Paolo Cagliari had not known what he would do until the old man's suggestion seemed to make his vision less vaguely inaccessible, and before they reached the landing he had learned, by a judicious indifference which sharpened his companion's loquacity, that Messer Girolamo lived there alone with his daughter, who went about always with a bambino in her arms--the child of a dead sister.
There could be no doubt; yet, to keep the old man talking, he put the question, "She is very beautiful, the donzella?"
"Eccellenza"--with a pause and deprecatory movement of the shoulders--"_cosi_--so-so--a little pale--like a saint--devote. For the poor? Good, _gentile_, the donzel of Messer Girolamo. _Bella_, with rosy colors? _Non_!"
With the Venetians there could be no sharp distinction between the decorative and the fine arts, as the fine arts were employed by them without limit in their sumptuous decorations; and that which elsewhere would have been merely decorative they raised, by exquisite quality and finish, to a point which deserved to be termed art, without qualifications.
The Veronese, who had been knighted by the Doge, could scarcely go unrecognized to any art establishment in any quarter of Venice, and with unconcealed pleasure Girolamo bowed low before this master who had come to do him honor; displaying all that the initiated would hold most precious among his treasures--that design, faded and dim, almost unrecognizable, of those early mosaics of the Master Pietro--he held nothing back. It was a day of honor for his house, and the two were alone in his cabinet.
The Veronese had a gift of sympathy; his heart opened to those who loved art and had conquered difficulties in her service, and the talk flowed freely. "I believe," he said, as together they laid away the parchment, "that in our modern mosaics we should keep to the massive lines of these earlier models--greater dignity and simplicity in outline and coloring. It is a mistake to attempt to confound this art with painting."
"It is good, then, for our art, Messer Cavalière, that at San Donato, our mother church, we workmen of Murano have our Lady in that old Byzantine type; there is none earlier--nor in all Venice more perfect of its time--and the setting is of marvelous richness and delicacy."