162 GUIDE TO THE ACADEMY AT VENICE

in a hurry, for you can see the like of it, and better, in Paris;¹ but you can see nothing in all the world, out of Venice, like certain other pictures in this room.²

Glancing round it, you see it may be generally described as full of pictures of street architecture, with various more or less interesting transactions going on in the streets. Large Canalettos, in fact; only with the figures a little more interesting than Canaletto’s figures; and the buildings, on the whole, red and white or brown and white, instead of, as with Canaletto, black and white. And on consideration, and observation, you will perceive, if you have any perception of colour, that Venetian buildings, and most others, being really red and white or brown and white, not black and white, this is really the right manner of painting them, and these are true and sufficient representations of streets, of landscapes, and of interiors of houses, with the people, as I said, either in St. Mark’s Place, 567, or at Grand Cairo, 571, or before the Castle of St. Angelo at Rome, 577, or by the old Rialto here, 566,³ being themselves also more or less interesting, if you will observe them, first in their dresses, which are very curious and pretty, and afterwards in many other particulars, of which for the present I must leave you to make out what you can; for of the pictures by Carpaccio in this room I must write an entirely separate

¹ [For Veronese’s “Marriage at Cana” and “Dinner at Simon the Pharisee’s” in the Louvre, see Vol. XII. pp. 451, 456.]

² [The pictures referred to-formerly in the same room as the large Veronese-are now exhibited in two rooms, recently added to the Gallery-XV. (The Room of Gentile Bellini) and XVI. (The Room of Carpaccio).]

³ [No. 567 (Room XV.) is the famous picture of the Piazza di San Marco, by Gentile Bellini (Plate XLVI.).]

The picture which includes a scene at Cairo (or rather, Alexandria?) is No. 571: “Incidents from the Life of St. Mark,” by Giovanni Mansueti; it hangs in an annexe to Room XV.

No. 577 (Room XVI.) is No. VI. in the St. Ursula series by Carpaccio, as described below, p. 167.

No. 566 (Room XV.) is ascribed doubtfully to Carpaccio. The subject is the healing of a man possessed by the devil at the touch of the relic of the True Cross, which is presented to him by the Patriarch Francesco Querini. Painted in 1494; and except for an imaginary balcony, whence the miracle takes place, it faithfully represents the old Rialto and adjacent buildings, as they then stood.

No. 564 (Room XV.) depicts another miracle of the True Cross. Also painted in 1494; by Mansueti.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]