GUIDE TO THE ACADEMY AT VENICE 183

Peter Martyr.* The St. John the Baptist in this gallery (314),¹ is really too stupid to be endured, and the black and white scrabble of landscape in it is like a bad copy of Ruysdael.

42.² The miracle of St. Mark; a fine, but much-over-rated, Tintoret. If any painter of real power wishes to study this master, let him be content with the Paradise of the Ducal Palace, and the School of St. Roch, where no harmful repainting has yet taken place. The once mighty pictures in the Madonna dell’ Orto are destroyed by restoration;³ and those which are scattered about the other churches⁴ are scarcely worth pursuit, while the series of St. Roch remains in its purity.

In the next room to this⁵ the pictures on the ceiling, brought from the room of the State Inquisitors, are more essential, because more easy, Tintoret-work, than the St. Mark, and very delightful to me; I only wish the Inquisitors were alive to enjoy them again themselves, and inquire into a few things happening in Venice, and especially into the religious principles of her “Modern Painters.”

We have made the round of the rooms, all but the Pinacoteca Contarini, Sala V. and VI., and the long gallery, Sala X.-XIV.,⁶ both containing many smaller pictures of

* Of the portrait of the Doge Andrea Gritti, in my own possession at Oxford, I leave others to speak, when I can speak of it no more. But it

¹ [In Room XIX.]

² [In Room II.]

³ [See Vol. XI. p. 395.]

⁴ [As, for instance, in the Salute: see Vol. XI. p. 429.]

⁵ [Ed. 1 adds: “(Sala III.).” The pictures in question are on the ceiling of what is now Room IV. The subjects are the Parable of the Prodigal Son, Virtue, Faith, Justice, Courage, and Charity.]

⁶ [The description no longer applies. The Pinacoteca Contarini (a miscellaneous collection presented in 1843 by the Count Jérôme Contarini) was at the time when Ruskin wrote hung together in a room; it has now been merged in the general arrangement of the collection, and the other rooms have all been altered. The rooms in the present arrangement left unmentioned by Ruskin are V. (School of Bellini), VII. (School of Bergamo), VIII. (Flemish), and XI. to XIV. (Later Italian Schools).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]