But it occurred too often for even my self-complacency, did that exasperating "It is nothing--it is of the Renaissance." I said at last: "Who is this Renaissance?
Where did he come from?
Who gave him permission to cram the Republic with his execrable daubs ?" We learned, then, that Renaissance was not a man; that renaissance was a term used to signify what was at best but an imperfect rejuvenation of art.

The guide said that after Titian's time and the time of the other great names we had grown so familiar with, high art declined; then it partially rose again--an inferior sort of painters sprang up, and these shabby pictures were the work of their hands.

Then I said, in my heat, that I "wished to goodness high art had declined five hundred years sooner." The Renaissance pictures suit me very well, though sooth to say its school were too much given to painting real men and did not indulge enough in martyrs.
The guide I have spoken of is the only one we have had yet who knew any thing.

He was born in South Carolina, of slave parents.

They came to Venice while he was an infant.