One of the chief characteristics of the Venetian school of painters, and one of the most attractive to all art lovers, is their great appreciation of colour. In most of their work colour seems to be the chief motive. Pictures by Venetian painters never suggest drawings. They strike you not as having been coloured afterwards, but as having been painted essentially for the colour. One sees this throughout the whole school. And in their paintings they do not go to extremes. There is no exaggeration in their colouring. They do not err, as do so many schools, either on the foxy-red side or on the cold steely colouring. Unfortunately, much of the beautiful colouring of these pictures is lost by age. One has to become accustomed to that ugly brown skin which has formed upon the surface before one can realise what great colourists these early Venetians really were. The pictures somehow cause one to resent oil as a medium. One realises how different they must have looked when fresh from the easel, and wishes that these great masters could have painted with a medium more lasting—as did the Chinese, whose works are as young and fresh now as if they had been painted yesterday: the years have left no trace whatever: the simple colouring is the same to-day as it was a hundred years ago. Many of the earlier paintings, those of the Gothic Venetians, the less-known men, are a good deal better preserved. Their canvasses have not turned black; the glazings have not departed; and there is no smoky film upon them, as in the case of the works of the great masters, such as Titian, Tintoretto, and Giovanni Bellini, men who came a hundred years afterwards. It may very possibly be that the pigment which painters used then was purer and less adulterated. Certainly one sees in the various schools all over the world that the older the pictures are the better preserved they are. Age never improves a picture—unless, indeed, it is an extremely bad one, when time serves as a thin veil.

Undoubtedly these great colourists, the Venetians, influenced the various schools of painters all over the world, and are still influencing them. Originally they worked for the churches, and colour was used exactly as music was used—to appeal to the senses, to the emotions: to influence the people, to teach them biblical stories and parables. It also educated the people to understand painting and to feel the need of it in their daily lives.

At about this time the Renaissance began to express itself, not only in poetry and other literature, but also in paintings; and it found clearer utterance in Venice than elsewhere. The conditions at this time were perfect for the development of art. Venice at that period lent herself to art. She was at peace with the whole world, and she was prosperous. The people were joyous, gay, and light-hearted. They longed for everything that made life pleasant. Naturally, they wanted colour. And Venice was not affected by that wave of science which swept over the rest of Italy. The Venetians were not at all absorbed in literature and archÆology. They wanted merely to be joyous. This was an ideal atmosphere for the painter. Such a condition of things could not but create a fine artistic period. The painter is not concerned with science and learning, or should not be. Such a condition of mind would result in feeble, academical work—in struggling to tell a story with his medium, instead of producing a beautiful design. That is partly why the Venetian school has had such a strong influence on art, even until the present day. The conditions were perfect for the development of art, because the patrons were capable of appreciating beautiful form and beautiful colour. Because the public would have it, this new school of painters appeared. The demand was created, and the supply came.

There was undoubtedly great friction among the painters of this period, exactly as there has been lately with the modern impressionists and the academic painters. Some of the old Venetians resented the new school that was springing up; but they had eventually to bend and try to paint in sympathy with the senses and emotion of their patrons. You find this new mode of thought expressed strongly even in the churches and in the treatment of religious subjects. The old ideals were altered. Men no longer painted saints and Madonnas as mild, attenuated people. The figures were lifelike and full of actuality. The women were Venetian women of the period dressed in splendid robes and dignified; the men were healthy, full-blooded, and joyous. Florence, however, at this particular period was undergoing quite a different mood. The Florentines preferred to express themselves in poetry and in prose. That was the language the masses understood. Painting was not popular. There has always been a literary atmosphere about Florence, and one feels it there to this day; it is essentially the city for the student.

When painting became so much a vogue in Venice, painters began to try and perfect the art in every possible way. They struggled for actuality. Art began to develop in the direction of realism. The Venetians wanted form and colour in their pictures; but they wanted also a suggestion of distance and atmosphere. In those early pictures you find that painters smeared their distance to give it a blurred look. That was the beginning of perspective. Painters of this period seem to have been marvellously modern. They were quite in the movement. There has never been any attempt at harking back to earlier periods.

