Spirit of the age. [volume] (Woodstock, Vt.) 1845-1913, 1909-02-06

water street twice the width Of Broad
way. The Venetian never articulates
gently when he has anything te say,
but puts all the feeling of a dramatic
song into casual observation. This
is not saying exactly that the Vene-
tians have loud voices, but that they
talk very loud, at least in the open
air.
The Art of Venice.
AS | visit and ponder over the art
and architecture of Venice, I realize
the ingenious wisdom of Howells,
who wrote so much Of the city and
so cleverly left out the art. The
books that say least of this subject
have sold best and advertised the
city most. For surely Venice is not
a great art centre, though it may be
the cause of art centres elsewhere
The paintings are grand interior
decorations, having wonderful tech
nique hut no Imagination or soul,
telling no story, presenting ever
the same everlasting fat and artificial
madonna There are noble portraits
of doges and senators, but portrait
painting is not the great art.
No one can say that Venice has
any wonderful architecture her
churches are great brick barns,
and she has no grand cathedral
st Marks, and the doge's palace
and the Library, San Marcolo, some
palace facades - this ends the list;
and nearly everything is a copy,
endless copy of the style of the pal
ace. 1t is all beautiful and decorative
and charming, but not the great
good thing.
The great art OF Venice is the city,
the joint work Of God and man, with
its wonderfully clear, restless air, the
color Of the water, sky and build
ings, These give one thousand
new pictures, each one better than
anything the Acadamia furnishes.
OF course there are many who like
TintoretGo and Titan and even Vero-
nese, who can stand and study their
work and get feeling of joy and
expansion over the faces and figures
They are great artists and | have no
quarrel with their admirers, 1t only
seems to me that these great artists
went wrong; they ceased to be con-
scientious, accurate, sincere; they
wanted only to show what wonder
ful painters they were, putting in
their W YES and mistresses and their
own faces to adorn a sacred room or
tell tragic story. They were won
derful and they were artists, but it
shows us that art has various mis-
sions, not all of them so very
suprems. And if these men made
interiors of churches and council
halls beautiful, it was a sufficient
mission,
One is sent promptly by the guide
books to see the plague-churches and
the tombs and statues of the doges.
Nothing could be less interesting
than tie tomb of a doge and the
sculpture of it, unless one is very
personally interested in the life and
history of these deceased or is an
architect. There are fine statues
and weIl-conceived graveyard effects,
but it is cruel to tourists to give
them the idea that they should be
admired for serious aesthetic rea-
sons. They are all or nearly all con-
ceived on the same lines; the old
attempt to give Greek temple or
Roman garden effect to a side-walI.
Venice has no statues of great
importance except the Golleoni, and
that is made great by the grim old
pirates face and figure; he must
have been a man indeed.
The man who would get the real
art of Venice will hunt for her few
primitives; the little known Mon
tegro he will 60 to Venice's suburb,
Padua, ond see her Giotto, and Man
tegna; even Carpaccio knows at least
his own mind and tells story that
is vastly truer than the saints in the