376 ST. MARK’S REST

mediæval mythology, speaks to the same effect: “Hieronimus, quod est Sanctum Nemus,” Holy Grove, “a nemore ubi aliquando conversatus est,” from that one in which he sometime had his walk-“Se dedit et sacri nemoris perpalluit umbra,”* but not beneath the laurels of “I’un giogo de Parnaso,” † to whose inferior summit, only, Dante in that line alludes, nor now under olive boughs-

“where the Attick bird

Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long,”¹

but where, once on a winter night, shepherds in their vigil heard other singing, where the palm bearer of burdens, witness of victorious hope, offers to every man, for the gathering, fruit unto everlasting life. “Ad Bethleem oppidum remeavit, ubi, prudens animal, ad præsepe Domini se obtulit permansurum.” “He went, as though home, to the town of Bethlehem, and like a wise domestic creature presented himself at his Master’s manager to abide there.”

215. After the pictures of St. George comes that of St. Tryphonius, telling how the prayer of a little child shall conquer the basilisk of earthly pride, though the soldier’s spear cannot overthrow this monster, nor maiden’s zone bind him. After the picture of St. Jerome we are given the Calling of Matthew, in which Carpaccio endeavours to declare how great joy fills the fugitive servant of Riches when at last he does homage as true man of another Master. Between these two is set the central picture of the nine, small, dark itself, and in a dark corner, in arrangement following pretty closely the simple tradition of earlier Venetian masters. The scene is an untilled garden-the subject, the Agony of our Lord.

The prominent feature of the stories Carpaccio has chosen-setting aside at present the two gospel incidents-is that, though heartily Christian, they are historically drawn quite

* Dante, Eclogues, i. 30.

† Dante, Par., i. 16.

¹ [Paradise Regained, iv. 244.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]