BASSO-CARMINI 365

BYZANTINE PALACES generally, X. 143.¹

[“BRAIDED HOUSE,” X. 146 n., 159 n., 453.]

[BIAGIO, FONDAMENTA S., X. 303 n.]

C

CAMERLENGHI, PALACE OF THE, beside the Rialto [X. 6]. A graceful work of the early Renaissance (1525) passing into Roman Renaissance. Its details are inferior to most of the work of the school. The “Camerlenghi,” properly “Camerlenghi di Comune,” were the three officers or ministers who had care of the administration of public expenses.

CANCELLARIA, X. 342.

CANCIANO, CHURCH OF ST. Of no importance.

CAPPELLO, PALAZZO, at St. Aponal. Of no interest. Some say that Bianca Cappello fled from it; but the tradition seems to fluctuate between the various houses belonging to her family.²

CARITÀ, CHURCH OF THE. Once an interesting Gothic church of the fourteenth century, lately defaced, and applied to some of the usual important purposes of the modern Italians.³ The effect of its ancient façade may partly be guessed at from the pictures of Canaletto, but only guessed at; Canaletto being less to be trusted for renderings of details, than the rudest and most ignorant painter of the thirteenth century.⁴

CARMINI, CHURCH OF THE [XI. 12]. A most interesting church, of late thirteenth century work, but much altered and defaced. Its nave, in which the early shafts and capitals of the pure truncate form are unaltered, is very fine in effect; its lateral porch is quaint and beautiful, decorated with Byzantine circular sculptures (of which the central one is given in Vol. X., Plate 11, fig. 5), and supported on two shafts whose capitals are the most archaic examples of the pure Rose form that I know in Venice.

There is a glorious Tintoret over the first altar on the right in entering; the “Circumcision of Christ.” I do not know an aged head either more beautiful or more picturesque than that of the high priest. The

¹ [The last three entries under B. were omitted in the “Travellers’ Edition,” but retained in later issues of the complete work.]

² [See Vol. X. p. 295. The memory of the infamous Bianca (1542-1587) is associated also with the Ca’ Trevisan, which she bought in 1577, and gave to her brother, Vittore Cappello (see above, Appendix 4, p. 256). She was a rich heiress who, at the age of fifteen, fled from Venice to Florence, to marry a poor bookkeeper. She became the mistress, and then the wife, of Francesco de’ Medici, Duke of Tuscany, who had procured the assassination of her first husband. “Notwithstanding her condemnation by the laws of Venice, the Signory, on her second marriage, took her under their protection for political reasons, and proclaimed her ‘the true and particular daughter of the Republic.’” The story of her subsequent adventures, and of the mysterious death of herself and the Duke, may be read in Symonds’ Renaissance, vi., pp. 296-297 (ed. 1898). Some have thought that hers is the face, of cruel and sensual beauty, which looks at us from Paris Bordone’s “Portrait of a Lady” in the National Gallery (No. 674).]

³ [The church forms part of the Accademia delle Belle Arti (see above, p. 361).]

⁴ [Compare Modern Painters, vol. i. (Vol. III. pp. 255, 337).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]