374 ST. MARK’S REST

II.-THE PLACE OF DRAGONS

“‘EnnohsaV oti ton poihthn deoi, eiper melloi poihthV einai, poiein muqouV all ou logouV”-Plat. Phædo, 61 B.

213. ON the eve of the Feast of the Annunciation, in the year of Christ 1452,¹ the Council of Ten, by decree, permitted certain Dalmatians settled in Venice to establish a Lay Brotherhood, called of St. George and of St. Tryphonius. The brothers caused to be written in illuminated letters on the first pages of their minute book their “memorandum of association.” They desired to “hold united in sacred bonds men of Dalmatian blood, to render homage to God and to His saints by charitable endeavours and religious ceremonies, and to help by holy sacrifices the souls of brothers alive and dead.” The brotherhood gave, and continues to give, material support to the poor of Dalmatian blood in Venice; money to the old, and education to the young. For prayer and adoration it built the chapel known as St. George’s of the Sclavonians. In this chapel, during the first decade of the sixteenth century, Carpaccio painted a series of pictures. First, three from the story of St. Jerome-not that St. Jerome was officially a patron of the brothers, but a fellow-countryman, and therefore, as it were, an ally;-then three from the story of St. George, one from that of St. Tryphonius, and two smaller from the Gospel History. Allowing for doorways, window, and altar, these nine pictures fill the circuit of the chapel walls.

Those representing St. George are placed opposite those of St. Jerome. In the ante-chapel of the Ducal Palace, Tintoret, who studied, not without result otherwise, these pictures of Carpaccio’s, has placed the same saints over against each other.² To him, as to Carpaccio, they represented the two sides, practical and contemplative, of faithful life. This balance we still, though with less completeness,

¹ [1451. See vol. xiv. 47, in the State Archives (Archivio Veneto).]

² [For Ruskin’s notes on these pictures, see Vol. XI. p. 374.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]