est and weakest of the women with a huge cross
lying across her knees, the whole weight of it resting upon her. As
might have been expected, where the conception is so languid, the
execution is little delighted in; it is throughout steady and
powerful, but in no place affectionate, and in no place impetuous. If
Tintoret had always painted in this way, he would have sunk into a
mere mechanist. It is, however, a genuine and tolerably well preserved
specimen, and its female figures are exceedingly graceful; that of St.
Helena very queenly, though by no means agreeable in feature. Among
the male portraits on the left there is one different from the usual
types which occur either in Venetian paintings or Venetian populace;
it is carefully painted, and more like a Scotch Presbyterian minister,
than a Greek. The background is chiefly composed of architecture,
white, remarkably uninteresting in color, and still more so in form.
This is to be noticed as one of the unfortunate results of the
Renaissance teaching at this period. Had Tintoret backed his Empress
Helena with Byzantine architecture, the picture might have been one of
the most gorgeous he ever painted.

MATER DOMINI, CAMPO DI STA. MARIA, II. 261. A most interesting little
piazza, surrounded by early Gothic houses, once of singular beauty;
the arcade at its extremity, of fourth order windows, drawn in my
folio work, is one of the earliest and loveliest of its kind in
Venice; and in the houses at the side is a group of second order
windows with their intermediate crosses, all complete, and well worth
careful examination.

MICHELE IN ISOLA, CHURCH OF ST. On the island between Venice and
Murano. The little Cappella Emiliana at the side of it has been much
admired, but it would be difficult to find a building more feelingless
or ridiculous. It is more like a German summer-house, or angle turret,
than a chapel, and may be briefly described as a bee-hive set on a low
hexagonal tower, with dashes of stone-work about its windows like the
flourishes of an idle penman.

The cloister of this church is pretty; and the attached cemetery is
worth entering, for the sake of feeling the strangeness of the quiet
sleeping ground in the midst of the sea.

MICHIEL DALLE COLONNE, PALAZZO. Of no importance.

MINELLI, PALAZZO. In the Corte del Maltese, at St. Paternian. It has a
spiral e