f her people Venice was not a
learned or devout city. Religion, though the chief subject, was not
the chief spirit of Venetian art. Christianity was accepted by the
Venetians, but with no fevered enthusiasm. The Church was strong
enough there to defy the Papacy at one time, and yet religion with the
people was perhaps more of a civic function or a duty than a spiritual
worship. It was sincere in its way, and the early painters painted its
subjects with honesty, but the Venetians were much too proud and
worldly minded to take anything very seriously except their own
splendor and their own power.

Again, the Venetians were not humanists or students of the revived
classic. They housed manuscripts, harbored exiled humanists, received
the influx of Greek scholars after the fall of Constantinople, and
later the celebrated Aldine press was established in Venice; but, for
all that, classic learning was not the fancy of the Venetians. They
made no quarrel over the relative merits of Plato and Aristotle, dug
up no classic marbles, had no revival of learning in a Florentine
sense. They were merchant princes, winning wealth by commerce and
expending it lavishly in beautifying their island home. Not to attain
great learning, but to revel in great splendor, seems to have been
their aim. Life in the sovereign city of the sea was a worthy
existence in itself. And her geographical and political position aided
her prosperity. Unlike Florence she was not torn by contending princes
within and foreign foes without--at least not to her harm. She had
her wars, but they were generally on distant seas. Popery, Paganism,
Despotism, all the convulsions of Renaissance life threatened but
harmed her not. Free and independent, her kingdom was the sea, and her
livelihood commerce, not agriculture.

The worldly spirit of the Venetian people brought about a worldly and
luxurious art. Nothing in the disposition or education of the
Venetians called for the severe or the intellectual. The demand was
for rich decoration that would please the senses without stimulating
the intellect or firing the imagination to any great extent. Line and
form were not so well suited to them as color--the most sensuous of
all mediums. Color prevailed through Venetian art from the very
beginning, and was its distinctive characteristic.

[Illustration: FIG. 35.--GIOVANNI BELLINI. MADONNA OF SS. GEORGE AND
PAUL. VENICE ACAD.]

Where this love of color came from is matter o