in art the intellectual strivings of the Renaissance was the task of Florence and her sons; to create a monument of Renaissance magnificence was the task of Venice.  Without Venice the modern world could not have produced that flower of sensuous and unreflective loveliness in painting, which is worthy to stand beside the highest product of the Greek genius in sculpture.  For Athena from her Parthenon stretches the hand to Venezia enthroned in the ducal palace.  The broad brows and earnest eyes of the Hellenic goddess are of one divine birth and lineage with the golden hair and superb carriage of the sea-queen.

It is in the heart of Venice, in the House of the Republic, that the Venetian painters, considered as the interpreters of worldly splendour, fulfilled their function with the most complete success.  Centuries contributed to make the Ducal Palace what it is.  The massive colonnades and Gothic loggias of the external basement date from the thirteenth century; their sculpture belongs to the age when Niccola Pisano’s genius was in the ascendant.  The square fabric of the palace, so beautiful in the irregularity of its pointed windows, so singular in its mosaic diaper of pink and white, was designed at the same early period.  The inner court and the facade that overhangs the lateral canal, display the handiwork of Sansovino.  The halls of the palace—­spacious chambers where the Senate assembled, where ambassadors approached the Doge, where the Savi deliberated, where the Council of Ten conducted their inquisition—­are walled and roofed with pictures of inestimable value, encased in framework of carved oak; overlaid with burnished gold.  Supreme art—­the art of the imagination perfected with delicate and skilful care in detail—­is made in these proud halls the minister of mundane pomp.  In order that the gold brocade of the ducal robes, that the scarlet and crimson of the Venetian senator, might, be duly harmonised by the richness of their surroundings, it was necessary that canvases measured by the square yard, and rendered priceless by the authentic handiwork of Titian, Tintoret, and Veronese, should glow upon the walls and ceilings.  A more insolent display of public wealth—­a more lavish outpouring of human genius in the service of State pageantry, cannot be imagined.

Sublime over all allegories and histories depicted in those multitudes of paintings, sits Venezia herself enthroned and crowned, the personification of haughtiness and power.  Figured as a regal lady, with yellow hair tightly knotted round a small head poised upon her upright throat and ample shoulders, Venice takes her chair of sovereignty—­as mistress of the ocean to whom Neptune and the Tritons offer pearls, as empress of the globe at whose footstool wait Justice with the sword and Peace with the olive branch, as a queen of heaven exalted to the clouds.  They have made her a goddess, those great painters; they have produced a mythus, and personified in native