1385-1455.
Michele Giambono, fl. 1470.
Giovanni Alemanus, fl. 1440-1447.
Antonio da Murano, circa 1430-1470.
Bartolommeo Vivarini, fl. 1420-1499.
Alvise Vivarini, fl. 1461-1503.
Antonello da Messina, circa 1444-1493.
Jacopo Bellini, fl. 1430-1466.
Jacopo dei Barbari, circa 1450-1516.
Andrea Mantegna, 1431-1506.
Carlo Crivelli, 1430-1493.
Bartolommeo Montagna, 1450-1523.
Francesco Buonsignori, 1453-1519.
Gentile Bellini, circa 1427-1507.
Giovanni Bellini, 1426-1516.
Lazzaro Bastiani, fl. 1470-1508.
Vittore Carpaccio, fl. 1478-1522.
Girolamo da Santa Croce.
Mansueti, fl. 1474-1510.
Giovanni Battista da Conegliano (Cima), 1460-1517.
Vincenzo Catena, fl. 1495-1531.
Bissolo, 1464-1528.
Marco Basaiti, circa 1470-1527.
Andrea Previtali, fl. 1502-1525.
Bartolommeo Veneto, fl. 1505-1555.
N. Rondinelli, fl. 1480-1500.
Girolamo Savoldo, 1480-1548.
Giorgio Barbarelli (Giorgione), 1478-1511.
Giovanni Busi (Cariani), circa 1480-1544.
Tiziano Vecellio (Titian), 1477-1576.
Palma Vecchio, 1480-1528.
Lorenzo Lotto, 1480-1556.
Martino da Udine (Pellegrino di San Daniele).
Morto da Feltre, circa 1474-1522.
Romanino, 1485-1566.
Sebastian Luciani (del Piombo), 1485-1547.
Giovanni Antonino Licinio (Pordenone), 1483-1540.
Bernardino Licinio, fl. 1520-1544.
Alessandro Bonvicino (Moretto), circa 1498-1554.
Bonifazio de Pitatis (Veronese), fl. 1510-1540.
Paris Bordone, 1510-1570.
Jacopo da Ponte (Bassano), 1510-1592.
Jacopo Robusti (Tintoretto), 1518-1592.
Paolo Caliari (Veronese), 1528-1588.
Domenico Robusti, 1562-1637.
Palma Giovine, 1544-1628.
Alessandro Varotari (Il Padovanino), 1590-1650.
Gianbattista Fumiani, 1643-1710.
Sebastiano Ricci, 1662-1734.
Gregorio Lazzarini, 1657-1735.
Rosalba Carriera, 1675-1757.
G. B. Piazetta, 1682-1754.
Gianbattista Tiepolo, 1696-1770.
Antonio Canale (Canaletto), 1697-1768.
Belotto, 1720-1780.
Francesco Guardi, 1712-1793.

PART I

CHAPTER I

VENICE AND HER ART

Venetian painting in its prime differs altogether in character from that of every other part of Italy. The Venetian is the most marked and recognisable of all the schools; its singularity is such that a novice in art can easily, in a miscellaneous collection, sort out the works belonging to it, and added to this unique character is the position it occupies in the domain of art. Venice alone of Italian States can boast an epoch of art comparable in originality and splendour to that of her great Florentine rival; an epoch which is to be classed among the great art manifestations of the world, which has exerted, and continues to exert, incalculable power over painting, and which is the inspiration as well as the despair of those who try to master its secret.

The other schools of Italy, with all their superficial varieties of treatment and feeling, depended for their very life upon the extent to which they were able to imbibe the Florentine influence. Siena rejected that strength and perished; Venice bided her time and suddenly struck out on independent lines, achieving a magnificent victory.

Art in Florence made a strictly logical progress. As civilisation awoke in the old Latin race, it went back in every domain of learning to the rich subsoil which still underlay the ruin and the alien structures left by the long barbaric dominion, for the Italian in his darkest hour had never been a barbarian; and as the mind was once more roused to conscious life, Florence entered readily upon that great intellectual movement which she was destined to lead. Her cast of thought was, from the first, realistic and scientific. Its whole endeavour was to know the truth, to weigh evidences, to elaborate experiments, to see things as they really were; and when she reached the point at which art was ready to speak, we find that the governing motive of her language was this same predilection for reality, and it was with this meaning that her typical artists found a voice. No artist ever sought for truth, both physical and spiritual, more resolutely than Giotto, and none ever spoke more distinctly the mind of his age and country; and as one generation follows another, art in Tuscany becomes more and more closely allied to the intellectual movement. The scientific predilection for form, for the representation of things as they really are, characterises not Florentine painting alone, but the whole of Florentine art. It is an art of contributions and discoveries, marked, it is needless to say, at every step by dominating personalities, positively as well as relatively great, but with each member consciously absorbed in “going one better” than his predecessors, in solving problems and in mastering methods. Florentine art is the outcome of Florentine life and thought. It is part of the definite clear-cut view of thought and reason, of that exactitude of apprehension towards which the whole Florentine mind was bent, and the lesser tributaries, as they flowed towards her, formed themselves on her pattern and worked upon the same lines, so that they have a certain general resemblance, and their excellence is in proportion to the thoroughness with which they have learned their lesson.

The difference which separates Venetian from the rest of Italian painting is a fundamental one. Venice attains to an equally distinguished place, but the way in which she does it and the character of her contribution are both so absolutely distinct that her art seems to be the outcome of another race, with alien temperament and standards. Venice had, indeed, a history and a life of her own. Her entire isolation, from her foundation, gave her an independent government and customs peculiar to herself, but at the same time her people, even in their earliest and most precarious struggles, were no barbarians who had slowly to acquire the arts of civilised life. Among the refugees were persons of high birth and great traditions, and they brought with them to the first crazy settlement on the lagoons some political training and some idea of how to reconstruct their shattered social fabric. The Venetian Republic rose rapidly to a position of influence in Europe. Small and circumscribed as its area was, every feature and sentiment was concentrated and intensified. But one element above all permeates it and sets it apart from other European States. The Oriental element in Venice must never be lost sight of if we wish to understand her philosophy of art.

There are some grounds, seriously accepted by the most recent historians, for believing that the first Venetian colonists were the descendants of emigrants who in prehistoric times had established themselves in Asia and who had returned from thence to Northern Italy. “These colonists,” says Hazlitt, “were called Tyrrhenians, and from their settlements round the mouth of the Po the Venetian stock was ultimately derived.” If the tradition has any truth, we think with a deeper interest of that instinct for commerce which seems to have been in the very blood of the early Venetians. Did it, indeed, come down to them from the merchants of Tyre and Carthage? From that wonderful trading race which stretched out its arms all over Europe and penetrated even to our own island? From the