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of execution and essentially artistic power of design, I rank this Carpaccio above either of them, and therefore, as in these respects, the best picture in the world. I know no other which unites every nameable quality of painter’s art in so intense a degree-breadth with minuteness, brilliancy with quietness, decision with tenderness, colour with light and shade: all that is faithfullest in Holland, fancifullest in Venice, severest in Florence, naturallest in England. Whatever De Hooghe could do in shade, Van Eyck in detail-Giorgione in mass-Titian in colour-Bewick and Landseer in animal life, is here at once; and I know no other picture in the world which can be compared with it.

It is in tempera, however, not oil: and I must note in passing that many of the qualities which I have been in the habit of praising in Tintoret and Carpaccio, as consummate achievements in oil-painting, are, as I have found lately, either in tempera altogether, or tempera with oil above. And I am disposed to think that ultimately tempera will be found the proper material for the greater number of most delightful subjects.

201. The subject, in the present instance, is a simple study of animal life in all its phases. I am quite sure that this is the meaning of the picture in Carpaccio’s own mind. I suppose him to have been commissioned to paint the portraits of two Venetian ladies-that he did not altogether like his models, but yet felt himself bound to do his best for them, and contrived to do what perfectly satisfied them and himself too. He has painted their pretty faces and pretty shoulders, their pretty dresses and pretty jewels, their pretty ways and their pretty playmates-and what would they have more?-he himself secretly laughing at them all the time, and intending the spectators of the future to laugh for ever.

It may be, however, that I err in supposing the picture a portrait commission. It may be simply a study for practice, gathering together every kind of thing which he could get to sit to him quietly, persuading the pretty ladies to

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