GUIDE TO THE ACADEMY AT VENICE 169

gradually to more accurate observance of natural phenomena, until, by Turner, the method of Carpaccio’s mind is precisely reversed, and the Nature in the background becomes principal; the figures in the foreground, its foil.¹ I have a good deal more, however, to say on this subject now,-so much more, indeed, that in this little Guide there is no proper room for any of it, except the simple conclusion that both the painters are wrong in whatever they either definitely misrepresent, or enfeeble by inharmonious deficiency.

In the next place, I want you to notice Carpaccio’s fancy in what he does represent very beautifully,-the architecture, real and ideal, of his day.

His fancy, I say; or phantasy; the notion he has of what architecture should be; of which, without doubt, you see his clearest expression in the Paradise [576], and in the palace of the most Christian King, St. Ursula’s father [572].

And here I must ask you to remember, or learn if you do not know, the general course of transition in the architecture of Venice;-namely, that there are three epochs of good building in Venice; the first lasting to 1300, Byzantine, in the style of St. Mark’s; the second, 1300 to 1480, Gothic, in the style of the Ducal Palace; and the third, 1480 to 1520, in a manner which architects have yet given no entirely accepted name to, but which, from the name of its greatest designer, Brother Giocondo, of Verona,* I mean, myself, henceforward to call “Giocondine.”

Now the dates on these pictures of Carpaccio’s run from 1480 to 1485, so that you see he was painting in the youthful gush, as it were, and fullest impetus of Giocondine architecture, which all Venice, and chiefly Carpaccio, in the joy of art, thought was really at last the architecture

* Called “the second Founder of Venice,” for his engineering work on the Brenta. His architecture is chiefly at Verona; the style being adopted and enriched at Venice by the Lombardi.²

¹ [On this subject see Vol. XIII. pp. 151 seq.]

² [For notes on Fra Giocondo, see Vol. XI. p. 20 n., Vol. XXI. p. 199, Vol. XXII. p. 476 n.; and for the Lombardi, Vol. V. p. 75 n., Vol. X. p. 354, and Vol. XX. p. 323.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]