WE may not here attempt to tread the maze of chicanery and violence which ended in the peace of Cambrai.[53] We are permitted to see a fighting Pope exhorting his soldiers and directing siege operations against an Italian city, and climbing by a scaling-ladder through the breach to take possession. In 1514 the Spaniards desolated the land up to the lagoons and levelled their cannon at Venice. In 1515 the encampments of four armies were exhausting and polluting Lombardy. King, Popes, and Emperor died and their successors took up the unholy heritage of war and duplicity. Gaston de Foix, Bayard and other renowned chevaliers perished. In 1521 the Emperor Charles V. came upon the scene, and in alliance with the great Medicean Pope, Leo X., swept the French and their Venetian allies out of Lombardy. In July 1523, when the power of France was waning, the Venetians made terms with the Emperor. They were suffered to retain their territory up to the Adda in return for an annual tribute of 250,000 ducats. Venice excused herself to Francis I. by professing solicitude for the peace of Christendom in view of the threatening attitude of the Sultan. Before the year was ended King and Emperor were competing for Venetian help in a renewed struggle for mastery. While the Republic was temporising, the Imperialists had descended on Lombardy, routed the French before Pavia and captured their King. “Nothing is left to me,” wrote Francis, “but honour, and life which is safe,”[54] and proceeded to send his ring secretly to the Sultan and to grovel before Charles. The victorious Emperor brushed aside the subtleties of the Venetian ambassadors. “If you were to send all your lawyers,” he cried, “you would not convince me. You must pay 80,000 ducats for the troops you failed to send to Pavia. You are rich: my expenses are heavy: you must help me.”

After perjuring himself at the peace of Madrid, January 1526, the Cristianissimo returned to France. In less than six weeks a “holy league” of France, Venice and the Papacy had been signed at Cognac for the “liberation” of Italy from the Imperialists. But Francis, whose moral fibre had been rotted by lechery, was no match for the virile genius of Charles, strong with the united resources of the Empire and of Spain in her greatness. The Emperor was soon again master of Italy. Rome was captured and sacked; Pope Clement VII. imprisoned. But the miserable condition of Italy and the news that the Turks were threatening Vienna disposed Charles to treat, and in July 1529 Margaret of Austria was once more at Cambrai negotiating on behalf of the Emperor with Louise of Savoy, who represented Francis.[55] Two adjacent houses were chosen and the party-wall pierced that the ladies might confer with absolute secrecy. In two months, while the Venetians were finessing, the “paix des dames” was concluded and Venice left to make the best terms she might with the Emperor. Francis had given way all along the line. “The peace of Cambrai,” says Michelet, “was the moral annihilation of France in Europe.” During the coronation festivities at Bologna the Emperor and the Pope found time to deal with the Venetians, who agreed to pay the balance of the annual tribute of 250,000 ducats due on the treaty of 1523; to restore the cities of Naples and Apulia to the Emperor; and to the Papacy Ravenna and Cervia, which they had seized during the Pope’s imprisonment at Rome. Thanks to the impassable lagoons Venice preserved her capital inviolate, but her prestige and her military power were gone.

In 1521 Leonardo Loredano died and was buried with more than usual pomp at S. Zanipolo. Antonio Grimani, the disgraced of Sapienza, who had redeemed himself by faithful service, reigned for two years and gave place to Andrea Gritti, a distinguished civil commissioner with the army during the wars. Between Gritti’s death in 1539 and the election of Sebastian Venier, the hero of Lepanto, in 1577, there follows a line of Doges, Pietro Lando, Francesco Donato, Marc’ Antonio Trevisano, Francesco Venier, Lorenzo and Girolamo Priuli, Pietro Loredano, Luigi Mocenigo, worthy magistrates all, but without distinction.

