As typical a walk as one can take in democratic Venice is that from this church to the Frari, along the Ruga Vecchia di San Giovanni, parallel with the Grand Canal. I have been here often both by day and by night, and it is equally characteristic at either time. Every kind of shop is here, including two old book-shops, one of which (at the corner of the Campiello dei Meloni) is well worth rummaging in. A gentle old lady sits in the corner so quietly as to be invisible, and scattered about are quite a number of English books among them, when I was last there, a surprising proportion of American minor verse. Another interesting shop here supplies Venetians with the small singing birds which they love so much, a cage by a window being the rule rather than the exception; and it was hereabouts that an old humorous greengrocer once did his voluble best to make me buy a couple of grilli, or crickets, in a tiny barred prison, to make their shrill mysterious music for me. But I resisted.
At night, perhaps, is this walk best, for several very popular wine shops for gondoliers are hereabouts, one or two quite large, with rows of barrels along the walls; and it is good to see every seat full, and an arm round many a waist, and everybody merry. Such a clatter of tongues as comes from these taverns is not to be beaten; and now and then a tenor voice or a mandolin adds a grace.
The Scuola di S. Rocco--Defective lighting--A competition of artists--The life of the Virgin--A dramatic Annunciation--Ruskin's analysis--S. Mary of Egypt--The upper hall--"The Last Supper"--"Moses striking the rock"--"The Crucifixion"--A masterpiece--Tintoretto's career--Titian and Michel Angelo--A dramatist of the Bible--Realistic carvings--The life of S. Rocco--A humorist in wood--A model council chamber--A case of reliquaries--The church of S. Rocco--Giorgione or Titian?
There are Tintorettos everywhere in Venice, in addition to the immense canvases in the Doges' Palace, but I imagine that were we able to ask the great man the question, Where would he choose to be judged? he would reply, "At the Scuola di S. Rocco,"--with perhaps a reservation in favour of "The Miracle of S. Mark" at the Accademia, and possibly the "Presentation" (for I feel he must have loved that work) at the Madonna dell'Orto, and "The Marriage in Cana," that fascinating scene, in the Salute. In the superb building of the S. Rocco Scuola he reigns alone, and there his "Crucifixion" is.