Hall of Council of the Ten
and those surrounding it[28] are gilded habitations, insufficient for
the figures that dwell therein; but after a moment one forgets the
habitation and sees only the figures. Power and voluptuousness blaze
there, unbridled and superb. In the angles nude men, painted caryatides,
jut out in such high relief that at the first glance one takes them for
statues; a colossal breath swells their chests; their thighs and their
shoulders writhe. On the ceiling a Mercury, entirely nude, is almost a
figure by Rubens, but of a more gross sensuality. A gigantic Neptune
urges before him his sea-horses which plash through the waves; his foot
presses the edge of his chariot; his enormous and ruddy body is turned
backwards; he raises his conch with the joy of a bestial god; the salt
wind blows through his scarf, his hair, and his beard; one could never
imagine, without seeing it, such a furious _elan_, such an overflowing
of animal spirit, such a joy of pagan flesh, such a triumph of free and
shameless life in the open air and broad sunlight. What an injustice to
limit the Venetians to the painting of merely happy scenes and to the
art of simply pleasing the eye! They have also painted grandeur and
heroism; the mere energetic and active body has attracted them; like
the Flemings, they have their colossi also. Their drawing, even without
colour, is capable by itself of expressing all the solidity and all the
vitality of the human structure. Look in this same hall at the four
_grisailles_ by Veronese--five or six women veiled or half-nude, all so
strong and of such a frame that their thighs and arms would stifle a
warrior in their embrace, and, nevertheless, their physiognomy is so
simple or so proud that, despite their smile, they are virgins like
Raphael's Venuses and Psyches.

[Illustration: BACCHUS AND ARIADNE.
_Tintoret._]

The more we consider the ideal figures of Venetian art, the more we feel
the breath of an heroic age behind us. Those great draped old men with
the bald foreheads are the patrician kings of the Archipelago,
Barbaresque sultans who, trailing their silken simars, receive tribute
and order executions. The superb women in sweeping robes, bedizened and
creased, are empress-daughters of the Republic, like that Catherina
Cornaro from whom Venice received Cyprus. There are the muscles of
fighters in the bronzed breasts of the sailors and captains; their
bodies, reddened by the sun and