Martha, not sufficiently resentful, lays the table.
In Room VIII we again go north and again are among pictures that must be cleaned if we are to see them.
And then we come to Room IX and some masterpieces.

The largest picture here is Paul Veronese's famous work, "Jesus in the House of Levi," of which I give a reproduction opposite page 176.

Veronese is not a great favourite of mine; but there is a blandness and aristocratic ease and mastery here that are irresistible.

As an illustration of scripture it is of course absurd; but in Venice (whose Doges, as we have seen, had so little humour that they could commission pictures in which they were represented on intimate terms with the Holy Family) one is accustomed to that.

As a fine massive arrangement of men, architecture, and colour, it is superb.
It was for painting this picture as a sacred subject--or rather for subordinating sacred history to splendid mundane effects--that the artist was summoned before the Holy Office in the chapel of S.Theodore on July 8, 1573.