The second dome tells the history of Abraham, and then three domes are given to the best story in the world, the story of Joseph.  The first dome treats of his dream, showing him asleep and busy with it, and the result, the pit being a cylinder projecting some feet from the ground.  Jacob’s grief on seeing the coat of many colours is very dramatic.  In the next we find Potiphar’s wife, Joseph’s downfall, and the two dreaming officials.  The third tells of Joseph and Jacob and is full of Egyptian local colour, a group of pyramids occurring twice.  On the wall are subsidiary scenes, such as Joseph before Pharaoh, the incident of Benjamin’s sack with the cup in it, and the scene of the lean kine devouring the fat, which they are doing with tremendous spirit, all beginning simultaneously from behind.

The last dome relates the story of Moses, but it is by an inferior artist and does not compare with the others.  The miracle of the manna on the wall is, however, amusing, the manna being rather like melons and the quails as large as pheasants.  On the extreme left a cook is at work grilling some on a very open fire.  Another inferior mosaic on the north side of the atrium, represents S. Christopher with his little Passenger.  It is a pity that Titian’s delightful version in the Doges’ Palace could not have been followed.

The atrium is remarkable not only for its illustrations to Genesis.  Its mosaic patterns are very lovely, and its carved capitals.  The staircase to the left of the centre door of the church proper leads to the interior galleries and to the exterior gallery, where the golden horses are.  Of the interior galleries I speak later.  Let me say here that these noble steeds were originally designed and cast for a triumphal arch, to be driven by Victory, in honour of Nero.  Filched from Rome by Constantine, they were carried to his own city as an ornament to the imperial hippodrome.  In 1204 the great Doge Enrico Dandolo, having humiliated Constantinople, brought the horses to Venice as a trophy, and they were transferred to the service of the church.  Here, above the central portal of the cathedral, they stood for nearly six centuries, and then in 1797 a more modern Constantine, one Napoleon, carried them to Paris, to beautify his city.  In 1815, however, when there was a redistribution of Napoleonic spoils, back they came to Venice, to their ancient platform, and there they now are, unchanged, except that their golden skins are covered with the autographs of tourists.

One odd thing about them is that they and Colleoni’s steed are the only horses which many younger and poorer Venetians have ever seen.  As to the horselessness of Venice, the last word, as well as one of the first, in English, was written by our old friend Coryat in the following passage:  “For you must consider that neither the Venetian Gentlemen nor any others can ride horses in the streets of Venice as in other Cities and Townes, because their streets being both