cendants, they disdained to annex a single one of the great
paintings of the Venetian, Gianbattista Tiepolo.

Eastlake only vouchsafes him one line as "an artist of fantastic
imagination." Most of the nineteenth-century critics do not even mention
him. Burckhardt dismisses him with a grudging line of praise, Blanc is
equally disparaging, and for Taine he is a mere mannerist, yet his
influence has been felt far beyond his lifetime; only now is he coming
into his own, and it is recognised that the _plein-air_ artist, the
luminarist, the impressionist, owe no small share of their knowledge to
his inspiration.

The name of Tiepolo brings before us a whole string of illustrious
personages--doges and senators, magnificent procurators and great
captains--but we have nothing to prove that the artist belonged to a
decayed branch of the famous patrician house. Born in Castello, the
people's quarter of Venice, he studied in early youth with that good
draughtsman, Lazzarini. At twenty-three he married the sister of
Francesco Guardi; Guardi, who comes between Longhi and Canale and who is
a better painter than either. Tiepolo appeared at a fortunate moment.
The demand for a facile, joyous genius was at its height. The life of
the aristocracy on the lagoons was every year growing more gay, more
abandoned to capricious inclination, to light loves and absurd
amusements. And the art which reflected this life was called upon to
give gaiety rather than thought, costume rather than character. Yet if
the Venetian art had lost all connection with the grave magnificence of
the past, it had kept aloof from the academic coldness which was in
fashion beyond the lagoons, so that though theatrical, it was with a
certain natural absurdity. The age had become romantic; the Arcadian
convention was in full force, Nature herself was pressed into the
service of idle, sentimental men and women. The country was pictured as
a place of delight, where the sun always shone and the peasants passed
their time singing madrigals and indulging in rural pleasures. The
public, however, had begun to look for beauty; the traditions which had
formed round the decorative schools were giving way to the appreciation
of original work. Tiepolo, sincere and spontaneous even when he is
sacrificing truth to caprice, struck the taste of the Venetians, and
without emancipating himself from the tendencies of the time, contrives
to introduce a fresh accent. All round him was a wea