on, is kept subservient, and is part of
the stage on which the scene is enacted. The procession passes along,
carrying the relics, attended by the waxlights and the banners. Behind
the reliquary kneels the merchant, Jacopo Salo, petitioning for the
recovery of his wounded son. Then come the musicians; the spectators
crowd round, they strain forward to see the chief part of the cortege,
as a crowd naturally does. Some watch with reverence, others smile or
have a negligent air. The faces of the candle-bearers are very like
those we may see to-day in a great Church procession: some absorbed in
their task, or uplifted by inner thoughts; others looking curiously
and sceptically at the crowd. Gentile tries in his crowds to bring
together all the types of life in Venice, all the officials and the
ecclesiastical world, the young and old. With a few strokes he creates
the individual and also the type;--the careless rover; the responsible
magistrate; the shrewd, practical man of business; the young men, full
of their own plans, but pausing to look on at one of the great religious
sights of their city. In the "Finding of the Cross" he produces the
effect of the whole city _en fete_. It was a sight which often met his
eyes. The Doge made no fewer than thirty-six processions annually to
various churches of the city, and on fourteen of these occasions he was
accompanied by the whole of the nobles dressed in their State robes.
Every event of importance was seized on by the Venetian ladies as an
opportunity for arraying themselves in the richest attire, cloth of gold
and velvet, plumes and jewels. Gentile has massed the ladies of Queen
Catherine Cornaro's Court around their Queen upon the left side of the
canal. The light from above streams upon the keeper of the School, who
holds the sacred relic on high. All round are the old, irregular
Venetian houses, and in the crowd he paints the variety of men he saw
around him every day in Venice. Yet even in this animated scene he
retains his old quattrocento calm. The groups are decorously assisting:
only here and there he is drawn off to some small detail of reality,
such as an oarsman dexterously turning his boat, or the maid letting the
negro servant pass out to take a header into the canal. The spectators
look on coolly at one more of the oft-seen, miraculous events. The
committee, kneeling at the side, is a row of unforgettable portraits,
grave, benign, sour, and austere, with bald head or