he horizon is low, and he exhibits great mastery in
painting the wide lagoons, but he also paints rough seas, and is one
of the few masters of his day--perhaps the only one--who succeeds in
representing a storm at sea.

Often as he paints the same subjects he never becomes mechanical or
photographic. We may sometimes tire of the monotony of Canale's unerring
perspective and accurate buildings, but Guardi always finds some new
rendering, some fresh point of interest. Sometimes he gives us a summer
day, when Venice stands out in light, her white palaces reflected in the
sun-illumined water; sometimes he is arrested by old churches bathed in
shadow and fusing into the rich, dark tones of twilight. His boats and
figures are introduced with great spirit and _brio_, and are alive
with that handling which a French critic has described as his _griffe
endiablee_.

[Illustration: _Francesco Guardi._
S. MARIA DELLA SALUTE.
_London._
(_Photo, Mansell and Co._)]

His masterly and spirited painting of crowds enables him to reproduce
for us all those public ceremonies which Venice retained as long as the
Republic lasted: yearly pilgrimages of the Doge to Venetian churches, to
the Salute to commemorate the cessation of the plague, to San Zaccaria
on Easter Day, the solemn procession on Corpus Christi Day, receptions
of ambassadors, and, most gorgeous of all, the Feast of the Wedding of
the Adriatic. He has faithfully preserved the ancient ceremonial which
accompanied State festivities. In the "Fete du Jeudi Gras" (Louvre) he
illustrates the acrobatic feats which were performed before Doge
Mocenigo. A huge Temple of Victory is erected on the Piazzetta, and
gondoliers are seen climbing on each other's shoulders and dancing upon
ropes. His motley crowds show that the whole population, patricians as
well as people, took part in the feasts. He has also left many striking
interiors: among others, that of the Sala del Gran Consiglio, where
sometimes as many as a thousand persons were assembled, the "Reception
of the Doge and Senate by Pius IV." (which formed one of the series
ordered by Pietro Edwards), or the fine "Interior of a Theatre,"
exhibited at the Burlington Fine Arts in 1911, belonging to a series
of which another is at Munich.

In his landscapes Guardi does not pay very faithful attention to nature.
The landscape painters of the eighteenth century, as Mr. Simonson points
out,