GUIDE TO THE ACADEMY AT VENICE 167

V.-575. The Prince of England sets sail for Brittany;-there receives his bride, and embarks with her on pilgrimage.

VI.-577. The Prince of England and his bride, voyaging on pilgrimage with the eleven thousand maidens, arrive at Rome, and are received by the Pope, who, “with certain Cardinals,”¹ joins their pilgrimage.² (The most beautiful of all the series, next to the Dream.³)

VII.-580. The Prince, with his bride, and the Pope with his Cardinals, and the eleven thousand maids, arrive in the land of the Huns, and receive martyrdom there. In the second part of the picture is the funeral procession of St. Ursula.

VIII.-576. St. Ursula, with her maidens, and the pilgrim Pope, and certain Cardinals, in glory of Paradise. I have always forgotten to look for the poor bridegroom in this picture, and on looking, am by no means sure of him. But I suppose it is he who holds St. Ursula’s standard. The architecture and landscape are unsurpassably fine; the rest much imperfect; but containing nobleness only to be learned by long dwelling on it.

In this series, I have omitted one picture, 579, which is of scarcely any interest-except in its curious faults and unworthiness. At all events, do not at present look at it, or think of it; but let us examine all the rest without hurry.

In the first place, then, we find this curious fact, intensely characteristic of the fifteenth as opposed to the nineteenth century-that the figures are true and natural, but the landscape false and unnatural, being by such fallacy made entirely subordinate to the figures. I have never approved of, and only a little understand, this state of things. The painter is never interested in the ground, but

¹ [The quotation is from the legend of St. Ursula as given in Fors Clavigera, Letter 71.]

² [Compare St. Mark’s Rest, § 204 (below, p. 367).]

³ [Here in the order of subjects comes the picture which Ruskin omits, No. 579: “Arrival of St. Ursula at Cologne, with her 11,000 Virgins and Pope Cyriacus.”]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]