It was in 1548, when but thirty years old, that Tintoretto first became famous, with the large _Miracle of S. Mark_, now in the Venice Academy. This is perhaps his finest as well as his most celebrated work; but the greatest monument to his industry and general ability is the Scuola di'San Rocco, where he began to work in 1560 under a contract to produce three pictures a year for an annuity of a hundred ducats. In all there are sixty-two of his pictures in this building, the greater part of them very large, the figures throughout being of the size of life. _The Crucifixion_, painted in 1565, is the most extensive of them, and on the whole the most perfect. In 1590, four years before his death, he completed the enormous _Paradise_ in the Sala del Gran Consiglio, measuring seventy-four feet in length and thirty in height. In the National Gallery we have three characteristic examples, fortunately on a smaller scale, namely, the _S. George_ on a white horse, which, with its greyish flesh tones and the blue of the princess's mantle, is cooler in tone than the generality of his pictures; _Christ washing the Disciples' Feet_, and the very beautiful and radiant _Origin of the Milky Way_, purchased from Lord Darnley in 1890. At Hampton Court a still finer example, _The Nine Muses_, is so discoloured by age and hung in such a difficult light that it is impossible to enjoy its full beauty. PAOLO CALIARI, better known as VERONESE, was born ten years later than Tintoretto, and died six years before him (1528-1588). He studied in his native city of Verona till he was twenty, and after working for some time at Mantua he came to Venice in 1555, where he was quickly recognised by Titian and by Sansovino, the sculptor and Director of Public Buildings, and was commissioned in that year to paint a _Coronation of the Virgin_ and other works in the church of S. Sebastian. The _Martyrdom of S. Giustino_, now in the Uffizi, and the _Madonna and Child_ in the Louvre are also among his earlier works. As early as 1562 he was at work on the enormous _Feast at Cana_, now in the Louvre, and a similar work at Dresden is of the same date. In 1564 he went to Rome, where he studied the works of Raphael and Michelangelo. On his return to Venice in [Illustration: PLATE XVII.--TINTORETTO ST GEORGE AND THE DRAGON _National Gallery, London_]