Venice was very wealthy at this time, and Venetian people never missed an opportunity of parading wealth. They loved glory where the State was concerned, and encouraged pageantry by both land and sea. They loved to see Doge and senators in their gorgeous robes, either on the piazza or on the Grand Canal. Then there came a demand for painted records of these processions and ceremonials. All this was encouraged by the State for political reasons. Pageantry entertained the people, and at the same time made them less inquisitive. Much better, these great officials argued, that the people should be enjoying things in this way than that they should begin to inquire into the doings of the State. Gentile Bellini and Carpaccio were the first pageant painters of the period. Paolo Veronese, who came much later, also loved pageantry, elevated it to the height of serious art, and idealised prosaic magnificence. He painted great banquets, and combined ceremony, splendour, and worldliness with childlike naturalness and simplicity.

First of all, as has been shown, it was the Church that called for pictures—to represent their saints and to enforce biblical legends. Painting became more and more popular. People became more and more educated to understand painting, until at last they wanted their domestic and social lives depicted. Also they wanted to hang these pictures in their homes. Pictures were neither so rare nor so expensive in those days as they are now, and people could afford to buy them—even the lower and the middle classes. Immediately there sprang up painters who satisfied the demand. In those days there were no academies and no salons wherein artists fought to outdo one another as to the size and eccentricity of their pictures; there were no vulgar struggles of that kind. Painters simply supplied to the best of their ability the wants of the people. Naturally, the public required small pictures, suitable to the size of their houses. Therefore, they needed gay and beautiful colour, and pictures in which the subjects did not obtrude themselves forcibly. Thus, in the natural course of events pageantry found less favour, and pictures of social and domestic life found more. Religious subjects were rather deserted. By the aid of books people could learn all the stories of the Bible. Besides, they were not at that period in a devotional or contrite mood. They were too happy and full of life to feel any pressing need for religion.

Painting took much the same position with the Venetians as music has with us now. The fashion for triumphal marches and the clashing of cymbals in processional pictures had died out, and the vogue of symphonies and sonatas had come in. No one at that time seemed quite capable of satisfying the public taste. Carpaccio, whose subtle yet brilliant colouring would have exactly suited it, never undertook these subjects. Giovanni Bellini attempted them; but his style was too severe for the gaiety of the period.

However, there was not long to wait. Soon appeared a man who told the public what they wanted and gave it to them. He swept away conventions and revolutionised art all over the world. He was a genius—Giorgione. Pupil of Bellini and Carpaccio, he combined the qualities of both. When he was quite a youth painters all over the world followed his methods. Curiously enough, there are not a dozen of this great master's works preserved at the present day. The bulk of them were frescoes which long ago disappeared. The few that remain are quite enough to make one realise what a great master he was. The picture which most appeals to me is an altar-piece of the Virgin and Child at Castelfranco. It is painted in the pure Giorgione spirit. St. George in armour is at one side, resting on a spear which seems to be coming right out of the picture; while on the other side there is a monk, and in the background are a banner of rich brocade and a small landscape.

The Renaissance, the rejuvenation of art, seems to have slowly developed until at length it culminated in Giorgione. He was the man who opened the door, the one great modern genius of his period, whose influence remains and is felt to this day. Velasquez would never have been known but for Giorgione. Imagine this young man with his new ideas and his sweeps of golden colouring suddenly appearing in a studio full of men, all painting in the correct severe style established at the period. Such a man must needs influence all his fellows. Even Giovanni Bellini, the Watts of his day, acknowledged the young man's genius, and almost unconsciously began to mingle Giorgione's style with his own. We cannot realise what they meant at that period—these new ideas of Giorgione. He created just as much of a "furore" as when Benvenuto Cellini, in his sculpture, allowed a limb to hang over the edge of a pedestal. He needed this to complete his design. Since then almost everyone that has modelled has hung a limb over a pedestal. But Benvenuto Cellini started this new era. So, in much the same sort of way, did Giorgione. He cut away from convention, and introduced landscape as backgrounds to his figure subjects. He was the first to get actuality and movement in the arrangement of drapery. The Venetian public had long been waiting, though unconsciously, for this work; and Giorgione was so well in touch with the needs of the people that the moment he gave them what they wanted they would take nothing else.

