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Updated: June 1, 2025
"Please note in your little books this artist's Madonnas in San Zaccaria and Church of the Frari, and go to see them to-morrow morning if you can; they are his masterpieces. I will not talk any more now. If you wish to stay here longer, it will be well to go back and look at the very earliest pictures again, or others that you will find by Carpaccio and the Bellini brothers."
So it continued until Pope Zaccaria quarrelled with Astolfo, King of Lombardy, and summoned the Carlovingian princes from France to protect him.
His first act as Doge was to punish the assassination of his predecessor, Vitale Michiel, who, for what was held to be the bad management of an Eastern campaign which utterly and disastrously failed, and for other reasons, was killed by the mob outside S. Zaccaria. To him succeeded Ziani and the close of the long feud between the Pope and the Emperor.
Answering that summons to a parley, and with a last word of injunction to Fortemani, who was left in charge of the men at the guns, Francesco rode forward on one of Gian Maria's horses, escorted by Lanciotto and Zaccaria similarly mounted, and each armed with a loaded arquebuse. Under the walls of Roccaleone he drew rein, laughing to himself at this monstrous change of sides.
There is a picture of Bellini's in S. Zaccaria at Venice Madonna enthroned with Saints where the skill of the colourist may be said to culminate in unsurpassable perfection.
Behind him towered the bulk of Fortemani, his great face flushed with a strange excitement, a leather hacketon over his steel cuirass, girt, too, with sword and dagger, and carrying his shining morion in his hand. Last came Lanciotto and Zaccaria, both fully equipped and armed at all points.
This, then, goes by the hand of Zaccaria, to tell you that to-day has word been sent Gian Maria giving him three days in which to return to Babbiano, or to abandon all hope of his crown, of which the people will send the offer then to you at Aquila, where you are believed to be. So now, my dear lord, you have the tyrant at your mercy, tossed between Scylla and Charybdis.
"On the 15th April I called on Mrs Zaccaria Laurence at Bury Court, and gave her the receipt for the further share of the residue of the estate of my much respected grandmother, Esther Hannah Montefiore. With gratitude I recall to my mind her words to me on her deathbed. She lamented not having left me more in her will, and added, 'God bless you, and God will bless you. Peace be to her memory.
It is enough to indicate the goal of many a pleasant pilgrimage: warrior angels of Vivarini and Basaiti hidden in a dark chapel of the Frari; Fra Francesco's fantastic orchard of fruits and flowers in distant S. Francesco della Vigna; the golden Gian Bellini in S. Zaccaria; Palma's majestic S. Barbara in S. Maria Formosa; San Giobbe's wealth of sculptured frieze and floral scroll; the Ponte di Paradiso, with its Gothic arch; the painted plates in the Museo Civico; and palace after palace, loved for some quaint piece of tracery, some moulding full of mediæval symbolism, some fierce impossible Renaissance freak of fancy.
Here, then, they spread their cloaks, and Zaccaria unpacked his victuals, and set before them a simple meal of bread and wine and roasted fowl, which to their hunger made more appeal than a banquet at another season. And when they had eaten they laid them down beside the stream, and there beguiled in pleasant talk the time until they fell asleep.
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