152 GUIDE TO THE ACADEMY AT VENICE

John Bellini in the Academy of Venice; the third best in Venice, and probably in the world.¹ Repainted, the righthand angel, and somewhat elsewhere; but on the whole perfect; unspeakably good, and right in all ways. Not inspired with any high religious passion; a good man’s work, not an enthusiast’s. It is, in principle, merely the perfecting of Vivarini’s; the saints, mere portraits of existing men and women; the Madonna, idealized only in that squareness of face and throat, not in anywise the prettier for it, otherwise a quite commonplace Venetian woman. Such, and far lovelier, you may see living to-day, if you can see-and may make manifest, if you can paint.

And now, you may look to the far and end of the room, where Titian’s “Assumption”² has the chairs put before it; everybody being expected to sit down, and for once, without asking what o’clock it is at the railroad station, reposefully admire.

Of which, hear first what I wrote, very rightly, a quarter of a century ago:-

“The traveller is generally too much struck by Titian’s great picture of ‘The Assumption’ to be able to pay proper attention to the other works in this gallery. Let him, however, ask himself candidly how much of his admiration is dependent merely on the picture’s being larger than any other in the room, and having bright masses of red and blue in it; let him be assured that the picture is in reality not one whit the better either for being large or gaudy in colour, and he will then be better disposed to give the pains necessary to discover the merit of the more profound works of Bellini and Tintoret.”³

I wrote this, I have said, very rightly, not quite rightly. For if a picture is good, it is better for being large, because

¹ [The two which Ruskin preferred to it are the Madonnas of the Frari and San Zaccharia: see Relation between Michael Angelo and Tintoret, Vol. XXII. p. 83.]

² [No. 40 in Room II.]

³ [Stones of Venice, vol. iii. (1853): see now Vol. XI. p. 361; and for other references to the picture, Vol. VII. pp. 289, 298, 328; Vol. XI. pp. 379-380; Vol. XIX. pp. 110, 203; and Vol. XX. p. 170.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]