scores of works formerly put upon him in Europe few can now be safely defended, and of these few a bare half-dozen are allowed to Italy. The unstable position of expert opinion may be exemplified by the vicissitudes of the Miracle of St Mark, No. 516, in the Accademia, long since removed from its former position of honour and placed in a badly lighted corridor.[73] This, once assigned to Giorgione by Boschini, and at a later date generally attributed to Paris Bordone, is now esteemed by Mr Berenson to be one of Giorgione’s greatest achievements. Crowe and Cavalcaselle doubt if the “inky and spacious canvas” was ever touched by Giorgione. The official catalogue of 1895 assigns it to Palma Vecchio, that of 1903 to Paris Bordone and restorers of the eighteenth century. We are on safer ground when we examine the Gipsy and Soldier in the Giovanelli Palace. Nothing can be seen at Venice to surpass this superbly beautiful composition for originality, poetic grace and romantic beauty. A fairly convincing work is the Apollo pursuing Daphne, almost ruined by a restorer’s daubing, in the Seminario of the Salute. Of the many frescoes painted on Venetian palaces, especially those on the canal side of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi so eloquently described by Vasari, only a fragment remains, a head, torso and part of the arms, of a female figure. When Evelyn was at Venice in 1645, the frescoes seem to have been in good condition. The plague, or grief at the infidelity of his mistress, brought this great artist to a premature death in 1510. He was born about 1478. Passionately fond of music and song, his whole soul was attuned to impressions of inward and outward beauty. With him, romantic as distinguished from ecclesiastical painting leaps into being.

Titian (Tiziano Vecellio) is the complementary genius to Giorgione. In him is summed all that the Venetian school promised or attained to. Lacking perhaps the sunny radiance of Giorgione’s temperament, his larger experience of life, his deep, strong nature give him a pathetic insight into the tragedy, as well as the beauty, of existence, so characteristic of great artists and poets. To judge fully of Titian’s life-work one would need to travel over the greater part of Western Europe--to Madrid above all. Venice possesses but a score of his paintings, and these not the very greatest. Early works, attributed by some critics to Giorgione, are the Ecce Homo in the Scuola, and the Christ bearing the Cross, in the Church of S. Rocco. A somewhat later work, St Mark Enthroned, in the Sacristy of the Salute, painted in 1512, for S. Spirito, still bears traces of Giorgione’s influence. The famous Assumption in the Accademia, first of the grand compositions of the later Venetian school and generally regarded as a masterpiece, was painted in 1518. A finer picture, painted in 1526 in the maturity of his power, is the Pesaro Madonna, in the Frari. The beautiful Annunciation in the Scuola di S. Rocco was painted in 1525. The Presentation in the Accademia, now restored to its original position, is a later work, 1538. The Tobias and the Angel, perhaps painted about 1537,[74] in S. Marziale, is a work composed with unusual simplicity and charm. We see the great master in one of his happy moods like a strong man bending to play with his children. In addition to Doge Grimani’s ceremonial portrait there exists an unrestored fresco by his hand in the Ducal Palace. Many sacred subjects were painted late in life. In S. Salvatore are an Annunciation, a finely conceived work, and a Transfiguration, both executed when he was nearing ninety years of age. The grand old fellow died in harness. He failed to finish the Deposition, now in the Accademia, completed by Palma Giovane. “Titian is our standard-bearer,” said Velasquez when he saw him in Venice, and when Vasari was there in 1566 he called on the veteran painter and found him, although eighty-nine years old, brush in hand. The friends had much converse together of their art and of the master’s works. He died in 1576, wanting but one year to complete his century.[75]

With Titian, Venetian painting reached its meridian glory. Inspiration and technical mastery went hand in hand. He has been defined as the painter _par excellence_ as distinguished from the draughtsman who colours. In his new manner, that became absolute painting which in the Bellini and Carpaccio was but coloured drawing.

Palma Vecchio (Jacopo Negretti), 1480-1528, Titian’s contemporary, is the third of the dominant sixteenth-century painters. Without the finely endowed nature of his two fellows, he works with much energy and freshness, is masterly in his use of colour, and has a breadth and serenity of style which make of him a great, but not a paramount artist. The well-known St Barbara in S. Maria Formosa is the most grandiose and majestic female figure in Venetian art. The recently acquired Santa Conversazione, No. 147 in the Accademia, is an excellent example of a mode of composition which Palma brought to its ultimate form. He was the creator of that opulent type of female beauty with “marmoreal neck and bosom uberous” so characteristic of Venetian art.

