In the office of the salt-works is a picture by Carpaccio's son Benedetto, signed and dated 1541, which came from S. Lucia di Val di Fasano. It shows the Virgin seated with the Child in a little shirt, in the act of blessing. On the left is S. Lucy, on the right S. George standing, with their heads on the same level as the Virgin, and therefore on a smaller scale. The throne has a very shallow step. The figure of S. George is a repetition of that by Benedetto's father in S. Francesco.
In the Piazza Tartini, near a fourteenth-century house of Venetian Gothic, once the palace of the family of del Bello, is a modern statue of Tartini the violinist (1692-1770), who here commenced the study of music, which led him to extraordinary executive triumphs and the production of the celebrated "Trillo del diavolo."
Outside the walls, on the road to Porto Rose, are the ruins of the monastery of S. Bernardino, founded in 1450 by S. Giovanni da Capistrano, to whom the ruined convent on the island opposite Rovigno is also due. It once possessed a Vivarini, a Madonna with a sleeping Child, which was sent to Vienna in 1803. In the church of S. George is a fragment of a carved stall with a figure of the saint, which should be mentioned.
The town of Salvore seems to have been under the jurisdiction of Pirano, and the commune held a fair there on S. John the Baptist's Day, to celebrate the naval battle in 1177, in which Frederick Barbarossa was conquered in the deep bay between it and Pirano. The jousts, boat-races, and hunts which were held then and on the feasts of Pentecost and S. Orligo were so sumptuous that the _provveditore_ limited the expenditure.
The last boat for Trieste left Pirano at 1.30 p.m., an hour so ridiculously early, that we determined to walk to Isola and proceed thence by train. We started off bravely up the steep road which led to the fifteenth-century Porta di Raspo, obtaining fine views down the alleys and through garden doors as we ascended the hill. High above our heads the battlements towered, and as we approached the walls we realised what a business it must have been to attack a town so protected before the invention of gunpowder. Soon the road bent away to the right, which was not the direction in which we wished to go, but a path led to some brick-works, and there we found an idle workman, who advised us to go along the shore as being much shorter. So we plunged and slid about among rocks of a considerable size, and skirted the base of slippery cliffs, and ploughed through sand and shingle for some miles, rejoicing when we met the road again in a flat piece of land where there were salt-pans. From this point it made a long sweep inland and then rose in wide curves up the shoulder of a hill which divided us from Isola. Here we saw a train draw up to take on board two gentlemen and a little boy; there was no sign of station or halting-place, and we wondered whether all that was necessary was to stand by the line and wave one's hand to the driver in order to be taken up! A stony path led us to the summit--another short cut, which happily called for less exertion than our previous jaunt along the shore--and a charming view amply repaid us for our labours. In the foreground the stony path dropped between steep banks, the soil being occupied by vines and olives, with a little shrine perched on one of the banks. In the middle distance Isola lay like a jewel upon the sea, opalescent with delicate blue shadows and the indescribable tints of grey stone buildings at a distance in sunlight; with the campanile crowning the slight elevation of the clustered houses. Beyond were the horns of the Bay of Capodistria and the highlands of the Julian Alps, blue in the shadow of the declining sun. A few lighter houses scattered along the peninsula served to soften the transition from the grey town to the green country.