feeling which has so large a share in
Venetian art.

The painters of Venice were of the people and had no wide intellectual
outlook at its most splendid moment, such as was possessed by those men
who in Florence were drawn into the company of the Medici and their
court of scholars, and who all their lives were in the midst of a
society of large aims and a free public spirit, in which men took their
share of the responsibilities and honours of a citizen's life. The
merchant-patrons of Venice are quite uninterested in the solving of
problems. They pay a price, and they want a good show of colour and
gilding for their money. Presently they buy from outside, and a
half-hearted imitation of foreigners is the best ambition of Venetian
artists. Art, it has been said, does not declare itself with true
spontaneity till it feels behind it the weight and unanimity of the
whole body of the people. That true outburst was long in coming, but its
seeds were fructifying deep in a congenial soil. They were fostered by
the warmth and colour of Oriental intercourse, and at last the racial
instinct speaks with no uncertain accent in the great domain of art, and
speaks in a new and unexpected way; as splendid as, yet utterly unlike,
the grand intellectual declaration of Florence.

Let us bear in mind, then, that Venice in all her history, in all
her character, is Eastern rather than Western. Hers is the kingdom
of feeling rather than that of thought, of emotion as opposed to
intellect. Her whole story tells of a profoundly emotional and sensuous
apprehension of the nature of things; and till the time comes when her
artists are inspired to express that, their creations may be interesting
enough, but they fail to reveal the true workings of her mind. When they
do, they find a new medium and use it in a new way. Venetian colour,
when it comes into its kingdom, speaks for a whole people, sensuous and
of deep feeling, able for the first time to utter itself in art.

We have to divide the history of the Venetian School into three parts.
The first extends from the primitives to the end of Giovanni Bellini's
life. He forms a link between the first and second periods. The second
begins with Giorgione and ends with Tintoretto and Bassano, and is the
Venetian School proper. Thirdly, we have the eighteenth-century revival,
in which Tiepolo is the most conspicuous figure, and which is in an
equal degree the expression of the life of its time.