190 GUIDE TO THE ACADEMY AT VENICE

principal persons represented, or does he really paint such as strike his own fancy, without exercising his judgment or his discretion?*

A. I design my pictures with all due consideration as to what is fitting, and to the best of my judgment.

Q. Does it appear to you fitting that at our Lord’s last supper† you should paint buffoons, drunkards, Germans,‡ dwarfs, and similar indecencies?

A. No, my lord.

Q. Why, then, have you painted them?

A. I have done it because I supposed that these were not in the place where the supper was served.

Q. Are you not aware that in Germany, § and in other places infected with heresy, they are in the habit of painting pictures full of scurrility for the purpose of ridiculing and degrading the Holy Church, and thus teaching false doctrines to the ignorant and foolish?

A. Yes, my lord, it is bad; but I return to what I said before: I thought myself obliged to do as others-my predecessors-had done before me.

Q. And have your predecessors, then, done such things?

A. Michael-Angelo, in the Papal Chapel in Rome, has painted our Lord Jesus Christ, His mother, St. John, and St. Peter, and all the Court of Heaven, from the Virgin Mary downwards, all naked, and in various attitudes, with little reverence.

Q. Do you not know that in a painting like the Last Judgment, where drapery is not supposed, dresses are not required, and that disembodied spirits only are represented: but there are neither buffoons, nor dogs, nor armour, nor any other absurdity? And does it not appear to you that neither by this nor any other example you have done right in painting the picture in this manner, and that it can be proved right and decent?

A. Illustrious Lord, I do not defend it; but I thought I was doing right. I had not considered all these things, never intending to commit any impropriety; the more so as figures of buffoons are not supposed to be in the same place where our Lord is.

Which examination ended, my lords decreed that the above-named Master Paul should be bound to correct and amend the picture which had been under question, within three months, at his own expense, under penalties to be imposed by the Sacred Tribunal.”

This sentence, however severe in terms, was merely a matter of form. The examiners were satisfied there was no malice prepense in their fanciful Paul; and troubled neither him nor themselves farther. He did not so much as efface the inculpated dog; and the only correction or amendment he made, so far as I can see, was the addition of the inscription, which marked the picture for the feast of Levi.

* Admirably put, my lord.

† Not meaning the Cena, of course; but what Veronese also meant.

‡ and § The gist of the business, at last.

[Version 0.04: March 2008]