But the most noteworthy point in it is the light it throws on the architectural aspect of Venice at the close of the fifteenth century. On the right the houses are wholly of mediæval type, the flat marble-sheeted fronts pierced with trefoil-headed lights; one of them splendid with painted arabesques dipping at its base into the very waters of the canal and mounting up to enwreathe in intricate patterns the very chimney of the roof. The left is filled by a palace of the early Renascence, but the change of architectural style, though it has modified the tone and extent of colour, is far from dismissing it altogether. The flat pilasters which support the round arches of its base are sheeted with a delicately-tinged marble; the flower-work of their capitals and the mask enclosed within it are gilded like the continuous billet moulding which runs round in the hollow of each arch, while the spandrils are filled in with richer and darker marbles, each broken with a central medallion of gold. The use of gold indeed seems a "note" of the colouring of the early Renascence; a broad band of gold wreathes the two rolls beneath and above the cornice, and lozenges of gold light up the bases of the light pillars in the colonnade above. In another picture of Carpaccio, the 'Dismissal of the Ambassadors,' one sees the same principles of colouring extended to the treatment of interiors. The effect is obtained partly by the contrast of the lighter marbles with those of deeper colour or with porphyry, partly by the contrast of both with gold. Everywhere, whether in the earlier buildings of mediæval art or in the later efforts of the Renascence, Venice seemed to clothe itself in robes of Oriental splendour, and to pour over Western art before its fall the wealth and gorgeousness of the East.