Then the photograph stall, which is in that ancient room of the palace that has the two beautiful windows on a lower level than the rest.
It is melancholy to look round this gigantic sala of the great Council and think of the pictures which were destroyed by the great fire in 1576, when Sebastiano Venier was Doge, among them that rendering of the battle of Lepanto, the Doge's own victory, which Tintoretto painted with such enthusiasm.

A list of only a few of the works of art which from time to time have fallen to the flames would be tragic reading.

Among the artists whose paintings were lost in the 1576 fire were, in addition to Tintoretto, Titian, Giovanni and Gentile Bellini, Gentile da Fabriano and Carpaccio.

Sad, too, to think that the Senators who once thronged here--those grave, astute gentlemen in furred cloaks whom Tintoretto and Titian and Moroni and Moretto painted for us--assemble here no more.

Sightseers now claim the palace, and the administrators of Venetian affairs meet in the Municipio, or Town Hall, on the Grand Canal.
The best thing about the room is the room itself: the courage of it in a little place like Venice! Next, I suppose, all eyes turn to the "Paradiso," and they can do nothing else if the custodian has made himself one of the party, as he is apt to do.