176 GUIDE TO THE ACADEMY AT VENICE

with two brothers on each side holding their stemma, a fine free-hand piece of rough living work. You will not, I think, find that you have ill spent your hour of rest when you now return into the Carpaccio room, where we will look first, please, at No. IV. (574), in which many general points are better shown than in the rest.

Here is the great King of ideal England, under an octagonal temple of audience; all the scene being meant to show the conditions of a state in perfect power and prosperity.

A state, therefore, that is at once old and young; that has had a history for centuries past, and will have one for centuries to come.

Ideal, founded mainly on the Venice of his own day; mingled a little with thoughts of great Rome, and of great antagonist Genoa:¹ but, in all spirit and hope, the Venice of 1480-1500 is here living before you. And now, therefore, you can see at once what she meant by a “Campo,” allowing for the conventional manner of representing grass, which of course at first you will laugh at; but which is by no means deserving of your contempt. Any hack draughtsman of Dalziel’s² can sketch for you, or any member of the Water-colour or Dudley Societies dab for you, in ten minutes, a field of hay that you would fancy you could mow, and make cocks of. But this green ground of Carpaccio’s with implanted flowers and tufts of grass, is traditional from the first Greek-Christian mosaics, and is an entirely systematic ornamental ground, and to be understood as such, primarily, and as grass only symbolically. Careless indeed, more than is usual with him-much spoiled and repainted also; but quite clear enough in expression for us of the orderliness and freshness of a Venetian campo in the great times; garden and city you see mingled inseparably, the wild strawberry growing at the

¹ [In the green hill rising above the town; for a note on this picture, in its fidelity to Venetian characteristics, see the Introduction, above, p. lii.]

² [For a note on the Brothers Dalziel, see Vol. XIX. p. 149.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]