es of Tintoretto and Titian which had proved most popular.
So their works recall the great masters, but only to bring out their own
weakness. Padovanino, Liberi, and Pietro della Vecchia went even lower
down and shamelessly manufactured pictures which, in the distant markets
for which they were intended, passed for works of Titian, Veronese, and
Giorgione. Nor are these pictures altogether unenjoyable. There are airs
by the great composers we so love that we enjoy them even when woven
into the compositions of some third-rate master.

=XXIV. Longhi.=--But Venetian painting was not destined to die unnoticed.
In the eighteenth century, before the Republic entirely disappeared,
Venice produced three or four painters who deserve at the least a place
with the best painters of that century. The constitution of the Venetian
State had remained unchanged. Magnificent ceremonies still took place,
Venice was still the most splendid and the most luxurious city in the
world. If the splendour and luxury were hollow, they were not more so
than elsewhere in Europe. The eighteenth century had the strength which
comes from great self-confidence and profound satisfaction with one's
surroundings. It was so self-satisfied that it could not dream of
striving to be much better than it was. Everything was just right; there
seemed to be no great issues, no problems arising that human
intelligence untrammelled by superstition could not instantly solve.
Everybody was therefore in holiday mood, and the gaiety and frivolity of
the century were of almost as much account as its politics and culture.
There was no room for great distinctions. Hair-dressers and tailors
found as much consideration as philosophers and statesmen at a lady's
levee. People were delighted with their own occupations, their whole
lives; and whatever people delight in, that they will have represented
in art. The love for pictures was by no means dead in Venice, and Longhi
painted for the picture-loving Venetians their own lives in all their
ordinary domestic and fashionable phases. In the hair-dressing scenes
we hear the gossip of the periwigged barber; in the dressmaking scenes,
the chatter of the maid; in the dancing-school, the pleasant music of
the violin. There is no tragic note anywhere. Everybody dresses, dances,
makes bows, takes coffee, as if there were nothing else in the world
that wanted doing. A tone of high courtesy, of great refinement, coupled
with an all-pervadi