The first room is an ante-room where catalogues are sold; but these are not needed, for every room, or nearly every room, has hand-charts of the paintings, and every room has a custodian eager to impart information.
Next is the Hall of the Four Doors, with its famous and typical Titian--Doge Grimani, fully armed and accompanied by warriors, ecstatically acknowledging religion, as symbolized by a woman, a cross, and countless cherubim.

Behind her is S.Mark with an expression of some sternness, and beside him his lion, roaring.
Doges, it appears,--at any rate the Doges who reigned during Titian's long life--had no sense of humour, or they could not have permitted this kind of self-glorification in paint.

Both here and at the Accademia we shall see picture after picture in which these purse-proud Venetian administrators, suspecting no incongruity or absurdity, are placed, by Titian and Tintoretto, on terms of perfect intimacy with the hierarchy of heaven.

Sometimes they merely fraternize; sometimes they masquerade as the Three Kings or Wise Men from the East; but always it is into the New Testament that, with the aid of the brush of genius, they force their way.
Modesty can never have been a Venetian characteristic; nor is it now, when Venice is only a museum and show place.

All the Venetians--the men, that is,--whom one sees in the Piazza have an air of profound self-satisfaction.