_A._ I design my pictures with all due consideration as to what is fitting, and to the best of my judgment.
_Q._ Does it appear to you fitting that at our Lord's last supper you should paint buffoons, drunkards, Germans, dwarfs, and similar indecencies?
_A._ I have done it because I supposed that these were not in the place where the supper was served....
_Q._ And have your predecessors, then, done such things?
_A._ Michel-Angelo, in the Papal Chapel in Rome, has painted our Lord Jesus Christ, His mother, St. John and St. Peter, and all the Court of Heaven, from the Virgin Mary downwards, all naked, and in various attitudes, with little reverence.
_Q._ Do you not know that in a painting like the Last Judgment, where drapery is not supposed, dresses are not required, and that disembodied spirits only are represented; but there are neither buffoons, nor dogs, nor armour, nor any other absurdity? And does it not appear to you that neither by this nor any other example you have done right in painting the picture in this manner, and that it can be proved right and decent?
_A._ Illustrious lord, I do not defend it; but I thought I was doing right....
The result was that the painter was ordered to amend the picture, within the month, at his own expense; but he does not seem to have done so. There are two dogs and no Magdalen. The dwarf and the parrot are there still. Under the table is a cat.
[Illustration: THE FEAST IN THE HOUSE OF LEVI FROM THE PAINTING BY VERONESE _In the Accademia_]
Veronese has in this room also an "Annunciation," No. 260, in which the Virgin is very mature and solid and the details are depressingly dull. The worst Tuscan "Annunciation" is, one feels, better than this. The picture of S. Mark and his lion, No. 261, is better, and in 261a we find a good vivid angel, but she has a terrific leg. The Tintorettos include the beautiful grave picture of the Madonna and Child giving a reception to Venetian Senators who were pleased to represent the Magi; the "Purification of the Virgin," a nice scene with one of his vividly natural children in it; a "Deposition," rich and glowing and very like Rubens; and the "Crucifixion," painted as an altar-piece for SS. Giovanni e Paolo before his sublime picture of the same subject--his masterpiece--was begun for the Scuola of S. Rocco. If one see this, the earlier version, first, one is the more impressed; to come to it after that other is to be too conscious of a huddle. But it has most of the great painter's virtues, and the soldiers throwing dice are peculiarly his own.