CHAPTER XIX.
THE ACCADEMIA; CHURCHES AND SCUOLE.
The Accademia delle Belle Arti, although on the Grand Canal, may be reached by a short walk from the Piazza, passing San Moisè and Santa Maria Zobenigo, and through the Campo San Stefano to the ugly bridge which leads directly to the Campo della Carità. The Convent of Charity was one of the edifices upon which Palladio lavished the greatest care and study. Much, of it was burned in 1630, and the pride of the old architect no longer remains. After the suppression of the convent it was used as a barrack; but in 1807 Napoleon decreed the establishment of an Academy of Art, and the spacious buildings of La Carità were devoted to its use.
Here are pictures from the very earliest days in which even the glimmerings of a Venetian Art could be discerned; and this was as late as the middle of the fifteenth century, when the Vivarini of Murano painted their dry, meagre Virgins and other figures in colors so rich as even then to foreshadow the glorious blooming time which followed.
As we are not writing of Art with any special method, we will speak only of a few works of interest to all,—to the picture-lover as well as to the connoisseur and student,—merely saying, en passant, that one who has time will do well to spend a good share of it here.
It is to be expected that, as in other portions of Italy, the early pictures should almost without exception be devoted to religious subjects; and none could be more sweet and attractive in sentiment than are those of Giovanni Bellini, whose Madonnas are good and simple, self-effacing mothers, anxious only to show the sacred Child to all beholders, and offer him for the world to worship. How many of these pure, grave, reverential mothers the good Zuan painted! and we can never see them too often. We are sure that he who represented this Divine Mother, with the "splendid column of her throat, holding her head high in a noble and simple abstraction," and the Infant King, with his lovely angelic children in attendance, tenderly respected women, and idolized children. We are almost sure that he reproduced on his canvas the inmates of his own home. One of these Madonnas, in the Contarini collection of the Academy, is an exquisite example of this younger and most excellent Bellini.
Two unusually interesting works by Gentile Bellini are "Miracles of the Holy Cross," and were painted in 1466 and 1500 for the School of St. John the Evangelist. The first represents a scene in the Piazza when a miraculous cure is made by a fragment of the True Cross there displayed. This Bellini could not confine himself to an endless repetition of Madonnas and Saints; his interest in the humanity about him was far too strong for him to turn from it to paint the ideal, and we rejoice in his realistic picturing of the Venice of his day. He shows us San Marco with but a single mosaic that still remains; the bell-turrets of the façade; the Corinthian (?) horses; the statues, less numerous than now; and the foliage-like decorations, all brilliant with gold and color. The loggietta was not yet built; but the Campanile was there, not, however, unattached as now. The Clock-Tower was not in existence, and the Procuratie were so different from those of to-day as to be scarcely recognizable.
The procession has entered the Piazza through a gateway between San Marco and the Ducal Palace. Groups of idlers here and there are watching the ceremony, and are composed of Oriental merchants, Venetian gallants, and an occasional magistrate in his toga, or perhaps some women and children. Mrs. Oliphant says:—