GUIDE TO THE ACADEMY AT VENICE 181

36, 606, 608.¹ Spoils of the Church of the Carita, whose ruins you have seen. Venice being of all cities the only one which has sacked herself, not in revolution, but mere blundering beggary: suppressing every church that had blessed her, and every society that had comforted. But at all events you see the pictures here; and the Cima is a fine one; but what time you give to this painter should be spent chiefly with his John the Baptist at the Madonna dell’ Orto.²

280.³ Once a Bonifazio of very high order; sorrowfully repainted with loss of half its life. But a picture, still, deserving honour.

From this room⁴ you find access either to the modern pictures, or by the door on the left hand of the Cima to the collection of drawings. The well-known series by Raphael and Leonardo⁵ are of the very highest historical value and artistic interest; but it is curious to find, in Venice, scarcely a scratch or blot remaining of elementary study by any great Venetian master. Her painters drew little in black and white, and must have thrown such sketches, when they made them, away for mere waste paper. For all discussion of their methods of learning to draw with colour from the first, I must refer my readers to my Art lectures.⁶

The Leonardo drawings here are the finest I know; none in the Ambrosian Library equal them in execution.

¹ [These three pictures bore consecutive numbers when Ruskin wrote, and in the official catalogue were all said to have come from the suppressed church of S. Maria della Carità. No. 36 is in Room II. (Cima: “Madonna and Child enthroned, with various Saints”); Nos. 606 and 608 (in Room XVII.) are by Bernardo Parentino (1437-1531), and are now stated in the catalogue to have come from the suppressed church of S. Maria at Monteortone; formerly ascribed to Vivarini.]

² [For notices of this picture, see Vol. XX. p. 141, and Vol. XXI. pp. 16, 115.]

³ [Room X.: “St. Sebastian, St. Bernard, and the Devil.” Ruskin placed a photograph of this picture in his Standard Series at Oxford (No. 21), and discussed it in the catalogue: see Vol. XXI. p. 21.]

⁴ [Again the directions do not apply. The modern pictures are in Room XII., the collection of drawings in Room IV.]

⁵ [Nos. 198 seq., Nos. 213 seq.]

⁶ [See Lectures on Art, § 163 (Vol. XX. pp. 156-157).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]