that will not pall. The least instructed and the simple
feel his influence as strongly as the wise or learned.

In the course of this attempt to describe the specific qualities of
Tintoretto, Veronese, and Titian, I have been more at pains to distinguish
differences than to point out similarities. What they had in common was
the Renaissance spirit as this formed itself in Venice. Nowhere in Italy
was art more wholly emancipated from obedience to ecclesiastical
traditions, without losing the character of genial and natural piety.
Nowhere was the Christian history treated with a more vivid realism,
harmonised more simply with pagan mythology, or more completely purged of
mysticism. The Umbrian devotion felt by Raphael in his boyhood, the
prophecy of Savonarola, and the Platonism of Ficino absorbed by Michael
Angelo at 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