GUIDE TO THE ACADEMY AT VENICE 157

It is wholly without sentiment, though the distant landscape becomes affecting through its detailed truth,-the winding road under the rocks, and the towered city, being as full of little pretty things to be searched out as a natural scene would be.

And I have brought you first, in our now more complete review, to this picture, because it shows more clearly than any other through what tremendous work the Italian masters obtained their power.

Without the inherited strength won by this precision of drawing in the earlier masters, neither Titian nor Tintoret could have existed.

Return into the corridor,¹ and walk along it to the end without wasting time;-there is a Bonifazio, No. 269, worth a painter’s while to stop at, but in general mere Dutch rubbish. Walk straight on, and go in at the last door on the left, within which you will find

No. 611. Cima da Conegliano.² An entirely sincere and noble picture of the central epoch. Not supreme in any artistic quality, but good and praiseworthy in all; and, as a conception of its subject, the most beautiful you will find in Venice. Grudge no time upon it; but look at nothing else here; return into the corridor, and proceed by it into the great room.³

Opposite you is Titian’s great “Presentation of the Virgin,” interesting to artists, and an unusually large specimen of Titian’s rough work. To me, simply the most

¹ [The local indications are not now applicable. Bonifazio’s “Holy Family” is in Room X. In the rearrangement of the Gallery the Dutch pictures are separated from the Italian.]

² [Now in Room XVII.: “The Incredulity of St. Thomas.” In the revised edition (1891) the picture referred to by Ruskin was wrongly identified as the “Madonna and Child, with various Saints,” and this error is reproduced in the Italian edition. The “Madonna and Child,” etc. (No. 36 in the present numbering of the Gallery), is mentioned by Ruskin below, p. 181.]

³ [Here, again, the directions do not apply. Titian’s “Presentation” is No. 626 in Room XX. Visitors to Venice will find it interesting (as Ruskin elsewhere suggests) to compare with this picture that by Tintoret of the same subject in the Church of S. Maria dell’ Orto: see Vol. XI. p. 396. Ruskin finds the original suggestion for the little girl mounting the steps in a fresco by Giotto at Florence. see Mornings in Florence, § 25 (Vol. XXIII. p. 321, and Plate XXX.).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]