292 ST. MARK’S REST

pillars of caryatid mosaic. Between the windows,¹ the twelve apostles, and the Madonna-alas, the head of this principal figure frightfully “restored,” and I think the greater part of the central subject. Round the circle enclosing Christ is written, “Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye at gaze? This Son of God, Jesus, so taken from you, departs that He may be the arbiter of the earth: in charge of judgment He comes, and to give the laws that ought to be.”²

108. Such, you see, the central thought of Venetian worship. Not that we shall leave the world, but that our Master will come to it: and such the central hope of Venetian worship, that He shall come to judge the world indeed; not in a last and destroying judgment, but in an enduring and saving judgment, in truth and righteousness and peace. Catholic theology of the purest, lasting at all events down to the thirteenth century; or as long as the Byzantines had influence. For these are typical Byzantine conceptions; how far taken up and repeated by Italian workers, one cannot say; but in their gravity of purpose, meagre thinness of form, and rigid drapery lines, to be remembered by you with distinctness as expressing the first school of design in Venice, comparable in an instant with her last school of design, by merely glancing to the end of the north transept, where that rich piece of foliage, full of patriarchs, was designed by Paul Veronese.³ And what a divine picture it might have been, if he had only minded his own business, and let the mosaic workers mind theirs!-even now it is the only beautiful one of the late mosaics, and shows a new phase of the genius of Veronese. All I want you to feel, however, is the difference of temper from

¹ [Rather, in a circle above the windows; between the windows themselves are figures of the Virtues.]

[“Dicite, quid statis, quid in æthere consideratis?

Filius iste Dei, Christus, cives Galilei,

Sumptus ut a vobis abiit, et sic arbiter orbis

Judicii cura veni et dare debita jura.”

Compare below, § 131, p. 307.]

³ [The large tree, representing the genealogy of Mary, is, however, the work of Bianchini, from a drawing by Salviati; date, 1542-1555.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]