In the next room the Three Heads of the Council of Ten debated, and here the attendant goes into spasms of delight over a dazzling inlaid floor.

This is all that is shown upstairs, for the piombi, or prison cells in the leaden roof, are now closed.

Downstairs we come to the two Great Halls—­first the gigantic Sala del Maggior Consiglio, with Tintoretto’s “Paradiso” at one end; historical pictures all around; the portraits of the Doges above; a gorgeous ceiling which, I fear, demands attention; and, mercifully, the little balcony over the lagoon for escape and recovery.  But first let us peep into the room on the left, where the remains of Guariento’s fresco of Paradise, which Tintoretto was to supersede, have been set up:  a necessarily somewhat meaningless assemblage of delicate tints and pure drawing.  Then the photograph stall, which is in that ancient room of the palace that has the two beautiful windows on a lower level than the rest.

It is melancholy to look round this gigantic sala of the great Council and think of the pictures which were destroyed by the great fire in 1576, when Sebastiano Venier was Doge, among them that rendering of the battle of Lepanto, the Doge’s own victory, which Tintoretto painted with such enthusiasm.  A list of only a few of the works of art which from time to time have fallen to the flames would be tragic reading.  Among the artists whose paintings were lost in the 1576 fire were, in addition to Tintoretto, Titian, Giovanni and Gentile Bellini, Gentile da Fabriano and Carpaccio.  Sad, too, to think that the Senators who once thronged here—­those grave, astute gentlemen in furred cloaks whom Tintoretto and Titian and Moroni and Moretto painted for us—­assemble here no more.  Sightseers now claim the palace, and the administrators of Venetian affairs meet in the Municipio, or Town Hall, on the Grand Canal.

The best thing about the room is the room itself:  the courage of it in a little place like Venice!  Next, I suppose, all eyes turn to the “Paradiso,” and they can do nothing else if the custodian has made himself one of the party, as he is apt to do.  The custodians of Venice are in the main silent, pessimistic men.  They themselves neither take interest in art nor understand why you should.  Their attitude to you is if not contempt only one remove from it.  But one of the officials in the Doges’ Palace who is sometimes to be found in this Great Hall is both enthusiastic and vocal.  He has English too, a little.  His weakness for the “Paradiso” is chiefly due to the circumstance that it is the “largest oil painting in the world.”  I dare say this is true; but the same claim, I recall, was once made for an original poster in the Strand.  The “Paradiso” was one of Tintoretto’s last works, the commission coming to him only by the accident of Veronese’s death.  Veronese was the artist first chosen, with a Bassano to assist, but when he died, Tintoretto, who had been passed over as too old, was permitted to try.  The great man, painting on canvas, at the Misericordia, which had been turned into a studio for him, and being assisted by his son Domenico, finished it in 1590; and it was the delight of Venice.  At first he refused payment for it, and then consented to take a present, but a smaller one than the Senate wished to offer.