We will go back again along the Rio della Sensa to the point where we entered it, turning now to the right under the Ponte Rosso into the Rio dei Trasti which soon Widens into a broad way of unbridged water leading out to the lagoon and dividing the island of the Madonna dell’ Orto from that of Sant’ Alvise. The rio into which we have now come is the third long parallel waterway we have struck in our journey through this district. It stretches on either side of us, spanned by wooden bridges, between the west lagoon and the Sacca della Misericordia. We will follow it for a short distance to the left to the little campo of Sant’ Alvise from which it takes its name. Here, in the church hangs that series of strange little canvases that Ruskin did not hesitate to attribute to Carpaccio. They are hung on a wall near the entrance door without order or precaution, signed in great sprawling childish characters Vetor Carpacio. Perhaps our pleasure at penetrating the by-ways of the city to this remote little island makes us at first uncritically appreciative of the quaint square canvases. Ruskin thought them the works of Carpaccio at eight or nine years of age, but he was confessedly writing from memory, and face to face with the reality might have reconsidered his verdict. The paintings seem too sophisticated for a young Carpaccio, too feeble for an older one. The architectural details belong in many respects to a period of the Renaissance later than that which Carpaccio knew, and though, behind their technical incompetence and absurd anachronisms, we seem to catch glimpses of the masterful imaginativeness of Carpaccio, we shall probably feel Molmenti’s verdict against their authenticity to be more substantial than Ruskin’s reminiscence which was framed in the enthusiasm of his discovery of one of the greatest of Venetian artists. One of the paintings, _The Meeting of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba_, has an interest apart from its quaint fancy. We may conjecture that the artist was drawing on a memory of some work from the east; for the wooden bridge and the figures wavering at each end of it, the winding river, the little round Renaissance building to symbolise Jerusalem, and, above all, the swans in the stream below, and the tall blue peaks in the background, remind us of nothing so much as the willow pattern plate familiar to our childhood. We will leave on one side the scenes from Christ’s Passion by Tiepolo, which by some incongruous chance also are preserved in this humble aisleless church, merely remarking that it is necessary to arrive here early; for the sacristan, whose duties extend to both the churches on the two neighbouring islands, hurries off at half-past nine for the office at the Madonna dell’ Orto, and Sant’ Alvise is shut.