most as much employed. When the Venetians had
attained the point of culture where they were able to differentiate
their sensations and distinguish pleasure from edification, they found
that painting gave them decided pleasure. Why should they always have to
go to the Doge's Palace or to some School to enjoy this pleasure? That
would have been no less a hardship than for us never to hear music
outside of a concert-room. This is no merely rhetorical comparison, for
in the life of the Venetian of the sixteenth century painting took much
the same place that music takes in ours. He no longer expected it to
tell him stories or to teach him the Catechism. Printed books, which
were beginning to grow common, amply satisfied both these needs. He had
as a rule very little personal religion, and consequently did not care
for pictures that moved him to contrition or devotion. He preferred to
have some pleasantly coloured thing that would put him into a mood
connected with the side of life he most enjoyed--with refined
merrymaking, with country parties, or with the sweet dreams of youth.
Venetian painting alone among Italian schools was ready to satisfy such
a demand, and it thus became the first genuinely modern art: for the
most vital difference that can be indicated between the arts in
antiquity and modern times is this--that now the arts tend to address
themselves more and more to the actual needs of men, while in olden
times they were supposed to serve some more than human purpose.

The pictures required for a house were naturally of a different kind
from those suited to the Council Hall or the School, where large
paintings, which could be filled with many figures, were in place. For
the house smaller pictures were necessary, such as could easily be
carried about. The mere dimensions, therefore, excluded pageants, but,
in any case, the pageant was too formal a subject to suit all moods--too
much like a brass band always playing in the room. The easel picture had
to be without too definite a subject, and could no more permit being
translated into words than a sonata. Some of Giovanni Bellini's late
works are already of this kind. They are full of that subtle, refined
poetry which can be expressed in form and colour alone. But they were a
little too austere in form, a little too sober in colour, for the gay,
care-free youth of the time. Carpaccio does not seem to have painted
many easel pictures, although his brilliancy, his deligh