180 GUIDE TO THE ACADEMY AT VENICE

Paul Veroneses, one on each side of the steps. The upper group of the picture on your left (265), Madonna borne by angels at her knees, and encompassed by a circlet of them, is the loveliest piece of Veronese in these galleries, nor can you see a better in the world: but, considered as a whole, the picture is a failure; all the sub-celestial part of it being wholly dull. Nevertheless, for essential study of Veronese’s faculty, you cannot find anything better in Venice than that upper group; and the other picture [264], though confused, is worth attentive pause from all painters.

377. Le Brun.¹ Sent from Paris, you see, in exchange for the Cena of Paul Veronese.

The Cena of Paul Veronese being worth-at moderate estimate of its eternal and intrinsic art-value-I should say, roughly, about ten good millions of sterling ducats, or twenty ironclads; and the Le Brun, worth, if it were put to proper use, precisely what its canvas may now be worth to make a packing-case of;-but, as hung here,² in negative value, and effectual mischief, in disgracing the rooms, and keeping fine pictures invisibly out of the way,-a piece of vital poverty and calamity much more than equivalent to the presence of a dirty, torn rag, which the public would at once know to be worthless, in its place instead.

240, 244.³ Standard average portrait-pieces, fairly representative of Tintoret’s quiet work, and of Venetian magistrates,-Camerlenghi di Comune. Compare 242; very beautiful.

¹ [In the Loggia Palladina. As stated in the catalogue of the Gallery, this picture (“Magdalen at the feet of Jesus”), by Carlo Lebrun (1619-1690), was received in exchange for Veronese’s “Marriage in Cana,” now in the Louvre. Buonaparte had forcibly removed that picture to Paris after his seizure of Venice in 1797. After 1815 the Austrian Commissioners, owing to the difficulty of removing so large a picture, consented to the substitution of the Lebrun.]

² [Now, as already stated, hung in the Loggia Palladina-obscurely enough; formerly with the Veroneses in Room XV.]

³ [The three pictures here mentioned are now all in Room IX. and in a row. Nos. 240 (removed from the Magistrato of the Camerlenghi) and 244 are each “Portraits of two Senators”; No. 242 is “Portrait of the Procurator Carlo Morosini.”]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]