Two pictures with scriptural subjects represent Christ in the garden of Gethsemane, and Matthew (an Evangelist rarely painted in Venice, where his colleague Mark has all the attention) being called from the receipt of custom. And finally there is the delightful and vivid representation of S. Tryphonius and the basilisk. This picture, of which I give a reproduction opposite page 76, is both charming and funny. The basilisk is surely in the highest rank of the comic beasts of art. It seems to be singing, but that is improbable; what it is unmistakably not doing is basilisking. The little saint stands by in an attitude of prayer, and all about are comely courtiers of the king. In the distance are delightful palaces in the Carpaccio style of architecture, cool marble spaces, and crowded windows and stairs. The steps of the raised temple in which the saint and the basilisk perform have a beautiful intarsia of foliage similar to that on the Giants' Staircase at the Doges' Palace. So much for the ingredients of this bewitching picture; but as to what it is all about I have no knowledge, for I have looked in vain among books for any information. I find a S. Tryphonius, but only as a grown man; not a word of his tender years and his grotesque attendant. How amusing it would be to forget the halo and set the picture as a theme among a class of fanciful fantastic writers, to fit it with an appropriate fairy story! For of course it is as absolute a fairy tale illustration as the dragon pictures on the other wall.
It is now well to ask the way to S. Francesco della Vigna, where we shall find S. Jerome and his lion again. This vast church, with its pretentious and very unwelcoming façade by Palladio covering the friendly red brick, is at the first sight unattractive, so huge and cold and deserted is it. But it has details. It has, for example, just inside the door on the entrance wall, high up, a very beautiful early Christian coloured relief of the Madonna and Child: white on blue, but far earlier than the Delia Robbias. The Madonna is slender as a pole but memorably sweet. It has also a curious great altar picture on wood by a strange painter, Frater Antonius da Negropoñ, as he signs himself--this in a little chapel in the right transept--with most charming details of birds, and flowers, and scrolls, and monochrome reliefs surrounding a Madonna and Child who beam comfort and assurance of joy. The date is supposed to be about 1450 and the source of Brother Antonio's inspiration must have been similar to that of the great Mantegna's.