in faith, Titian in formalism. Between the years
of their births the vital religion of Venice had expired.

"The _vital_ religion, observe, not the formal. Outward observance was
as strict as ever; and doge and senator still were painted, in almost
every important instance, kneeling before the Madonna or St. Mark; a
confession of faith made universal by the pure gold of the Venetian
sequin. But observe the great picture of Titian's, in the ducal palace,
of the Doge Antonio Grimani kneeling before Faith: there is a curious
lesson in it. The figure of Faith is a coarse portrait of one of
Titian's least graceful female models: Faith had become carnal. The eye
is first caught by the flash of the Doge's armor. The heart of Venice
was in her wars, not in her worship. The mind of Tintoret, incomparably
more deep and serious than that of Titian, casts the solemnity of its
own tone over the sacred subjects which it approaches, and sometimes
forgets itself into devotion; but the principle of treatment is
altogether the same as Titian's: absolute subordination of the religious
subject to purposes of decoration or portraiture. The evidence might be
accumulated a thousand-fold from the works of Veronese, and of every
succeeding painter,--that the fifteenth century had taken away the
religious heart of Venice.

"Such is the evidence of painting. To give a general idea of that of
architecture: Phillipe de Commynes, writing of his entry into Venice in
1495, observed instantly the distinction between the elder palaces and
those built 'within this last hundred years; which all have their
fronts of white marble brought from Istria, a hundred miles away, and
besides, many a large piece of porphyry and serpentine upon their
fronts.'...

"There had indeed come a change over Venetian architecture in the
fifteenth century; and a change of some importance to us moderns: we
English owe to it our St. Paul's Cathedral, and Europe in general owes
to it the utter degradation or destruction of her schools of
architecture, never since revived."...

"The Rationalist kept the arts and cast aside the religion. This
rationalistic art is the art commonly called Renaissance, marked by a
return to pagan systems, not to adopt them and hallow them for
Christianity, but to rank itself under them as an imitator and pupil. In
Painting it is headed by Giulio Romano and Nicolo Poussin; in
Architecture, by Sansovino and Palladio.

"Instant degradation followed