f speculation. Some say
out of Venetian skies and waters, and, doubtless, these had something
to do with the Venetian color-sense; but Venice in its color was also
an example of the effect of commerce on art. She was a trader with the
East from her infancy--not Constantinople and the Byzantine East
alone, but back of these the old Mohammedan East, which for a thousand
years has cast its art in colors rather than in forms. It was Eastern
ornament in mosaics, stuffs, porcelains, variegated marbles, brought
by ship to Venice and located in S. Marco, in Murano, and in Torcello,
that first gave the color-impulse to the Venetians. If Florence was
the heir of Rome and its austere classicism, Venice was the heir of
Constantinople and its color-charm. The two great color spots in Italy
at this day are Venice and Ravenna, commercial footholds of the
Byzantines in Mediaeval and Renaissance days. It may be concluded
without error that Venice derived her color-sense and much of her
luxurious and material view of life from the East.

THE EARLY VENETIAN PAINTERS: Painting began at Venice with the
fabrication of mosaics and ornamental altar-pieces of rich gold
stucco-work. The "Greek manner"--that is, the Byzantine--was practised
early in the fifteenth century by Jacobello del Fiore and Semitecolo,
but it did not last long. Instead of lingering for a hundred years, as
at Florence, it died a natural death in the first half of the
fifteenth century. Gentile da Fabriano, who was at Venice about 1420,
painting in the Ducal Palace with Pisano as his assistant, may have
brought this about. He taught there in Venice, was the master of
Jacopo Bellini, and if not the teacher then the influencer of the
Vivarinis of Murano. There were two of the Vivarinis in the early
times, so far as can be made out, Antonio Vivarini (?-1470) and
Bartolommeo Vivarini (fl. 1450-1499), who worked with Johannes
Alemannus, a painter of supposed German birth and training. They all
signed themselves from Murano (an outlying Venetian island), where
they were producing church altars and ornaments with some Paduan
influence showing in their work. They made up the Muranese school,
though this school was not strongly marked apart either in
characteristics or subjects from the Venetian school, of which it was,
in fact, a part.

[Illustration: FIG. 36.--CARPACCIO. PRESENTATION (DETAIL). VENICE
ACAD.]

Bartolommeo was the best of the group, and contended long time in
riv