Sebastiano del Piombo (Sebastiano Luciani), 1485-1547, a pupil of Giorgione, was a younger painter of the school, a competent but not very gifted interpreter of the prevalent type of sensuous beauty. The painting on the high altar in S. Giov. Crisostomo is a fine example of his early style and in Vasari’s time was attributed to Giorgione. There is an early Pietà in Lady Layard’s collection and a doubtful Visitation in the Accademia. Early in his career he went to Rome and won the friendship of Raphael and Michel Angelo by whom his later style was profoundly influenced. This period of his activity belongs to Roman rather than to Venetian art.

Lorenzo Lotto (1480-1556), pupil of Alvise Vivarini, is a highly gifted but unequal painter, who was working in Venice early in the sixteenth century. He is one of the more original of the contemporaries of Titian. Much attention has recently been given to this artist, especially to his portrait work, by Mr Berenson, who gives him high, but perhaps somewhat exaggerated praise, as the first painter who sought to interpret the varying moods of the individual human soul; as an artist of penetrating sympathy and charity, preserving for us in his portraits the lineaments of the more gentle and refined of his contemporaries. These, however, must be sought anywhere but in Venice. One fine altar-piece, painted in the maturity of his powers, may be seen in the Carmine, St Nicholas in Glory, a work of real poetic feeling; another, better preserved, the Apotheosis of S. Antonino, is in S. Zanipolo. A later work, the Virgin and Child with Saints, is in S. Giacomo dall’ Orio.

A room in the Accademia is devoted to examples of the works of the Friulian school, a group of painters working in the capital, Udine, and other towns and villages of the northernmost Venetian territory during the second half of the fifteenth and first half of the sixteenth centuries. Of Martino da Udine (Pellegrino da S. Daniele), the Accademia possesses three examples. No. 151, an Annunciation, is a replica of the same subject in his best work, the series of frescoes in the church of S. Antonio, at S. Daniele, near Udine. Pictures by him have been assigned to Giorgione.

A greater man than Martino came to Venice from Pordenone, about thirty miles from the capital, his pupil Giov. Ant. Sacchiense, known as Pordenone. He was an artist of power, but who showed that pride in technical skill so characteristic of a declining art. He parades his anatomical knowledge and science of foreshortening, with all Michael Angelo’s daring, but with none of his genius. Most of his works are on the mainland, but one characteristic altar-piece, No. 316, and three other paintings are in the Accademia in Venice. In the cloister at S. Stefano are some frescoes (in which medium he excelled), now almost ruined, and a St Sebastian, better preserved, in the church of S. Rocco, where also is a fine painting of St Christopher and St Martin. Another good work is the altar-piece--S. Rocco, St Sebastian and St Catherine--in S. Giov. Elemosinario. His Entombment, in the Monte di Pietà at Treviso, has been ascribed to Giorgione. He was working in Venice in the early half of the sixteenth century, and died at Ferrara in 1539.

The name of Bonifazio is associated with a remarkable revolution and counter-revolution in the history of criticism. Vasari and the older writers knew but one painter of that name, who was called by some Bonifazio of Verona, by others, of Venice. In 1864 Bernasconi, by the aid of documentary evidence, discovered two Bonafazios; and in 1877 Morelli,[76] by applying his famous method (the shape of the ears, outline of the bodies and other similar criteria) evolved three, who were distinguished as Bonifazio I., II., and III. With few exceptions the whole of the works in European Galleries, including the Accademia of Venice, formerly attributed to one Bonifazio, were then grouped under these three heads, and re-catalogued.

