ed incentive to
artists, their effect upon the public, for whom they were designed, was
even greater. The councillors were not allowed to be the only people to
enjoy fascinating pictures of gorgeous pageants and ceremonials. The
Mutual Aid Societies--the Schools, as they were called--were not long in
getting the masters who were employed in the Doge's Palace to execute
for their own meeting places pictures equally splendid. The Schools of
San Giorgio, Sant' Ursula, and Santo Stefano, employed Carpaccio, the
Schools of San Giovanni and San Marco, Gentile Bellini, and other
Schools employed minor painters. The works carried out for these Schools
are of peculiar importance, both because they are all that remain to
throw light upon the pictures in the Doge's Palace destroyed in the fire
of 1576, and because they form a transition to the art of a later day.
Just as the State chose subjects that glorified itself and taught its
own history and policy, so the Schools had pictures painted to glorify
their patron saints, and to keep their deeds and example fresh. Many of
these pictures--most in fact--took the form of pageants; but even in
such, intended as they were for almost domestic purposes, the style of
high ceremonial was relaxed, and elements taken directly from life were
introduced. In his "Corpus Christi," Gentile Bellini paints not only the
solemn and dazzling procession in the Piazza, but the elegant young men
who strut about in all their finery, the foreign loungers, and even the
unfailing beggar by the portal of St. Mark's. In his "Miracle of the
True Cross," he introduces gondoliers, taking care to bring out all the
beauty of their lithe, comely figures as they stand to ply the oar, and
does not reject even such an episode as a serving-maid standing in a
doorway watching a negro who is about to plunge into the canal. He
treats this bit of the picture with all the charm and much of that
delicate feeling for simple effects of light and colour that we find in
such Dutch painters as Vermeer van Delft and Peter de Hoogh.

Episodes such as this in the works of the earliest great Venetian master
must have acted on the public like a spark on tinder. They certainly
found a sudden and assured popularity, for they play a more and more
important part in the pictures executed for the Schools, many of the
subjects of which were readily turned into studies of ordinary Venetian
life. This was particularly true of the works of Carpac