Ducal Palace, by Paul Veronese and Tintoret, have been more or less
reduced, by neglect, to this condition. Unfortunately they are not
altogether without reputation, and their state has drawn the attention
of the Venetian authorities and academicians. It constantly happens,
that public bodies who will not pay five pounds to preserve a picture,
will pay fifty to repaint it; [Footnote: This is easily explained. There
are, of course, in every place and at all periods, bad painters who
conscientiously believe that they can improve every picture they touch;
and these men are generally, in their presumption, the most influential
over the innocence, whether of monarchs or municipalities. The carpenter
and slater have little influence in recommending the repairs of the
roof; but the bad painter has great influence, as well as interest, in
recommending those of the picture.] and when I was at Venice in 1846,
there were two remedial operations carrying on, at one and the same
time, in the two buildings which contain the pictures of greatest value
in the city (as pieces of color, of greatest value in the world),
curiously illustrative of this peculiarity in human nature. Buckets were
set on the floor of the Scuola di San Rocco, in every shower, to catch
the rain which came through the pictures of Tintoret on the ceiling;
while in the Ducal Palace, those of Paul Veronese were themselves laid
on the floor to be repainted; and I was myself present at the
re-illumination of the breast of a white horse, with a brush, at the end
of a stick five feet long, luxuriously dipped in a common
house-painter's vessel of paint.
This was, of course, a large picture. The process has already been
continued in an equally destructive, though somewhat more delicate
manner, over the whole of the humbler canvases on the ceiling of the
Sala del Gran Consiglio; and I heard it threatened when I was last in
Venice (1851-2) to the "Paradise" at its extremity, which is yet in
tolerable condition,--the largest work of Tintoret, and the most
wonderful piece of pure, manly, and masterly oil-painting in the world.