GUIDE TO THE ACADEMY AT VENICE 151

two angels peeping over the arms of the throne may remind you to look at its cusped arches, for we are here in central Gothic time, thirty years after the sea-façade of the Ducal Palace had been built.

Now, on the opposite side of the room, over the door leading into the next room,¹ you see 615 in the Academy Catalogue, “The work of Bartholomew Vivarini of Murano, 1464,”² showing you what advance had been made in eighty years. The figures still hard in outline,-thin (except the Madonna’s throat, which always, in Venice, is strong as a pillar³), and much marked in sinew and bone (studied from life, mind you, not by dissection); exquisitely delicate and careful in pure colour;-in character, portraits of holy men and women, such as then were. There is no idealism here whatever. Monks and nuns had indeed faces and mien like these saints, when they desired to have the saints painted for them.

A noble picture; not of any supreme genius, but completely containing the essence of Venetian art.

Next,⁴ going under it, through the door, you find yourself in the principal room of the Academy, which please cross quietly to the window opposite, on the left of which hangs a large picture which you will have great difficulty in seeing at all, hung as it is against the light; and which, in any of its finer qualities, you absolutely cannot see; but may yet perceive what they are, latent in that darkness, which is all the honour that the kings, nobles, and artists of Europe care to bestow on one of the greatest pictures ever painted by Christendom in her central art-power. Alone worth an entire modern exhibition-building, hired fiddlers and all; here you have it jammed on a back wall, utterly unserviceable to human kind, the little angels of it fiddling unseen, unheard by anybody’s heart. It is the best

¹ [Again the directions do not apply. No. 615 is now in Room XVII.]

² [For another reference to pictures by B. Vivarini, see Vol. XI. p. 379.]

³ [Compare Modern Painters, vol. v. (Vol. VII. p. 282).]

⁴ [Here also the local indications are no longer applicable. The picture in question-Giovanni Bellini’s “Madonna Enthroned, with six Saints”-is No. 38 in Room II., and occupies a place of honour.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]