In the work of Giorgione the Renaissance finds its most genuine expression. It is the Renaissance at its height. Both Giorgione and Titian were village boys brought to Venice by their parents and placed under the care of Giovanni Bellini to learn art. They must have been of very much the same age. It is interesting to watch the career of these boys—the two different natures—the impulsiveness of the one and the plodding perseverance of the other. Giorgione shot like a meteor early and bright into the world of art, scattering the clouds in the firmament, bold, crowding the work and the pleasure of a lifetime in a few short years. His work was a delight to him, and life itself was full of everything that was beautiful. He was surrounded always by a multitude of admiring comrades, imitating him and urging him on. Giorgione was ever restless and impetuous by nature. When commissions flagged and he had no particular work in hand, he took to painting the outside of his own house. He cared not a whit for convention. He followed his own tastes and his own feelings. He converted his home into a glow of crimson and gold,—great forms starting up along the walls, sweet cherub boys, fables of Greece and Rome,—a dazzling confusion of brilliant tints and images. Think how this palace must have appeared reflected in the waters of the Canal! Unfortunately, the sun and the wind fought with this masterly canvas, conquered, and bore all these beautiful things away. Indeed, many of Giorgione's works were frescoes, and the sea air swept away much of the glory of his life. His career was brief but gay, full of work and full of colour. This impetuous painter died in the very heyday of his success. Some say he died of grief at being deserted by a lady whom he loved; others that he caught the plague.

Of what a different nature was Titian! He studied in the same bottega as Giorgione, and was brought up under much the same conditions. But he was a patient worker, absorbing the knowledge of everyone about him, ever learning and experimenting; never completing. He did not think of striking off on a new line, of executing bold and original work. He wanted to master not one side of painting but all sides. He waited until his knowledge should be complete before he declared himself, before he really accomplished anything. He absorbed the new principles of his comrade Giorgione, as he absorbed everything else that was good, with unerring instinct and steady power. Titian was never led away in any one direction. He was always open to any new suggestion. As it happened, it was just as well that Titian worked thus at his leisure, and Giorgione with haste and fever. Titian had ninety-nine years to live; Giorgione had but thirty-four. There is an interesting anecdote told by Vasari with regard to these two young men. They were both at work on the painting of a large building, the Fondaco dei Tedeschi; Titian painting the wall facing the street, and Giorgione the side towards the canal. Several gentlemen, not knowing which was the particular work of either artist, went one day to inspect the building, and declared that the wall facing the Merceria far excelled in beauty that of the river front. Giorgione was so indignant at this slight that he declared that he would neither see nor speak to Titian again.

Titian does not seem to have been very much appreciated by his patrons at the beginning of his career. He inspired no affection. He was acknowledged as the greatest of all the young painters; but the Republic, it would seem, was never very proud of the man who did her so much credit and added so greatly to her fame. Even although the noise of his genius was echoed all over the world,—although the great Emperor himself stooped to pick up his brush, declaring that a Titian might well be served by a CÆsar,—although Charles the Fifth sat to him repeatedly, and maintained that he was the only painter whom he would care to honour,—the Venetians do not seem to have been greatly enamoured of him. Perhaps it was that they missed the soul, the purity and grace and devotion, of the pictures of Bellini and Carpaccio. Certainly, as far as one can judge, he did not have a prepossessing nature. He was shifty in his dealings with his patrons and unfaithful in his promises. He seems to have belonged to a corrupt and luxurious society. Pietro Aretino had a very bad influence on Titian. He taught him to intrigue, to flatter, to betray. Aretino was a base-born adventurer for whom no historian seems to have a good word. He was, however, a man of wit and dazzling cleverness, with a touch of real genius. Aretino corresponded with all the most cultured men of his time, and he had the power of making those whom he chose famous. It was he who introduced Titian to Charles the Fifth.

Titian's pictures were much more saleable in foreign courts than in his own country. Abroad they did not seem to have the lack of soul which the Venetians so greatly deplored. It was the old case of the prophet having no honour in his own country. Certainly in the art of portraiture Titian has never been surpassed. At that period he had the field completely to himself. Nothing could have been more magnificent than Titian's portraits. They help to record the history of the age. It was in Titian's power to confer upon his subjects the splendour that they loved, handing them down to posterity as heroes and learned persons. His men were all noble, worthy to be senators and emperors, no coxcombs or foolish gallants. Titian was more at home in pictures of this kind than in religious subjects. His Madonnas are without significance; his Holy Families give no message of blessing to the world.