The wars had exhausted the State treasury. Her Indian trade was withered, and the wealth of Venice was no more commensurate to the demands of a long naval war. Her military pride had been chastened by the rod of the Emperor, and a dread of Spanish arms and Spanish gold hung like a pall over men’s minds. An era of subtle diplomacy begins, and the Council of the Ten, with its new instrument of the Inquisitors of State, tightens its grip upon the executive. Wave after wave of Ottoman fury surges against her Eastern possessions; one by one they are engulfed. In 1535 she lost Egina, Paros and Syra; in 1540, Malvasia and Nauplia. In 1570 Cyprus was marked out for conquest and the usual appeal to the Christian Powers was made. Spain and the Pope promised help. Zane, the Venetian commander, wasted his force waiting at Zara, then learned that the allies were at Corfù. He reached the island only to find the Spanish admiral without orders. Meanwhile the season had worn along and operations were judged inopportune. The whole island by this time was occupied by the Turks, Nicosia and Famagosta alone holding out. While the futile admirals were squabbling about plans the magnificent heroism of the garrisons and of the inhabitants was spent in vain, and the cities fell to the horrors of a Turkish pillage, and Marc’ Antonio Brigadin, the Venetian governor of Famagosta, was treacherously flayed alive in the Piazza after having surrendered on terms to the enemy. Zane was recalled to Venice, and Sebastian Venier given command. A new alliance of Spain, the Papacy and Venice being concluded, at length on October 7, 1571, the allied fleets came upon the Turkish armament off Lepanto in the Gulf of Corinth. The Spanish admiral, Don John of Austria, was in supreme command. Venier led the Venetians; Marc’ Antonio Colonna the Papalists.

It was a calm sunny morning. The line of the allied fleets was four miles in extent, the two armaments were a mass of glittering steel as the rays of the sun smote on the helmets, breastplates and shields, bright as polished mirrors. The banners of gold and tall galley lamps were resplendent in many colours. A beautiful, yet an awful spectacle. The Venetian flagship was fiercely assailed. Venier, spite of his seventy-five years, was seen, sword in hand, pressing to the thick of the fight, heartening his men and with invincible courage striking down his enemies, so that he wrought deeds beyond the belief of man. We cannot here linger on the vicissitudes of the struggle. Scenes of comic relief were not absent from the tragedy. Some Turks, their arms of offence failing, seized upon a quantity of oranges and lemons and threw them at their enemies, who with mocking laughter cast them back. At length after five hours of savage fighting, the Turks were scoured off the seas. The allied and victorious admirals met, embraced each other speechless from emotion; and as the venerable Venier and the youthful Don John of Austria stood clasped in each other’s arms shedding tears of joy, the eyes of even the most hardened of sea-dogs were moist with tears. Some 30,000 Turks are said to have perished; 3486 prisoners were divided among the victors as slaves; 94 ships were burned; 130 ships and 356 guns captured; 15,000 Christian slaves set at liberty. The allies lost heavily: 8000 men were slain including 25 Venetian nobles.[56] Among the Spanish was Cervantes, who lost an arm in the engagement.

A WINE SHOP.
A WINE SHOP.

As day broke on October 18th, a galley was seen sailing up to Lido trailing the Turkish colours at her stern, a pile of turbans on her deck. Amid the booming of the guns could be heard cries of “Victory! victory!” The reaction from the gloom of Cyprian news was tremendous. A frenzy of joy possessed the people. Shops were shut per la morte de’ Turchi. The streets from the Rialto bridge to the Merceria were covered with a firmament of blue cloth spangled with stars of gold; a pyramid of Turkish spoils stood on the Piazza, which was gay with scarlet cloth, tapestry and pictures. Four days’ rejoicings celebrated the triumph of the Cross. But to Venice the battle of Lepanto (or alle Curzolari) was a sterile victory. Dynastic jealousy in Spain and the old suspicion of Venice, which still clung to the allies, permitted the Turks to recover from the blow, and in March 1573 Venice agreed to purchase a separate peace at the cost of an indemnity of 300,000 ducats and a threefold increase of the tribute for Zante. The fair island of Cyprus was lost for ever. “Was it the Turks who were the victors at Lepanto?” asks Romanin.

