loveliness that bride of the sea, their love, their lady.  The beauty of Venetian women and the glory of Venetian empire find their meeting point in her, and live as the spirit of Athens lived in Pallas Promachos.  On every side, above, around, wherever the eye falls in those vast rooms, are seen the deeds of Venice—­painted histories of her triumphs over emperors and popes and infidels, or allegories of her greatness—­scenes wherein the Doges perform acts of faith, with S. Mark for their protector, and with Venezia for their patroness.  The saints in Paradise, massed together by Tintoretto and by Palma, mingle with mythologies of Greece and Rome, and episodes of pure idyllic painting.

Religion in these pictures was a matter of parade, an adjunct to the costly public life of the Republic.  We need not, therefore, conclude that it was unreal.  Such as it was, the religion of the Venetian masters is indeed as genuine as that of Fra Angelico or Albert Duerer.  But it was the faith, not of humble men or of mystics, not of profound thinkers or ecstatic visionaries, so much as of courtiers and statesmen, of senators and merchants, for whom religion was a function among other functions, not a thing apart, not a source of separate and supreme vitality.  Even as Christians, the Venetians lived a life separate from the rest of Italy.  Their Church claimed independence of the see of Rome, and the enthusiasm of S. Francis was but faintly felt in the lagoons.  Siena in her hour of need dedicated herself to Madonna; Florence in the hour of her regeneration gave herself to Christ; Venice remained under the ensign of the leonine S. Mark.  While the cities of Lombardy and Central Italy ran wild with revivalism and religious panics, the Venetians maintained their calm, and never suffered piety to exceed the limits of political prudence.  There is, therefore, no mystical exaltation in the faith depicted by her artists.  That Tintoretto could have painted the saints in glory—­a countless multitude of congregated forms, a sea whereof the waves are souls—­as a background for State ceremony, shows the positive and realistic attitude of mind from which the most imaginative of Venetian masters started, when he undertook the most exalted of religious themes.  Paradise is a fact, we may fancy Tintoretto reasoned; and it is easier to fill a quarter of an acre of canvas with a picture of Paradise than with any other subject, because the figures can be arranged in concentric tiers round Christ and Madonna in glory.

There is a little sketch by Guardi representing a masked ball in the Council Chamber where the “Paradise” of Tintoretto fills a wall.  The men are in periwigs and long waistcoats; the ladies wear hoops, patches, fans, high heels, and powder.  Bowing, promenading, intriguing, exchanging compliments or repartees, they move from point to point; while from the billowy surge of saints, Moses with the table of the law and the Magdalen with her adoring eyes of penitence look down