The Sala del Collegio itself, leading from this room, is full of Doges in all the magnificence of paint, above the tawdriest of wainscotting.  Tintoretto gives us Doge Andrea Gritti praying to the Virgin, Doge Francesco Donato witnessing as an honoured guest the nuptials of S. Catherine, Doge Niccolo da Ponte surveying the Virgin in glory, and Doge Alvise Mocenigo condescending to adore his Saviour.  Paul Veronese depicts an allegory of the battle of Lepanto in 1571, at which Venice temporarily overcame the Turks.  The kneeling white-bearded warrior beside S. Giustina is the victor, afterwards Doge Sebastiano Venier, and Christ looks on in approval.  Tintoretto also painted for the Palace a picture of this battle, but it perished in the fire of 1576.  It is Veronese who painted the virtues and attributes on the ceiling, one of his most famous works being the woman with a web, who is sometimes called “Industry” and sometimes “Dialectics,” so flexible is symbolism.  “Fidelity” has a dog with a fine trustful head.  To my weary eye the finest of the groups is that of Mars and Neptune, with flying cherubs, which is superbly drawn and coloured.  Nothing but a chaise-longue on which to lie supine, at ease, can make the study of these wonderful ceilings anything but a distressing source of fatigue.

The next room is the Sala del Senato, and here again we find a blend of heaven and Venice, with Doges as a common denominator.  A “Descent from the Cross” (by Tintoretto) is witnessed by Doge Pietro Lando and Doge Marcantonio Trevisan; and the same hand gives us Pietro Loredan imploring the aid of the Virgin.  In the centre ceiling painting Tintoretto depicts Venice as Queen of the Sea.  The other artist here is Palma the younger, whose principal picture represents Doge Leonardo Loredan presiding over an attack by a lion on a bull, typifying the position of the Republic when Pope Julius launched the League of Cambray against it in 1508.  The Doge does not look dismayed, but Venice never recovered from the blow.

The room on the right of the throne leads to the chapel, which has several small pictures.  A Giovanni Bellini is over the altar, but it is not one of his best.  During his long life in Venice Bellini saw ten Doges, and in his capacity as ducal painter painted four of them.

Returning to the Sala delle Quattro Porte (by way of the “Bacchus and Ariadne” room, if we are wise), we make for the Sala del Consiglio dei Dieci, the terrible Council of Ten.  All Venetian histories are eloquent upon this secret Tribunal, which, more powerful far than the Doge himself, for five centuries, beginning early in the fourteenth, ruled the city.  On the walls are historical paintings which are admirable examples of story-telling, and on the ceiling are Veroneses, original or copied, the best of which depicts an old man with his head on his hand, fine both in drawing and colour.  It was in the wall of the next room that the famous Bocca di Leone was placed, into which were dropped those anonymous charges against Venetian citizens which the Council of Ten investigated, and if true, or, very likely, if not true, punished with such swiftness and thoroughness.  How a state that offered such easy temptations to anti-social baseness and treachery could expect to prosper one cannot imagine.  It suggests that the Venetian knowledge of human nature was defective at the roots.