On Doge Venier was conferred the consecrated golden rose, a supreme token of papal favour, but during the seventy years’ peace from Lepanto to the outbreak of the fifth Turkish war, the indictment at Rome against the refractory children of the lagoons increased in gravity, and in the beginning of the seventeenth century the Papacy determined to force them to yield to discipline. The Venetians were a stubborn folk when their national dignity was threatened by Rome. “These Signori of the Senate,” said Paul IV. to the Venetian ambassador, “are tough fellows and take a lot of cooking” (non sono molto buoni da cuocer). In 1527, when the Papacy was under the heel of Charles V., the Republic had reasserted her rights to nominate to ecclesiastical offices. Disputes as to the taxation of Church property, the right of the Pope to inspect the monasteries, the right of the Republic to try criminous clerics, exacerbated the situation until at length Gregory XIII. declared in 1581 that he would no longer consent to be Pope everywhere but in Venice, and sent his nuncio to make a visitation of the Venetian monasteries. The Republic refused permission, and the conflict called of the Interdetto began. But the fight between Italian Popes and Italian sovereigns, even in our own times, has generally been a comedy played for the mystification of Transalpine Powers and all ended in compromise. The Signory appointed the Bishop of Verona as the nuncio’s colleague, and persuaded itself that the nuncio went with the Bishop; the Pope satisfied his dignity by claiming that the Bishop went with the nuncio. In 1605 the Spanish party, ever the evil genius of the Sacred College, re-opened the quarrel. The Republic had refused to send their nominee to the Patriarchate of Venice for examination to Rome, and had tried and convicted two clerics on the mainland for criminal offences. On Christmas Day a brief from Pope Paul V. was delivered to the Signory threatening excommunication if they did not submit in the matter of the taxation of ecclesiastical estates. The Republic engaged the learned Augustinian friar Paolo Sarpi as their adviser at a salary of two hundred ducats and prepared for the struggle. In February 1606, a second brief followed on the matter of the convicted clerics. The Republic expressed her devotion to the Catholic Faith, but firmly though respectfully declined to surrender her ancient rights and privileges. On April 16th, the Republic was given twenty-four days to submit under pain of interdict. Venice calmly waited. In due time the bull of excommunication[57] and interdict was delivered. The Signory forbade its publication and ordered the clergy to continue their functions as usual. Some of the regular clergy who disobeyed were expelled. Sarpi advised the Republic with excellent prudence and wisdom, and became in the eyes of Europe one of the greatest protagonists of national liberty against papal aggression. A Spanish army having been mobilised on the Milanese frontier, Sir Henry Wotton, the English ambassador, suggested an alliance of Venice with England, France, the Grisons, and the German Protestant princes, but the Republic was deaf on that side. She declared to the Pope that the Venetians were as good Catholics as he himself, but that as Church property enjoyed the protection of the State, it must share its burdens, and that criminals, whether lay or cleric, must be equally subject to the laws of the land. Time wore on. Spain, humbled by the defeat of her Armada and the revolt of the Netherlands, was afraid to strike; the obsolete ghostly artillery of Rome failed to act; and the secular clergy stood loyally by the Republic. The Papacy reverted to her habitual policy of compromise. The services of Henry IV. of France as mediator were accepted and a solemn comedy was played. The Republic agreed to surrender the incriminated clerics, without prejudice, to the French ambassador; the Pope agreed to withdraw informally the bull of excommunication and interdict. The Republic continued to nominate for Church offices and try clerical delinquents as before. But the Spanish fanatics at the Vatican never forgave the Venetian friar for his share in their discomfiture. On October 25, 1607, three ruffians fell upon him as he was crossing the S. Fosca Bridge,[58] stabbed him, then left him for dead, and escaped to Papal territory. Sarpi, however, recovered. The surgeon who was dressing his wounds remarked on their jagged, inartistic nature. “Ah!” replied the witty friar, “agnosco stylum curiæ romanæ.” On his recovery the Republic gave him a pension of six hundred ducats and a house near the Piazza, where the great patriot-scholar devoted the remainder of his life to literature and science.[59] Two further attempts were made to assassinate him, in 1609 and 1610. He spent his last breath in the service of the Republic, advising the Senate in three important questions in 1623 as he lay on his death-bed. His mind soon began to wander. “It is growing late,” he murmured, “I must hasten to St Mark’s for I have much to do.” His last words were a prayer for his country. “Esto perpetua.”

