The number of pictures here is immense, mostly of course of the Venetian school, but of these there are magnificent specimens. The names of Gian Bellino, the two Palmas, and three Bassans, are almost as well known as those of Titian, Paul Veronese, and Tintoret; but there are also very fine paintings by Andrea Vicentino, Sebastian Ricci, Bonifacio, Aliense, Mario Vecelli, &c.; and Luca Giordano has also left here a great number of his works. But the majority of these fine paintings are very badly lighted. In the churches there is usually a row of wax candles before them; and if on some feast day, when these are lighted, one of them should fall back, and burn a hole in the canvass, nobody seems to care much about it. Many of them are half hid by a statue of white marble, whose colour sadly deadens the tints of the painting; or what is worse, by the painted wax face, white veil, silver crown, and gaudy satin drapery of some wretched Madonna. Sometimes a crown and girdle of gold or silver are stuck on the painting itself, and when this represents, as is often the case, a Madonna in the clouds, they give her a silver moon to stand upon. All the pictures in the churches are wretchedly dirty, and it is provoking to see so little care taken of the finest of them. No English churchwarden can be fonder of whitewash, than those who have the care of the churches in Venice; and if they do not cover their Titians with it, they do almost as bad, in whitewashing all round them. Those returned from Paris are in a better condition. The French are accused of having restored, as well as cleaned; the accusation may be just in some degree, but not to the amount one is led to expect by the complaints made against them. And after all, when the question is between a very beautiful thing, but invisible, and another somewhat less beautiful, which may be seen, I confess that I prefer the latter. These paintings are now at the convent of the Carità, which is converted into an academy of the fine arts, but the building contains no large rooms in which they may be exhibited, and they are laid together in great confusion: a few indeed have been picked out and put in front, where they are tolerably well seen. The San Pietro Martyre was placed upon an easel, in an excellent light, and without any thing to disturb the view of it, so that I enjoyed it in all its perfection. Many of the larger paintings have not been unpacked, and as they cannot be exhibited till a room is erected for their reception, and there is now no Napoleon to order such an erection, and no rich merchant to supply the funds; it is not improbable that they may remain rolled up for these twenty years. I have already said that there is a fine collection of ancient marbles in the ducal palace. There are also one or two excellent private collections of the same sort, and some of the palaces are rich in pictures. One in particular, the Manfrin, has a glorious collection. Besides pictures, the Italians adorn their churches with painted images, to which I have occasionally alluded, and which are dressed out as finely as gold and satin can make them, and with as much taste as you would expect, when a monk undertakes to perform a lady’s toilet. An image of the Madonna in the Santi Apostoli, exhibited a gilt crown, a shawl of white silk was loosely thrown over the head and shoulders, and her gown was of yellow satin with blue stripes, and decorated with roses and other flowers intended to imitate Nature. The child had a gilt glory, and an apron like his mother’s gown. I have not selected this as a remarkable one, but merely in hopes to give you a more distinct idea of these figures by describing an individual.