Vasari’s accuracy has, however, been vindicated by the recent publication[77] of Gustav Ludwig’s patient and conclusive researches, which demonstrate (1) that Bonifazio Pasini of Verona (1489-1540), the so-called Bonifazio I., could never have left Verona for any length of time between 1515 and his death, and that nothing is now known of his works: (2) that Bonifazio di Pitati of Verona (1487-1553), Morelli’s Bonifazio II., came, a youth of eighteen, with his father, a soldier, to settle in Venice in 1505; learned his craft at Palma Vecchio’s workshop; married a basketmaker’s daughter; became one of the most famous painters in Venice; in 1530 was commissioned to decorate the Palazzo de’ Camerlenghi (Treasury offices); and died, childless, in 1553, leaving the work to be completed by Tintoretto, who for a period adopted Bonifazio’s style: (3) that Bonifazio III. is a mere phantom of Morelli’s imagination. Bonifazio, like all the successful painters of the Renaissance, kept a large number of assistants and pupils to supply the demands of his clients at home and abroad, himself executing the more important parts of his productions, and supervising the work done in his atelier. The paintings assigned to Bonifazio I., such as the Rich Man’s Feast, number 291 in the Accademia, and the Virgin and Child with SS. Omobono and Barbara in the Palazzo Reale, are those executed by Bonifazio di Pitati’s own hand in the days before prosperity had rendered personal execution of the whole of his work impossible. The paintings attributed to Bonifazio II., such as the Woman Taken in Adultery, No. 278 in the Accademia, the Massacre of the Innocents, and the Fall, in the Palazzo Reale, works which betray a falling off in vigour and firmness of drawing while retaining the old brilliancy of colour, are those which were partly executed by his assistants. The paintings allotted to Bonifazio III., feeble work, such as the Last Supper in S. Maria Mater Domini, and most of the panels with figures of two or more saints, of which the Accademia possesses so many examples, were painted wholly by assistants during Bonifazio’s lifetime, or after his death. Nearly the whole of those in the Accademia formerly attributed to Bonifazio III., many of which have been post-dated owing to a vicious theory of interpretation, were side panels painted for more important central compositions in the Treasury Offices. The 1903 (Italian) edition of the official catalogue adopts Ludwig’s conclusions.

Bonifazio, who always signs himself “da Verona,” is an eminently naturalistic painter. With perfect art he portrays for us the sensuous magnificence of the Venetian patrician’s life: his luxurious home; his well-nurtured body; his powerful, sagacious intellect; his love of the country; his gorgeous costume; his pet animals; his ideal of female beauty.

A talented pupil of Titian who came under Michael Angelo’s influence was Paris Bordone (1495-1571). He has the distinction of producing the finest of Venetian ceremonial paintings, No. 320 in the Accademia. No picture will evoke in the beholder a deeper sentiment of the peculiar charm of Venice. The magnificent architecture; the dignified Fathers of the State in their rich costumes; the romantic legend it illustrates; the warm, golden, sunny atmosphere in which the whole composition is bathed, make this the most essentially Venetian picture in the world. The Accademia has other works by this artist--the Paradise, No. 322, a poor canvas, and a small panel, No. 311.

Two great artists preserved the power and grandeur of the Venetian school during a time when elsewhere in Italy painting had sunk to nerveless mannerism and mawkish sentimentality.