Grimani died on Christmas Day 1605, the very evening of the delivery of the first papal brief, and Leonardo Donato was chosen to open the document, and to preside over the conflict with the Spanish papalists at Rome. When he died in 1612, weird stories were whispered by fanatics of shrieks and cries heard from his chamber as the Evil One bore him away.

In 1622 the atmosphere of dread and suspicion which encompassed the State, so dulled the perceptions of the Ten that a grave miscarriage of justice was laid to their charge. In 1618 Antonio Foscarini, a noble of high family and Venetian ambassador at London, was accused by Mascorno, a disaffected member of his staff, of licentiousness, blasphemy and treason. Foscarini was recalled, arrested by the Ten, and, after a long trial, acquitted, but kept under surveillance. In 1622, as he was leaving the Senate, a cloak was flung over him, and he was hurried off to prison. His accuser, who had been sentenced to two years’ detention in a fortress, had, on his release, fabricated some documents which the tribunal deemed conclusive. Foscarini was declared guilty of corresponding secretly with Spain and the Emperor, strangled in prison, and his dead body hung by the leg between the red columns. As he had been an occasional visitor at Casa Mocenigo, where Lady Arundel resided, she was suspected also; but Sir Henry Wotton prompted her to clear herself by asking an audience of the Doge. This she did, and was allowed to make a statement in the Senate, the only woman who ever addressed that Assembly. She was exonerated, and a present of sweetmeats and wax offered to conciliate her. Four months later poor Foscarini’s innocence was entirely proved, and two of his accusers were put to death. The family was restored to honour, and his remains were dug up and buried in the Frari with great splendour and pomp. His bust may still be seen in the church of S. Eustacchio (S. Stae) near the old Foscarini Palace.

Doge Priuli died shortly after the Foscarini tragedy. The brief reign of Francesco Contarini followed, and Giovanni Cornaro was chosen to fill the ducal office in 1624. The shock of Foscarini’s judicial murder had given a rallying cry to the poorer nobles in the Great Council, jealous of the power of the Ten and the monopoly of office by the more influential patricians; and Renier Zeno, a patrician, fearless and incorruptible—himself an ex-capo of the Ten—led an attack on the tribunal. Banished for a year, he did but return with added popularity, and forced himself again on the Ten as one of the Capi. He used his power to accuse the Doge of nepotism, and his Serenity was forced to cancel certain family appointments. Zeno, driving his advantage further, came into conflict with his colleagues of the Ten, and, leaning on the majority of the Great Council, emerged triumphant. Shortly after, while standing at the Porta della Carta, he was attacked by five persons and stabbed. The Doge’s son and certain alleged accomplices were denounced to the Ten, whose laggard justice, however, made flight easy. Again appointed one of the Ten, Zeno, on his recovery, renewed the struggle with increased vigour; and, after a stormy scene in the Great Council, during which he came to high words with the Doge, the stout reformer was ordered to keep his house, and report himself to the Ten within three days. Ignoring the summons, he was fined two thousand ducats and banished. The Great Council quashed the sentence, and ordered it to be blotted out of the records of the Ten. At length Zeno’s party succeeded in carrying a motion for a committee of inquiry into the constitution of the Ten, but the four years’ bitter conflict ended in a virtual triumph for the tribunal, whose powers of criminal jurisdiction over the nobles were reaffirmed, though it had to submit to a modified capitulary.

Seven million ducats were quickly raised in Venice by the sale of patents of nobility. By a marvellous re-birth of naval energy and capacity, her fleet was reorganised and spread terror along the Dardanelles. The Venetian Captain-General, Lazzaro Mocenigo, determined to force the passage and attack Constantinople, but a well-aimed shell fired his ship, and he was killed. Francesco Morosini, appointed his successor, won the admiration of Europe by his twenty-two years’ defence of Candia. Inspired by his heroism, companies of Flemish and French volunteers, eager and impetuous, joined him, but their enthusiasm was soon spent, and, impatient of the long vigils and toils of the war, they left the Venetians to fight alone. Morosini did not save Crete, but he extorted an honourable peace. No indemnity was paid, and the Venetian garrison marched proudly out of Candia unsubdued.[60] Four thousand Candiots who opted for Venice were settled in Istria, where traces of their language and customs are said still to survive. Suda and other fortresses remained in the hands of the Venetians. To the Pope the result seemed almost incredible.

