first, Venice cut herself adrift, as far as possible, from Western ties, but she turned to Eastern people and to intercourse with the East with a natural affinity which savours of racial instinct. All her greatness was derived from her Asiatic trade, and her bazaars, heaped with Eastern riches, must have assumed a deeply Oriental aspect. Her customs long retained many details peculiar to the East. The people observed a custom for choosing and dowering brides, which was of Asia. The national treatment of women was akin to that of an Oriental State; Venetian women lived in a retirement which recalled the life of the harem, only appearing on great occasions to display their brocades and jewels. Girls were closely veiled when they passed through the streets. The attachment of men to women had no intellectual bias, scarcely any sentiment, but “went straight to the mark: the enjoyment of physical beauty.” The position of women in Venice was a great contrast to that attained by the Florentine lady of the Renaissance, who was highly educated, deeply versed in men and in affairs, the fine flower of culture, and the queen of a brilliant society. The love for colour and gorgeous pageantry was of Semitic intensity and seemed insatiable, and the gratification of the senses was a deliberate State policy. But passionate as was the spirit of patriotism, enthusiastic the love and loyalty of the people, the civic spirit was absent. The masses were contented to live under a despotic rule and to be little despots in their own houses. In the twelfth century the people saw power pass into the hands of the aristocracy, and as long as the despotism was a benevolent one, the event aroused no opposition. Like Orientals, the Venetians had wild outbursts, and like them they quieted down and nothing came of them. As Mr. Hazlitt remarks, “their occasional resistance to tyranny, though marked by deeds of horrid and dark cruelty, left no deep or enduring traces behind it. It established no principle. It taught no lesson.” Venice was a Republic only in name. The whole aspect of her government is Eastern. Its system of espionage, its secret tribunals, its swift and silent blows,—these are all Oriental traits, and the East entering into her whole life from without found a natural home awaiting it. We should be mistaken, however, in thinking that the Venetians in their great days were enervated and lapped in the sensuality which we are apt to associate with Eastern ideals. Sensuality did in the end drain the life out of her. “It is the disease which attacks sensuousness, but it is not the same thing.” The Venetians were by nature men with a deep capacity for feeling, and it is this deep feeling which has so large a share in Venetian art.

The painters of Venice were of the people and had no wide intellectual outlook at its most splendid moment, such as was possessed by those men who in Florence were drawn into the company of the Medici and their court of scholars, and who all their lives were in the midst of a society of large aims and a free public spirit, in which men took their share of the responsibilities and honours of a citizen’s life. The merchant-patrons of Venice are quite uninterested in the solving of problems. They pay a price, and they want a good show of colour and gilding for their money. Presently they buy from outside, and a half-hearted imitation of foreigners is the best ambition of Venetian artists. Art, it has been said, does not declare itself with true spontaneity till it feels behind it the weight and unanimity of the whole body of the people. That true outburst was long in coming, but its seeds were fructifying deep in a congenial soil. They were fostered by the warmth and colour of Oriental intercourse, and at last the racial instinct speaks with no uncertain accent in the great domain of art, and speaks in a new and unexpected way; as splendid as, yet utterly unlike, the grand intellectual declaration of Florence.

Let us bear in mind, then, that Venice in all her history, in all her character, is Eastern rather than Western. Hers is the kingdom of feeling rather than that of thought, of emotion as opposed to intellect. Her whole story tells of a profoundly emotional and sensuous apprehension of the nature of things; and till the time comes when her artists are inspired to express that, their creations may be interesting enough, but they fail to reveal the true workings of her mind. When they do, they find a new medium and use it in a new way. Venetian colour, when it comes into its kingdom, speaks for a whole people, sensuous and of deep feeling, able for the first time to utter itself in art.

We have to divide the history of the Venetian School into three parts. The first extends from the primitives to the end of Giovanni Bellini’s life. He forms a link between the first and second periods. The second begins with Giorgione and ends with Tintoretto and Bassano, and is the Venetian School proper. Thirdly, we have the eighteenth-century revival, in which Tiepolo is the most conspicuous figure, and which is in an equal degree the expression of the life of its time.

CHAPTER II

PRIMITIVE ART IN VENICE

The school of Byzantium, so widespread in its influence, was particularly strong in Venice, where mosaics adorned the cathedral of Torcello from the ninth century and St. Mark’s became a splendid storehouse of Byzantine art. The earliest mosaic on the façade of St. Mark’s was executed about the year 1250, those in the Baptistery date during the reign of Andrea Dandolo, who was Doge from 1342 to 1354. Yet though the life of Giotto lies between these two dates, and his frescoes at Padua were within a few hours’ journey, there is no sign that the great revolution in painting, which was making itself felt in every principal centre of Italy, had touched the richest and most peaceful of all her States.

Yet local art in Venice was no outcome of Byzantinism. It rose as that of the mosaicists fell, but its rise differs from that of Florence and Siena in being for long almost imperceptible. Artists were looked upon merely as artisans in all the cities of Italy, but in Venice before any other city they had been placed among the craftsmen. The statute of the Guild of Siena was not formulated till 1355; that of Venice is the earliest of which we have any record, and bears the date of 1272. There is scarcely a word to indicate that pictures in the modern sense of the term existed. Painters were employed on the adornment of arms and of household furniture. Leather helmets and shields were painted, and such banners as we see in Paolo Uccello’s battlepieces. Painted chests and cassoni were already in demand, dishes and plates for the table and the surface of the table itself were treated in a similar way. Special regulations dealt with all these, and it is only at the end of the list that anconæ are mentioned. The ancona was a gilded framework, having a compartment containing a picture of the Madonna and Child, and others with single figures of the saints, and these were the only pictures proper produced at this date. The demand for anconæ was, however, large, and they were very early placed, not only in the churches, but in the houses of patricians and burghers. Constant disputes arose between the painters and the gilders. Pictures were habitually painted upon a gold ground, but the painters were forbidden to gild the backgrounds themselves. “Gilding is the business of the gilder, painting that of the painter,” says a contemporary record. “Now the gilder contends that if a frame has to be gilt and then touched with colour, he is entitled to