Tintoretto (Jacopo Robusti), 1518-94, a pupil of Bonifazio, and much influenced by Titian and Michel Angelo, is a painter who may only be studied at Venice. A fine example of his early work painted under Titian’s influence, is the Adam and Eve, No. 43 in the Accademia. In 1552 he painted two panels for the Palazzo Camerlenghi, in continuation of Bonifazio’s work, now in the Anti-Chiesetta of the Ducal Palace; and, a year later, the dramatic Miracle of St Mark, Accademia No. 42. This central work admirably displays the qualities of his genius. The composition is grandly conceived; the drawing stupendously clever and virile. But the craftsmanship is too insistent. The artist aims at displaying his triumph over difficult but non-essential problems of foreshortening and perspective. The whole scene is characterised by that “bustle and tumult” which Reynolds complains of in his criticism of Tintoretto’s work. Other paintings that may be noted are the Marriage of Cana in the sacristy of the Salute; two large and confused canvases, the Last Judgment and the Golden Calf, in the choir of the Madonna dell’ Orto; the charming Ariadne and Bacchus, with its companion pictures, and the colossal Paradise in the Ducal Palace. His last work, S. Marziale, is in the church of that name. Admirers of Tintoretto may sate themselves at Venice. The Accademia and the Ducal Palace are rich in his works. The Scuola of S. Rocco alone is a veritable Tintoretto museum. The sixty-two compositions there, exhibit the painter’s characteristics fully developed, his weakness as well as his strength. Never had sacred history been treated with such uncompromising realism. No one can contemplate these tremendous scenes without being impressed by the power of the genius that conceived them; none can turn away without a feeling of regret that so greatly endowed an artist should, in his later career at least, have been wanting in reverence and in the _incredibile diligenza_, which Vasari noted in all Titian’s work. He was a passionate, impatient worker, too often unconscionably superficial. His bold, vigorous, rapid execution is such that the practice of painting in his hands seems to partake of the nature of physical exercise. When Goethe was frequenting the official picture-restorers at S. Zanipolo in 1790, it was discovered that Tintoretto had been in the habit of leaving spaces for the more important heads in the large compositions executed _in situ_ (probably by pupils), which he would paint at home and stick on the canvas afterwards. How _presto e resoluto_ he was may be learned from the story told by Vasari of the march he stole upon his competitors for the decoration of a room in the Scuola di San Rocco. He had already painted his masterpiece, the Crucifixion, for the Sala dell’ Albergo, and the guild determined to decorate the hall with something _magnifica ed onorata_. Salviati, Zucchero, Veronese and himself were selected to send in designs. While his rivals were diligently at work, Tintoretto had taken the measurement of the space to be filled, painted his canvas with incredible rapidity and secretly fixed it in its place in the hall. When the masters of the guild met to examine the designs they found his work already finished. To their angry remonstrances the artist coolly replied that that was his way of competing, and if they did not care to pay him he would make them a present of the painting. Even in 1790 much of Tintoretto’s work had become dull, almost leaden in colour, due, Goethe thought, to the artist’s habit of painting _alla prima_ without ground colours, or simply on red paint. Tintoretto left many followers, who neither sounding the depths of his knowledge nor possessing the magnanimity of his style, imitated him in his “splendid negligence” and contributed to the final decadence of painting.

His younger contemporary Veronese (Paolo Caliari), 1530-88, reverts to and develops to an even higher degree the warmer and more brilliant colour of the school. He is the unsurpassed interpreter of the festal pomp of Venetian society. Without possessing the elemental force of Tintoretto he is a more careful artist. How nobly and gently he could conceive, may be seen in the decoration of the church of S. Sebastiano, painted 1555-65, and in the marriage of St Catherine at the church of that name, his most tender and beautiful work. Of his well-known banquet compositions, the Accademia possesses the finest specimen, the Supper at the House of Levi, No. 203. In this magnificent painting, with its marvellous drawing and spacious architecture, the artist revels in his power of expressing the joy of man in the satisfaction of material existence. This glorification of the pomps and vanities of the world, painted for the refectory of the Dominican friars at S. Zanipolo, did, however, shock the Church, and the head of the Holy Office called on the Prior and severely criticised the picture. On the 8th of July 1573, Master Paolo Caliari was cited before the tribunal of the Inquisition. Being asked his profession, he answered, “I invent and draw figures.” The inquisitor objected to the absence of Mary Magdalene and ordered that she should be substituted for the dog in the foreground; to St Peter carving a lamb; to a fellow dressed like a buffoon, with a parrot on his wrist; to another using his fork as a toothpick, and other indecencies. The artist defended himself stoutly and was ordered to reform his picture within three months. Veronese substituted the name of Levi for that of Simon and altered no more. Veronese was a noted house decorator of his time. None of his work survives at Venice, but visitors to Castelfranco may by a short detour see in the Villa Giacomelli, near Maser, some of the artist’s best fresco work on the walls of a characteristic Palladian country-house.

With the works of the Bassani we reach the beginnings of modern painting. They are moderns not only in their dominant love of landscape, but in their touching affection for lowly peasant life and for the flocks and herds of their native hills. The family consisted of Jacopo da Ponte (1510-92), the father, and his sons Francesco (1549-92) and Leandro (1558-1623). The Accademia has good examples of their work, but to appreciate fully these homely and sympathetic artists one must travel to their native city Bassano, in the beautiful hill country north of Venice.

Palma Giovane, 1544-1628, son of Antonio Negretti and of Bonifazio’s niece Giulia, is the last in whom the great traditions faintly survive. Besides his pictures in the Accademia some of the best of his work may be seen in the Oratorio dei Crocifissi. The school is now decadent; its productions feeble and mannered.

