But it is in the centre of his picture (which is reproduced on the opposite page) that the painter has achieved one of his pleasantest effects, for here is a row of pretty women sitting side by side at the banquetting table, with a soft light upon them, who make together one of the most charming of those rare oases of pure sweetness in all Tintoretto’s work.  The chief light is theirs and they shine most graciously in it.

Among other pictures are a S. Sebastian by Basaiti, with a good landscape; a glowing altar-piece by Titian, in his Giorgionesque manner, representing S. Mark and four saints; a “Descent of the Holy Ghost,” by the same hand but under no such influence; and a spirited if rather theatrical “Nativity of the Virgin” by Lucia Giordano.  In the outer sacristy the kneeling figure of Doge Agostino Barbarigo should be looked for.

The Salute in Guardi’s day seems to have had the most entrancing light blue curtains at its main entrance, if we may take the artist as our authority.  See No. 2098 in the National Gallery, and also No. 503 at the Wallace collection.  But now only a tiny side door is opened.

[Illustration:  THE MARRIAGE AT CANA FROM THE PAINTING BY TINTORETTO In the Church of the Salute]

A steamboat station, used almost wholly by visitors, is here, and then a canal, and then the fourteenth-century abbey of S. Gregorio, whose cloisters now form an antiquity store and whose severe and simple apse is such a rebuke to Longhena’s Renaissance floridity.  Next is a delightful little house with one of the old cup-chimneys, forming one of the most desirable residences in Venice.  It has a glazed loggia looking down to the Riva.  We next come to a brand new spacious building divided into apartments, then a tiny house, and then the rather squalid Palazzo Martinengo.  The calle and traghetto of S. Gregorio, and two or three old palaces and the new building which now holds Salviati’s glass business, follow.  After the Rio del Formase is a common little house, and then the Palazzo Volkoff, once Eleonora Duse’s Venetian home.

Next is the splendid fifteenth-century Palazzo Dario, to my eyes perhaps the most satisfying of all, with its rich colouring, leaning walls, ancient chimneys and porphyry decorations.  Readers of Henri de Regnier’s Venetian novel La Peur de l’Amour may like to know that much of it was written in this palace.  We shall see porphyry all along the Canal on both sides, always enriching in its effect.  This stone is a red or purple volcanic rock which comes from Egypt, on the west coast of the Red Sea.  The Romans first detected its beauty and made great use of it to decorate their buildings.

Another rio, the Torreselle, some wine stores, and then the foundations of what was to have been the Palazzo Venier, which never was built.  Instead there are walls and a very delectable garden—­a riot of lovely wistaria in the spring—­into which fortunate people are assisted from gondolas by superior men-servants.  A dull house comes next; then a stoffe factory; and then the Mula Palace, with fine dark blue poles before it surmounted by a Doge’s cap, and good Gothic windows.  Again we find trade where once was aristocracy, for the next palace, which is now a glass-works’ show-room, was once the home of Pietro Barbarigo, Patriarch of Venice.