mand. Too many attractive
manners existed to dazzle them, and when once they began to imitate,
they were tempted on all hands. It must also be remembered that every
master left behind him stacks of cartoons, sketches and suggestions, and
half-finished pictures, which were eagerly seized upon, bought or
stolen, and utilised to produce masterpieces masquerading under his
name.

As the seventeenth century advanced the character of art and manners
underwent a change. Men sought the beautiful in the novel and bizarre,
and the complex was preferred to the simple. Venetian art, in all its
branches, had passed from the stately and restrained to the pompous and
artificial. Yet the barocco style was used by Venice in a way of its
own; whimsical, contorted, and overloaded with ornament as it is, it yet
compels admiration by its vigorous life and movement. The art of the
sei-cento in Venice was extravagant, but it was alive. It escaped the
most deadly of all faults, a cold and academic mannerism--and this at a
time when the rest of Italy was given over to the inflated followers of
Michelangelo and the calculated elaborations of the eclectics.

Many of the things we most love in Venice, such as the Salute, the
Clock-Tower, the Dogana, the Bridge of Sighs, the Rezzonico and
Pesaro Palaces, are additions of the seventeenth century. The barocco
intemperance in sculpture was carried on by disciples of Bernini; and
as the immediate influence of the great masters declined, painting
acquired the same sort of character. The carelessness and rapidity of
Tintoretto, which, in his case, proceeded from the lightning speed of
his imagination and the unerring sureness of his brush, became a
mechanical trick in the hands of superficial students. True art had
migrated elsewhere--to the homes of Velasquez, Rubens, and Rembrandt. As
art grew more pompous it became less emotional. Painters like Palma
Giovine spoilt their ready, lively fancy by the vice of hurry. The
nickname of "Fa Presto" was deserved by others besides Luca Giordano,
and Venice was overrun by a swarm of painters whose prime standard of
excellence was the ability to make haste. Grandeur of conception was
forgotten; a grave, ample manner was no longer understood; superficial
sentiment and bombastic size carried the day. Yet a few painters, though
their forms had become redundant and exaggerated, retained something of
what had been the Venetian glory--the deep and moist colour of old.