[198] The figures are by Tiepolo (see under 1192).
[199] Visitors who have been to Venice will remember that "Carpaccio trusts for the chief splendour of any festa in cities to the patterns of the draperies hung out of windows" (Bible of Amiens, p. 3).
[200] Or, according to Mr. Berenson, of Alvise Vivarini and Lotto (see his Lorenzo Lotto, pp. 113, 304).
[201] It was exhibited at the "Old Masters" exhibition in 1873 as a Raphael. Mr. Ruskin, who had noticed it there, wrote to Mr. Fairfax Murray, "Please look at the Raphael, and tell me how far the colour may have changed on St. John's shoulder and in Judas' dress, and how far the fantastic shot silks of this last are absolutely as they were."
[202] It is a repetition with but slight variations of the Medici picture in the Uffizi.
[203] "The early Italian masters felt themselves so indebted to, and formed by, the master-craftsman who had mainly disciplined their fingers, whether in work on gold or marble, that they practically considered him their father, and took his name rather than their own; so that most of the great Italian workmen are now known, not by their own names, but by those of their masters (or of their native towns or villages—these being recognised as masters also), the master being himself often entirely forgotten by the public, and eclipsed by his pupil; but immortal in his pupil, and named in his name.... All which I beg you to take to heart and meditate on concerning Mastership and Pupilage" (Fors Clavigera, 1872, xxii. 3, 4). Vasari's story may be true, says Dr. Richter, "even though no contemporary record of a goldsmith called Botticello has been found. We know, however, that he had a brother, Giovanni Battista, a carpenter and frame-maker of some repute, nicknamed Botticegli, i.e. 'Little Barrel'; this nickname may have been inherited by the younger brother" (Lectures on the National Gallery, p. 48).
[204] See Richter's Lectures on the National Gallery for the list, p. 46.
[205] Reference may be made also to Mr. Swinburne's "Notes on Designs of the Old Masters at Florence" (first published in the Fortnightly Review for July 1868), in which he speaks of "the faint and almost painful grace which gives a distinct value and curious charm to all the works of Botticelli." At an auction in 1867 D. G. Rossetti picked up a Botticelli for £20. "If he had not something to do," writes his brother, "with the vogue which soon afterwards began to attach to that fascinating master, I am under a misapprehension." Pater's essay first appeared in the Fortnightly Review of August 1870. Ruskin's first mention of Botticelli was in a lecture delivered at Oxford during the Lent Term, 1871. Carpaccio had been proclaimed in a lecture of the preceding year, and it became a standing joke among the profane to ask who was Ruskin's last "greatest painter." It was in answer thereto that Mr. Bourdillon wrote:
To us this star or that seems bright,
And oft some headlong meteor's flight
Holds for awhile our raptured sight.
But he discerns each noble star;
The least is only the most far,
Whose worlds, may be, the mightiest are.
[206] "The dress appears to have been originally crimson or pink. If so, it has faded to so agreeable a tone that one could hardly wish it otherwise" (Poynter).