In the prime of his life he moved from his workshops to a noble and luxurious palace in San Cassiano, facing the wide lagoon and the islands. All trace of it has disappeared, and homes of the poor cover the garden where the best company of Venice was once entertained. It is said that Titian gave the gayest parties and suppers—that he entertained the most regal guests. Nevertheless, although made a knight and a count, and a favourite at most of the courts in Europe, he was greatly disliked by the Venetian Signoria, who in the midst of his famous supper-parties called upon him to demand that he should execute a certain work for which he had received the money long before. He seems to have been exceedingly grasping—a strange trait in the character of a painter. One sees throughout his correspondence, until the end of his life, a certain desire and demand for money. Undoubtedly he often painted merely for money alone, turning out a sacred picture one day and a Venus the next with equal impartiality. Anything, it was said, could have been got out of Titian for money. The Venetians never loved Titian's works, though foreign princes adored them. He seems to have laboured, until the end of his life, more from love of gain than from necessity. He was buried at the Frari, carried thither in great haste by order of the Signoria,—for it was at the time of the plague, when other victims were taken to the outlying islands and put in the earth unnamed.

Somehow, in reading the life of Titian one is brought right away to the twentieth century. Here is the painter with the attendant journalist, Pietro Aretino, the boomer. Aretino was a journalist, the first. He took Titian in hand and "ran" him for all he was worth. Had it not been for this system of booming, Titian would probably not have been well known during his lifetime. In the Academy of the Fine Arts one can trace by his pictures a splendid historical record of Titian's life, and can see plainly the changes in popular feeling and their effect upon his work. For very many years he lived and painted constantly, and then was killed by the plague!

There is a picture painted by him when he was fourteen years of age—a picture which contains all the qualities, in the germ, of his later work: marvellous architecture, pomp, yet great simplicity and luminous colour. Here also is the last picture he ever painted—at the age of ninety-nine. Think of the interval between the two! It is sombre, pious. There is something pathetic about it. This great painter, whose work showed such fury, audacity, vehemence,—the man who had always the sun on his palette—was now painting mildly, carefully, obviously with the shadow of approaching death upon him.

A marvellous picture by Titian hangs in the Academy of the Fine Arts. It is considered to be one of his finest pictures—the masterpiece of all his masterpieces—the eye of the peacock, as it were. This picture was neglected for many years, hidden away in an obscure portion of a church, and covered with a thick layer of cobwebs and dust. The custodian had almost forgotten the subject of the picture and the name of the painter. One day a certain Count Cicogna happened to visit the church. Being a great connoisseur and lover of art, he noticed this picture, and could not resist moistening his finger and rubbing it over a portion of the canvas. To his amazement, this portion emerged young and fresh, and as highly coloured as when it left the painter's hands—a picture bearing upon it the unmistakable stamp of Titian's genius! The delight of the Count can be imagined. He suggested to the custodian, with great care and tact, that he would present to the church a bran-new glossy picture, very large, of some religious subject; and mentioned in a casual way that they might give him the dilapidated old picture as a slight return. This was the Assunta. It was painted for the church of the Frari. Fra Marco Jerman, the head of the convent, ordered it at his own expense. Many a time when the work was in progress he and all the ignorant brethren visited the painter's studio and criticised his picture, grumbling and shaking their heads, and wondering whether it would be good enough to be accepted, whether it would be sneered at when uncovered before all Venice. They undoubtedly thought that they had done a rash thing in engaging him. Think of the agony of Titian, hindered by these ignorant men, being forced to explain elaborately that the figures were not too large, that they must needs be in proportion to the space! It was not until the envoy of the Emperor had seen the picture and declared it to be a masterpiece, offering a large sum of money for its purchase, that the Frari understood its value, and decided that, as the buying and selling of pictures was not in their profession, they had better keep it.

