Before entering Room II. the eye will be arrested by Titian’s famous Assumption, No. 40. A nearer view of this grandiose painting will serve to impress the beholder with the animation and force of the master’s new style and the subtle artifice by which he attracts the eye of the spectator to the ascending Virgin, to whom the whole composition yearns. This great altar-piece created a vast sensation when exposed at the Frari, pregnant as it was with the future development of the grand school of Venetian painting:--its masterly group of a large and complicated subject, its breadth of treatment and habit of massing the warmer and mellower colours of the palette on the canvas. It must be remembered, however, that the features of the Virgin and the picture generally have been coarsened by restoration, for, unhappily, most of the old paintings which have come down to us have been restored more than once, more than twice, more than thrice, and the traveller will need to make allowances for the consequent debasement of the original creation in this and many other works by the old masters. In this room of masterpieces we are enabled, by the juxtaposition of three altar-pieces (38, by Giov. Bellini; 36, by Cima; 37, by Veronese) to compare the treatment of the same subject, the Virgin and Child and Saints, by three great masters. 41, The Death of Abel, by Tintoretto, is an admired work, powerful but sombre. It is considered by Ruskin to be one of the most wonderful works in the gallery and superior in many respects to 42, The Miracle of St Mark, the most popular of the master’s paintings (p. 209). A Christian slave is tortured and ordered to be executed for his devotion to St Mark, who descends from heaven like lightning to rescue him. The executioner exhibits the broken hammer. A work of amazing science and originality which so perplexed the members of the guild[97] for whom it was executed and gave rise to so many discussions, that the impatient artist fetched it away and kept it in his atelier until it was better appreciated. 43, Adam and Eve, is an early work by the master. 44, Carpaccio, Presentation in the Temple, is, in Ruskin’s estimation, the best picture in the Accademia. The painter wrought the work in emulation of his master’s altar-piece (No. 38). All the Bellini features are here--the mosaic half dome, the Renaissance decoration, the sweet boy musicians with instruments almost too big for them to handle. The two paintings adorned the same church.