ACCADEMIA-ALVISE 361

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ACCADEMIA DELLE BELLE ARTE¹. Notice above the door the two bas-reliefs of St. Leonard and St. Christopher, chiefly remarkable for their rude cutting at so late a date, 1377; but the niches under which they stand are unusual in their bent gables, and in the little crosses within circles which fill their cusps. The traveller is generally too much struck by Titian’s great picture of the “Assumption,” to be able to pay proper attention to the other works in this gallery. Let him, however, ask himself candidly, how much of his admiration is dependent merely upon the picture being larger than any other in the room, and having bright masses of red and blue in it; let him be assured, that the picture is in reality not one whit the better for being either large, or gaudy in colour; and he will then be better disposed to give the pains necessary to discover the merit of the more profound and solemn works of Bellini and Tintoret. One of the most wonderful works in the whole gallery is Tintoret’s “Death of Abel,” on the left of the “Assumption;” the “Adam and Eve,” on the right of it, is hardly inferior; and both are more characteristic examples of the master, and in many respects better pictures, than the much vaunted “Miracle of St. Mark.” All the works of Bellini in this room are of great beauty and interest. In the great room, that which contains Titian’s “Presentation of the Virgin,” the traveller should examine carefully all the pictures by Vittor Carpaccio and Gentile Bellini, which represent scenes in ancient Venice; they are full of interesting architecture and costume. Marco Basaiti’s “Agony in the Garden” is a lovely example of the religious school. The Tintorets in this room² are all second rate, but most of the Veroneses are good, and the large ones are magnificent.

(1877. I leave this article as originally written; the sixth chapter of St. Mark’s Rest now containing a careful notice of as many pictures as travellers are likely to have time to look at.)

ALGA. See GIORGIO.

ALVISE, CHURCH OF ST. I have never been in this church, but Lazari dates its interior, with decision, as of the year 1388, and it may be worth a glance, if the traveller has time.³

¹ [On the Grand Canal, in a group of buildings belonging to the church, monastery, and guild of S. Maria della Carità, which were appropriated by the French Government, after the fall of the Republic, for a picture gallery. For Ruskin’s account of the building and description of the pictures, see his Guide to the Principal Pictures in the Academy of Fine Arts at Venice, first issued in 1877. In this separate publication, instead of in the sixth chapter of St. Mark’s Rest, as he first intended (see his note of 1877, above), is contained his “notice of as many pictures as travellers are likely to have time to look at.”]

² [The rooms have been re-arranged since Ruskin wrote; see notes to his Guide, where also other references (besides those in the Guide itself) to the pictures here mentioned will be found. For the “Miracle of St. Mark” see also Vol. IX. p. 348.]

³ [The church, as Ruskin afterwards pointed out, contains ceiling paintings-characteristic of the Renaissance “passion for perspective”-and “celebrated pieces by Tiepolo ... the beginner of Modernism” (St. Mark’s Rest, §§ 189-191); also eight

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