Tintoretto painted, according to the popular feeling of his period, for the good of mankind. This we certainly owe to the Renaissance—the desire to benefit mankind, and not only men individually. Tintoretto felt this strongly. One sees not only the effect of this new era of thought in his work: one sees also human life at the base of it. Tintoretto worked for the good of mankind, and his work throbs with humanity. There was atmosphere, reality, in it. He was, it is true, a pupil of Titian; but it was Michael Angelo whose works had the greatest attraction for him. He loved Angelo's overwhelming power and gigantic force. Tintoretto's pictures seem to possess much of the glowing colour of Titian; but he paid greater attention to chiaroscuro. He seems to have had the power of lowering the tone of a sky to suit his composition of light and shade. His conception of the human form was colossal. His work showed a wide sweep and power. He turned to religion, not because it was a duty, but because it answered the needs of the human heart—because it helped him to forget the mean and sordid side of life, braced him to his work, and consoled him in his days of despair. The Bible was not to him a cut-and-dried document concerning the Christian religion, but a series of beautiful parables pointing to a finer life. Then, Tintoretto asked himself, Why keep to the old forms and the old ideals? Why should the saints and biblical people be represented as Romans, walking in a Roman background? He himself thought of them as people of his own kind, and painted them as such. Thus, he argued, people became more familiar with the Bible, more readily understood it.

Tintoretto painted portraits not only of Venetians, but also of foreign princes. Although he painted with tremendous rapidity, the demand was greater than the supply. His paintings were popular. They gave pleasure to the eye, and stimulated the emotions. He painted people at their best, in glowing health and full of life. Under his marvellous brush old men became vigorous and full-blooded. His pictures give the same sort of pleasure as one finds in looking upon a casket of jewels—they are just as deathless in their brilliancy. The portrait that the popular taste called forth in Titian's day was just about as unlike the typical modern portrait as you could possibly imagine,—the colourless, cold, unsympathetic portrait of the fish-eyed mayor in his robes.

At the age of fifteen, Jacopo Robusti—tintoretto, the little dyer—was brought by his father, Battista Robusti, to the studio of the great painter Titian. There he stayed for a little while, until one day Titian came across, in his bottega, some drawings that showed promise. On discovering that they were from the hand of Jacopo, he sent the boy away. Young as he was, Tintoretto had all the arrogance of the well-to-do citizen. He would brook no man's No, and would not yield his own pretensions for the greatest genius in Christendom. He did not need money: he was independent: and he started boldly to teach himself. Boiling with rage at the affront Titian had put upon him, he was determined to make a career for himself. He studied the works of Michael Angelo and of Titian, and inscribed upon his studio wall, so that his ambition might always be before his eyes, "Il desegno di Michael Angelo, e' il colorito di Titiano." He studied casts of ancient marbles, and made designs of them by the light of a lamp, in order to gain a strong effect of shadow. Also, he copied the pictures of Titian. Seeking, by every means in his power, to educate himself, he modelled figures of wax and plaster, upon which he hung his drapery. And always, whether painting by night or by day, he arranged his lights so as to have everything in high relief. Tintoretto's inventions for teaching himself were endless. Often he visited the painters' benches in the piazza of St. Mark's, where the poor men of the profession worked at painting chests and furniture of all kinds. In those days there were too many painters. The profession was overdone. Many young men who had real genius worked at the benches. Titian was the great man at the moment, and Palma Vecchio. But Tintoretto did not care. He forced his work down men's throats—gave it to them for nothing if they would not pay for it. He was always ready with his brush, and would paint anything from an organ to an altar-piece. He worked like a giant, with tremendous sweep and power; no subject was too great or too laborious; and always he had a desire to do his best.

Tintoretto would not be trifled with or condescended to. He would not have his work under-valued, and would allow no patrician, not even a prince, to play the patron to him. He was determined not to be set aside. He flung his pictures at people's heads, and insisted on undertaking any great piece of work there was to do. Thus, Tintoretto's pictures are to be seen everywhere in Venice—in almost every church, every council-hall, every humble chapel, every parish church, every sacristy. He neglected no opportunity to make his work known. He worked with extraordinary rapidity. Whenever Tintoretto came across a fine fair wall he prevailed upon the master-mason to allow him to paint it. A fifty-foot space he would cover with avidity, asking nothing for his work but the cost of the material, giving his time and labour as a gift.

