Standing in some room of the Doge's Palace, decorated entirely by his hand, we are carried back to the time when Venice was Queen of the Seas, unrivalled for magnificence and wealth.

He was the Master of Ceremonies, before whom other painters of pomps and vanities pale.

Gorgeous colouring is what all these Venetian painters had in common.

We see it in the early days when Venetian art was struggling into existence.
In her art, as in her skies and waters, we are overwhelmed by a vision of colour unsurpassed.
We have now touched on a few prominent points in the history of painting in Italy from its early rise in Florence with Giotto; through its period of widespread excellence in the first quarter of the sixteenth century, when Raphael, Giorgione, Michelangelo, and Leonardo were all painting masterpieces in Florence, Venice, Rome, and Milan at the same moment; to its final blaze of sunset grandeur in Venice.

It is time to return to the north of Europe.