Florence, the scientific preoccupations of Lionardo and the antiquarian interests of Mantegna, were all alike unknown at Venice.  Among the Venetian painters there was no conflict between art and religion, or art and curiosity—­no reaction against previous pietism, no perplexity of conscience, no confusion of aims.  Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese were children of the people, men of the world, men of pleasure; wealthy, urbane, independent, pious:—­they were all these by turns; but they were never mystics, scholars, or philosophers.  In their aesthetic ideal religion found a place, nor was sensuality rejected; but the religion was sane and manly, the sensuality was vigorous and virile.  Not the intellectual greatness of the Renaissance, but its happiness and freedom, was what they represented.

FOOTNOTES: 

[265] From the beginning of Julian and Maddalo, which relates a ride taken by Shelley with Lord Byron, on the Lido, and their visit to the madhouse on its neighbouring island.  The description, richly coloured and somewhat confused in detail, seems to me peculiarly true to Venetian scenery.  With the exception of Tunis, I know of no such theatre for sunset-shows as Venice.  Tunis has the same elements of broad lagoons and distant hills, but not the same vaporous atmosphere.

[266] Lettere di Messer Pietro Aretino, Parigi, MDCIX, lib. iii. p. 48.  I have made a paraphrase rather than a translation of this rare and curious description.

[267] See Yriarte, Un Patricien de Venise, p. 439.

[268] See above, Chapter IV, Political Doctrine expressed in Fresco.

[269] See Vol.  I., Age of the Despots, p. 183.

[270] I must refer my readers to Crowe and Cavalcaselle for an estimate of the influence exercised at Venice by Gentile de Fabriano, John Alamannus, and the school of Squarcione.  Antonello da Messina brought his method of oil-painting into the city in 1470, and Gian Bellini learned something at Padua from Andrea Mantegna.  The true point about Venice, however, is that the Venetian character absorbed, assimilated, and converted to its own originality whatever touched it.

[271] The conditions of art in Flanders—­wealthy, bourgeois, proud, free—­were not dissimilar to those of art in Venice.  The misty flats of Belgium have some of the atmospheric qualities of Venice.  As Van Eyck is to the Vivarini, so is Rubens to Paolo Veronese.  This expresses the amount of likeness and of difference.

[272] Jacopo and his sons Gentile and Giovanni.

[273] Notice particularly the Contadina type of S. Catherine in a picture ascribed to Cordegliaghi in the Venetian Academy.

[274] These Scuole were the halls of meeting for companies called by the names of patron saints.

[275] Notice in particular, from the series of pictures illustrating the legend of S. Ursula, the very beautiful faces and figures of the saint herself, and her young bridegroom, the Prince of Britain.  Attendant squires and pages in these paintings have all the charm of similar subordinate personages in Pinturicchio, with none of his affectation.