Portraiture was the outcome of realism, and one of the most important discoveries of the Renaissance. People began to feel that they wanted not only their affluence in possessions, but also their own individual faces and features, handed down to posterity. Thus portraiture began to creep in. At first it appeared in the churches under cover of saints and Madonnas; gradually it became possible to distinguish one from another—it was not always the same face. Painters took models from life as their saints. But portraiture in painting was very slow in reaching perfection. Sculpture had accomplished that long before; now that the latest craze was for portraiture, it was the sculptors who were the most prepared to take it up, and stepped forward to execute commissions. They had plenty of material in the way of old Roman coins and busts. Donatello and Vittore Pisano were the two men who first offered to satisfy the new want. Donatello executed marvellous studies of character, and Pisano medals such as have never been seen before or since. But even these men, fine as their work undoubtedly was, felt that the public could not long remain satisfied merely with the sculptured portrait. They must have colour. Donatello, therefore, began to stain and colour his busts, showing that painting, not sculpture, was to be the portrait art of the Renaissance. Vittore Pisano also gave up his sculpture, and turned his attention to portrait-painting; but he was only an amateur in this direction, and did not meet with much success. No portrait-painter of any merit was produced in that generation. The idea was entirely new. Men had not had sufficient time in which to study the human face. The next generation ushered in Mantegna, who painted a marvellous portrait of Cardinal Sciramo; but he went too far in the other direction. He painted his man as he was—as he saw him, line for line. He painted the soul and heart of him—and the soul and the heart were black. Venice was revolted with such a portrait. It seemed indeed indecent that a man's character should be laid bare in such a way. It was a picture they did not care to hang in the Council Chamber, a picture that was unpleasant to live with. The Cardinal belonged to the State. His honour was their honour, and it must not be defiled. The Venetians came to the conclusion that portraits must be painted not in full-face but in profile. Thus the characteristics of a man, if they be not pleasant, do not come out clearly. This accounts for the number of profile portraits. The age wanted an agreeable portrait. This Giorgione provided. He realised that the treatment must always be bright, joyous, romantic. His followers trod in his footsteps: the master's style was too strong and pronounced to be much deviated from. Giorgione seems to have reached the topmost height of art at that period. Even Titian, for a generation after his death, followed in Giorgione's lines; only, Titian's work was a little more sober, a little less sunny. He had the sense to see that Giorgione had expanded the old rule and done something worth adopting, and for a time he simply followed this joyful outburst. His early years fell at a time when life was glowing, radiant, almost intoxicating in its vigour. But youth and joy cannot last; nor could the Renaissance spirit. Gradually the trouble and the strife from which the whole of Italy was suffering filtered into Venice, and cast a serious aspect over art and social life. Venice, of all the states in Italy, was the last to feel this sobering influence. She had been defeated both in battle and in commerce; and, although she was not totally crushed under the heel of Spain, life was not the endless holiday it promised to be. Men took themselves more seriously, and the quieter pleasures of friendship and affection began to be more sought after. Religion revived in importance. Men clung to it, as they always do in time of trouble, for comfort and support. It was no longer a political sentiment, but a personal one. Art declined as the sunshine and the gaiety that had fed and nourished it ebbed away. When men began to feel that individually they were of no avail, that they were subject to the powers round about and above them, the death-blow of great art fell. Titian was influenced by his environment, and his painting changed completely. He produced pictures that would have been looked upon with scorn in his earlier days. The faces of his men are no longer smooth and free from care. One saw there struggle and suffering, and all that life had done for them. But Titian was not a pessimist at heart. The joy and gaiety in which he had been brought up formed part of his character. Whatever changes may have happened to his country politically, nothing could alter that entirely. And it was no doubt this early training and the atmosphere in which he was brought up that made his pictures the masterpieces they were. You notice the men who came after Titian—how they began to decline. For example, Lorenzo Lotto had been brought up in the heyday of the Renaissance; but the new order of things, the change from national virility to national decadence, enfeebled him. Then, again, the coming in touch with poets and men of letters, victims flying from the fury of Spain, was a new stimulant to art. It did not exactly improve it; but it certainly changed it.

THE ORANGE SAIL