ers abound, but however excellent
and essential these may be to an advanced study of the school, the
volumes containing them make too large a library to be easily carried
about, and a great deal of reading and assimilation is required to set
each painter in his place in the long story. Crowe and Cavalcaselle's
_History of Painting in North Italy_ still remains our sheet anchor; but
it is lengthy, over full of detail of minor painters, and lacks the
interesting criticism which of late years has collected round each
master. There seems room for a portable volume, making an attempt to
consider the Venetian painters, in relation to one another, and to help
the visitor not only to trace the evolution of the school from its dawn,
through its full splendour and to its declining rays, but to realise
what the Venetian School was, and what was the philosophy of life which
it represented.

Such a book does not pretend to vie with, much less to supersede, the
masterly treatises on the subject which have from time to time appeared,
or to take the place of exhaustive histories, such as that of Professor
Leonello Venturi on the Italian primitives. It should but serve to pave
the way to deeper and more detailed reading. It does not aspire to give
a complete and comprehensive list of the painters; some of the minor
ones may not even be mentioned. The mere inclusion of names, dates, and
facts would add unduly to the size of the book, and, when without real
bearing on the course of Venetian art, would have little significance.
What the book does aim at is to enable those who care for art, but may
not have mastered its history, to rear a framework on which to found
their own observations and appreciations; to supply that coherent
knowledge which is beneficial even to a passing acquaintance with
beautiful things, and to place the unscientific observer in a position
to take greater advantage of opportunities, and to achieve a wide and
interesting outlook on that cycle of artistic apprehension which the
Venetian School comprises, and which marks it as the outcome and the
symbol of a great historic age.

The works cited have been principally those with which the ordinary
traveller is likely to come into contact in the chief European
galleries, and, above all, in Venice itself. The lists do not propose to
be exhaustive, but merely indicate the principal works of the artists.
Those in private galleries, unless easy of access or of first-rate
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