Here once hung Veronese's "Family of Darius," now No.

294 in our National Gallery, and, according to Ruskin, "the most precious" of the painter's works.

The story goes that Veronese being driven to make use of the Pisani villa at Este as a temporary home, painted the picture while there and left it behind him with a message that he hoped it would pay for his board and lodging.

The Pisani family sold it to the National Gallery in 1857.
The next palace is the hideous Barbarigo della Terrazza, with a better facade on the Rio S.Polo: now a mosaic company's head-quarters, but once famous for its splendours, which included seventeen Titians, now in Russia; and then the Rio S.Polo and the red Capello Palace where the late Sir Henry Layard made his home and gathered about him those pictures which now, like the Darius, belong to our National Gallery.
Next it is the Vendramin, with yellow posts and porphyry enrichment, and then the desolate dirty Querini, and the Bernardo, once a splendid palace but now offices, with its Gothic arches filled with glass.

The Rio della Madonnetta here intervenes; then two Dona palaces, the first dating from the twelfth century.