GUIDE TO THE ACADEMY AT VENICE 173

of it) the real occasion of the building of the church whose walls yet stand, was the founding of the Confraternita di S. Maria della Carita, on St. Leonard’s Day, 6th November, 1260,* which brotherhood, in 1310, fought side by side with the school of the Painters in St. Luke’s field, against one body of the conspirators for Bajamonte,¹ and drove them back, achieving the right thenceforward of planting their purple standard there, in St. Luke’s field, with their stemma (all this bears on Carpaccio’s pictures presently, so have patience yet a minute or two), and so increasing in number and influence, bought in 1344, from the Monks of the Church of Charity, the ground on which you are presently going to see pictures; and built on it their cloister, dedicated also to St. Mary of Charity; and over the gate of it, by which you are going to enter, put St. Mary of Charity, as they best could get her carved, next year, 1345: and so you have her there, with cowled members of the confraternity kneeling to her; happy angels fluttering about her; the dark blue of her eyes not yet utterly faded from them. Blue-eyed as Athena she,-the Greek tradition yet prevailing to that extent,-a perfect type, the whole piece, of purest central fourteenth-century Gothic thought and work untouched, and indubitable of date, being inscribed below its bracket cornice,

MCCCXLV. I LO TEMPO DE MIS.

MARCHO ZULIAN FO FATO STO LAVORIER.

To wit-“1345, in the time” (of the Guardianship) “of Messer Mark Julian, was made this laboured thing.”

And all seemed to bid fair for Venice and her sacred schools; Heaven surely pleased with these her endeavours, and laboured things.

* Archivio Veneto. (Venezia, 1876.) Tom. XII., Parte i., p. 112.

¹ [For the conspiracy of Bajamonte Tiepolo, see Vol. X. p. 298 n.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]