In 1684 Venice was invited to join the Emperor and the King of Poland in a league against the Turks. The Cretan war had cost her one hundred and twenty-six million ducats, and she felt too exhausted to run with the horsemen again. But bolder counsels prevailed. Morosini was despatched with an army, and ably seconded by Koningsmark, the great Swedish mercenary, overran the Morea, captured Coron, Sparta and Athens, which last was won at the price of the ruin of the Parthenon, the Turkish powder magazine there having been exploded by a Venetian shell. Morosini returned in triumph, bringing the Greek lions, which still stand in front of the Arsenal. He was made Doge in 1688, the coronation being deferred that he might return to Greece. Vast designs of the recapture of Negropont, even of Crete, lured him on, but ill-health soon necessitated his return, only, however, to be again entreated to take up the command and retrieve the blunders of an incompetent Captain-General. The veteran Doge and captain for the last time sailed from Venice amid scenes that recalled the great crusading times of old. After some successes at Corinth he went to winter at Nauplia, where he died on January 9, 1694. He was the greatest of the modern Doges. A tomb in S. Stefano and a triumphal arch in the Sala dello Scrutinio still witness to his fame.

PONTE DI RIALTO.
PONTE DI RIALTO.

But Venice was too poor and too feeble to retain her conquests. During a short campaign in 1715 she lost the whole of the Morea, and by the treaty of Passarovitch in 1717 all that was left of her vast empire in the East were a few fortresses in Dalmatia, Albania and Herzegovina. The treaty of 1717 bore her last signature as a European Power.

The procession of Doges that stretches from Giov. Cornaro, the opponent of Renier Zeno, to the fall of the Republic contains but one name of historic significance—Francesco Morosini. Marco Foscarini, elected in 1762, a descendant of the ill-fated Antonio Foscarini, is known to students as the author of a “History of Venetian Literature,” and Ludovico Manin has the unhappy distinction of closing the line for ever. Through all the vicissitudes of foreign affairs, the decadence of trade, the fear corroding at her statesmen’s hearts, the social and ceremonial life of Venice waxed rather than waned in pomp and splendour. The recurring ravages of plague periodically purged her pride and luxury. Of all the great cities of Europe, Venice bears the deepest traces of the passages of the destroying angel. In her annals no less than seventy visitations are recorded. Two great churches, the Redentore founded in 1575 and the Salute in 1630, are votive offerings to Heaven for salvation from the scourge. Her greatest scuola is dedicated to the chief plague saint, St Roch. Indeed in all her churches the figures of the plague saints, St Roch, St Job, St Sebastian, have a sad pre-eminence. But the danger past, the lesson faded from her memory, and the traditional magnificence shone forth. She became again—

