Pictures, as we use the word, meaning paintings in frames on the wall, as in the National Gallery or the Louvre, are not among its first treasures.

But in painting as decoration of churches and palaces Venice is rich indeed, and by anyone who would study the three great Venetian masters of that art--Tintoretto, Titian and Paul Veronese--it must not only be visited but haunted.

Venice alone can prove to the world what giants these men--and especially Tintoretto--could be when given vast spaces to play with; and since they were Venetians it is well that we should be forced to their well-beloved and well-served city to learn it.
Let us walk through the Accademia conscientiously, but let us dwell only in the rooms I have selected.

The first room (with a fine ceiling which might be called the ceiling of the thousand wings, around which are portraits of painters ranged like the Doges in the great council halls) belongs to the very early men, of whom Jacobello del Fiore (1400-1439) is the most agreeable.

It was he who painted one of the two lions that we saw in the museum of the Doges' Palace, the other and better being Carpaccio's.