rn fiction. Painting reached its loftiest height in Giorgione,
Titian, Tintoret, and Paul Veronese.

The greatest of colourists sprang from a world of colour. Faded, ruined
as the city is now, the frescoes of Giorgione swept from its palace
fronts by the sea-wind, its very gondoliers bare and ragged, the glory
of its sunsets alone remains vivid as of old. But it is not difficult to
restore the many-hued Venice out of which its painters sprang. There are
two pictures by Carpaccio in the Accademia which bring back vividly its
physical aspect. The scene of the first, the 'Miracle of the Patriarch
of Grado' as it is called, lies on the Grand Canal immediately in front
of the Rialto. It is the hour of sunset, and darker-edged clouds are
beginning to fleck the golden haze of the west which still arches over
the broken sky-line, roof and turret and bell-tower and chimneys of
strange fashion with quaint conical tops. The canal lies dusk in the
eventide, but the dark surface throws into relief a crowd of gondolas,
and the lithe, glowing figures of their gondoliers. The boats themselves
are long and narrow as now, but without the indented prora which has
become universal; the sumptuary law of the Republic has not yet robbed
them of colour, and instead of the present "coffin" we see canopies of
gaily-hued stuffs supported on four light pillars. The gondolier himself
is commonly tricked out in almost fantastic finery; red cap with long
golden curls flowing down over the silken doublet, slashed hose, the
light dress displaying those graceful attitudes into which the rower
naturally falls. On the left side of the canal its white marble steps
are crowded with figures of the nobler Venetian life; a black robe here
or there breaking the gay variety of golden and purple and red and blue,
while in the balcony above a white group of clergy, with golden
candlesticks towering overhead, are gathered round the daemoniac whose
cure forms the subject of the picture.

But the most noteworthy point in it is the light it throws on the
architectural aspect of Venice at the close of the fifteenth century. On
the right the houses are wholly of mediaeval type, the flat
marble-sheeted fronts pierced with trefoil-headed lights; one of them
splendid with painted arabesques dipping at its base into the very
waters of the canal and mounting up to enwreathe in intricate patterns
the very chimney of the roof. The left is filled by a palace of the
early Renas