photograph
taken at his order.

CONTENTS.

THE VENETIAN PAINTERS OF THE RENAISSANCE

I. VALUE OF VENETIAN ART

II. THE CHURCH AND PAINTING

III. THE RENAISSANCE

IV. PAINTING AND THE RENAISSANCE

V. PAGEANT PICTURES

VI. PAINTING AND THE CONFRATERNITIES

VII. EASEL PICTURES AND GIORGIONE

VIII. THE GIORGIONESQUE SPIRIT

IX. THE PORTRAIT

X. THE YOUNG TITIAN

XI. APPARENT FAILURE OF THE RENAISSANCE

XII. LOTTO

XIII. THE LATE RENAISSANCE AND TITIAN

XIV. HUMANITY AND THE RENAISSANCE

XV. SEBASTIANO DEL PIOMBO

XVI. TINTORETTO

XVII. VALUE OF MINOR EPISODES IN ART

XVIII. TINTORETTO'S PORTRAITS

XIX. VENETIAN ART AND THE PROVINCES

XX. PAUL VERONESE

XXI. BASSANO, GENRE, AND LANDSCAPE

XXII. THE VENETIANS AND VELASQUEZ

XXIII. DECLINE OF VENETIAN ART

XXIV. LONGHI

XXV. CANALETTO AND GUARDI

XXVI. TIEPOLO

XXVII. INFLUENCE OF VENETIAN ART

INDEX TO THE WORKS OF THE PRINCIPAL VENETIAN PAINTERS

INDEX OF PLACES

THE VENETIAN PAINTERS OF THE RENAISSANCE

=I. Value of Venetian Art.=--Among the Italian schools of painting the
Venetian has, for the majority of art-loving people, the strongest and
most enduring attraction. In the course of the present brief account of
the life of that school we shall perhaps discover some of the causes of
our peculiar delight and interest in the Venetian painters, as we come
to realise what tendencies of the human spirit their art embodied, and
of what great consequence their example has been to the whole of
European painting for the last three centuries.

The Venetians as a school were from the first endowed with exquisite
tact in their use of colour. Seldom cold and rarely too warm, their
colouring never seems an afterthought, as in many of the Florentine
painters, nor is it always suggesting paint, as in some of the Veronese
masters. When the eye has grown accustomed to make allowance for the
darkening caused by time, for the dirt that lies in layers on so many
pictures, and for unsuccessful attempts at restoration, the better
Venetian paintings present such harmony of intention and execution as
distinguishes the highest achievements of genuine poets. Their mastery
over colour is the first thing that attracts most people to the painters
of Venice. Their colouring not only gives direct pleasure to the eye,
but acts like music upon the moods, stimulating thought and memory i