Giov. Battisto Tiepolo, 1696-1770, was a famous painter of his time: in the eyes of his contemporaries the equal of Veronese. He was a fine colourist, a bold and skilful draughtsman, with a broad and facile style, an excellent interpreter of the decadent splendour of Venetian life. He was in much demand as a decorator of palaces and churches. His best work may be seen in the frescoes executed for the Palazzo Labia. Among other churches, the Scalzi and the Gesuati have examples of his work in ceiling decoration, and there is a good altar-piece by his hand, St Lucy, in the SS. Apostoli.

Pietro Longhi, 1702-85, is a painter of scenes of intimate Venetian life in the eighteenth century with its trivial artificiality and social inanities. He has been aptly called the Goldoni of Venetian painters. Of Antonio da Canale (Canaletto), 1697-1768, and Francesco Guardi, 1712-93, Venice has few and poor examples. They were patient, excellent craftsmen but without inspiration, who have faithfully transmitted to us the Venice of their day.

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Most ancient and important was the art of the glass-worker, peculiarly favoured by the abundance of fine sand and of a marine flora rich in alkaline products. In the thirteenth century so great was the expansion of the industry that it was deemed prudent to transfer the many furnaces working night and day from Rialto to Murano. It was a jealously guarded monopoly. In 1459 the Ten took over the control of the art and forbade under severe penalties (in some cases death) the emigration of workmen or the divulging of the secrets of the craft to foreigners. The craftsmen had their own _libro d’Oro_ and ranked with patricians. Some beautiful examples of the masters, whom the genius of Marion Crawford[78] has invested with such dramatic interest, Zorzi il Ballarin and the Berovieri, may be seen at the Murano Museum, and an exquisite blue nuptial goblet in Room XII. at the Correr Museum in Venice. Wondrous stories are told of the subtle art of the craftsmen who were famed to make goblets so sensitive that they would betray by fracture the presence of poison.

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The Venetians were great bibliophiles and readers. Soon after the discovery of the art of printing, Venice became its most important centre in Italy. By the end of the fifteenth century more books had been published in Venice than in Rome, Milan, Florence and Naples put together. In 1469 the Senate authorised John of Spires to print books for a period of five years. In 1470 Nicolo Jansen was issuing the Latin classics; in 1471 he published an Italian translation of the whole Bible, and in 1476 an edition of Pliny in the vulgar tongue. In 1490 the great humanist, Teobaldo Pio Manuccio of Rome (Aldus Manutius, or, as he wrote himself, Aldus Romanus), chose Venice as the most appropriate city for the achievement of his stupendous design of editing and printing the whole of the Greek classics. He gathered round him the greatest scholars of the age. Cretan Greeks were employed as designers of his types and compositors. Latin and Italian classics were printed in the type first used in the Virgil of 1501 and known as italics or _aldino_. It is said to have been modelled on Petrarch’s handwriting and executed by Francia. Erasmus acted for a short time as editor and reader, and the great Dutch humanist had his translations of Euripides and his _Adagia_ printed there. Erasmus and Aldus were good friends and would have been better if the fare provided at dinner had been less Lenten. The scholar’s heart to-day warms to Aldus, whose steady, glowing enthusiasm carried him through his great task amid all the stress of the wars of the League of Cambrai. He founded at his house the famous _Accademia di Aldo_, where a symposium of humanists met for the study and emendation of the Greek classics. The rules were drawn up and the discussions conducted in Greek. Before Aldus died, in 1515, he had published twenty-eight _editiones principes_ of the Greek masterpieces. He was the first of modern publishers, the first to break down the monopoly of the rich in books. His charming little octavo volumes with their familiar device of the anchor and the dolphin, so precious to the modern bibliophile, were sold at prices averaging about two shillings of our money. They were well read, for of the 24,000 copies printed of Erasmus’ “Praise of Folly,” only one copy has survived, and that in an imperfect state. He died a poor man and his kinsmen and descendants carried on the good work for a century.

If we turn from printing to literature we are met by a remarkable and impressive fact. Alone among the nations of Europe, Venice has given birth to no great literature. Save her crumbling architecture all that she conceived of the beautiful is expressed in painting. It is a great inheritance and immortalises a people of merchant princes, proud, sensuous, resourceful, with a firm grip of the realities of life, deeply religious in its own way, but without the spiritual idealism of the Tuscan. Through the millennial tale of her existence as a State, no great poet, no great thinker, no great dramatist meets us; none save a fluent and graceful writer of comedies of the Decadence, who was descended from a Modenese, and whose best work was written in a foreign tongue for a foreign capital.[79]