Venice surpassed herself in the reception given to Henry III. of France in 1574. The young king was met at Malghera—the modern traveller will pass a fort erected there as he nears the railway bridge—by sixty Senators in gondolas covered with velvet, oriental carpets and cloth of gold, and was ferried to Murano, where he passed the night in one of the rich palaces with delicious gardens for which the island was then noted. Sixty halberdiers clothed in silk of azure and gold were his bodyguard: forty noble youths of the Calza were his attendants. On the morrow amid salvos of artillery he embarked for Venice in a great galley manned by four hundred Sclavonians clothed in yellow and turquoise taffety, followed by an immense train of galleys and gondolas decorated with carpets and tapestry, with banners and flags waving in the breeze. The procession of the trade guilds, formed of a hundred and seventy boats resplendent with crimson and silver and gold, was a dazzling pageant. The glass-workers excelled in splendour and invention. A marine monster, in whose body could be seen a furnace, and craftsmen making most beautiful crystal vases, led their section, breathing flames from his mouth. Then followed a boat in the shape of a great dolphin bestridden by Neptune; on the poop stood two winged angels to waft it along. Four river gods personifying the Brenta, the Adige, the Po and the Piove plied the oars. At S. Nicolo del Lido, Palladio had constructed a triumphal arch adorned with statues of Victory, Peace, Faith and Justice, and with ten paintings by Titian and Tintoretto portraying events in the King’s life. His Majesty lodged in the Palazzo Foscari from which an opening was made into the Palazzo Giustiniani to accommodate his suite, the whole being furnished with oriental magnificence. At a State ball given in the hall of the Great Council, two hundred gorgeously attired ladies were present glittering with jewels and precious stones. The Sala dello Scrutinio was made into a supper-room where twelve hundred and sixty plates of sweetmeats in the forms of griffins, ships, nymphs, deities, etc., tempted the palates of the guests. Regattas, serenades and jousts made the whole visit seem a dream of enchantment to the King. As trade languished and the population diminished, public shows increased in splendour. The sum expended at the election and coronation of the last Doge—forty-seven thousand, two hundred and ninety-eight ducats, was beyond all precedent. Venice was still the temple of pleasure. All the arts subservient to the luxury and vices of the rich flourished in rankest exuberance despite the efforts of the Ten to cleanse public morals and to enforce sumptuary laws. The excessive importance too of the stage and of its tinselled heroes and tawdry queens, was an infallible symptom of a decadent nation. The time came in the eighteenth century when the State was torn by the petty jealousies and vanities of a playwright and an actress, and when public appointments were controlled by the subtle influence of the boudoir and the drawing-room, and an ambitious and beautiful society lady was the central figure of Venetian life. It was the time of the fatuous masquerades and futile pomposities portrayed for us by Longhi, when the card table, the coffee house and the play were the absorbing interest of Venetian minds. But before she sinks into the deep night of subjection to Austria to rise again as a province of a free and united Italy,[61] a faint hue of naval splendour lights up the horizon. Soon after Goethe’s arrival in Venice in 1786 he ascended St Mark’s tower and under the bright noon-day sun saw a fleet of galleys and frigates lying off Lido. They were reinforcements for Tunis, where the last of the great Venetians, Angelo Emo, was fighting the Algerian pirates. Emo humbled the Bey of Tunis, cleared the seas, and died at Malta in 1792. Five years later Napoleon marched his battalions towards the lagoons and before the mere breath of his coming the Republic of Venice crumbled into dust. On May 16, 1797, for the first time in a thousand years the Realtine islands were trodden by the foot of a conqueror, and the hundred and twentieth Doge of Venice, handing his biretta to an attendant, said: “Take it away, we shall not want it again.”

CHAPTER XII

THE FINE ARTS AT VENICE

Masons—Painters—Glass-workers—Printers

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.

PONTE DI RIALTO, FROM THE MARKET.
PONTE DI RIALTO, FROM THE MARKET.

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.

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.

IN THE PROCURATIE NUOVE.
IN THE PROCURATIE NUOVE.

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.

Alinari, Florence PALAZZO LAYARD—PORTRAIT OF SULTAN MAHOMET II By Gentile Bellini
Alinari, Florence
PALAZZO LAYARD—PORTRAIT OF SULTAN MAHOMET II
By Gentile Bellini

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.

Alinari, Florence S. ZACCARIA—MADONNA ENTHRONED AND FOUR SAINTS By Giovanni Bellini
Alinari, Florence
S. ZACCARIA—MADONNA ENTHRONED AND FOUR SAINTS
By Giovanni Bellini

Alinari, Florence S. GIORGIO MAGGIORE—ST GEORGE AND THE DRAGON By Carpaccio
Alinari, Florence
S. GIORGIO MAGGIORE—ST GEORGE AND THE DRAGON
By Carpaccio

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.

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.

MADONNA DELL’ ORTO—THE BAPTIST AND FOUR SAINTS By Cima
MADONNA DELL’ ORTO—THE BAPTIST AND FOUR SAINTS
By Cima

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.

Alinari, Florence S. MARIA MATER DOMINI—S. CRISTINA By Catena
Alinari, Florence
S. MARIA MATER DOMINI—S. CRISTINA
By Catena

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.

ACCADEMIA—THE DEAD CHRIST By Titian
ACCADEMIA—THE DEAD CHRIST
By Titian

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.

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.

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.