great favorite. Of what other
painter do these angels remind you?"

"Of Fra Bartolommeo," quickly replied two or three voices.

"And I am sure," continued Mr. Sumner, "that Fra Bartolommeo never
painted them until after he had visited Venice, and had learned from the
study of these Venetian masters how great an aid to composition and
what beautiful features in a picture they are. And Raphael never painted
them until he had seen Fra Bartolommeo's work.

"But now look at Bellini's _Madonna_" as he turned again to the picture,
"for she is as individual as Botticelli's, and is as easily
recognizable. Note her stately pride of beauty, produced chiefly by the
way in which her neck rises from her shoulders, and in which her head is
poised upon it. Everything else, however, is in perfect keeping--from
the general attitude and lifted hand to the half-drooping eyelids. Of
what is she so proud? She is holding her Child that the world may
worship Him. Of herself she has no thought. Botticelli's Madonna is
brooding over the sorrows of herself and Son: Bellini's is lost in the
noble pride that He has come to save man. The color of the picture is
wondrously beautiful.

"Please note in your little books this artist's _Madonnas_ in San
Zaccaria and Church of the Frari, and go to see them to-morrow morning
if you can; they are his masterpieces. I will not talk any more now. If
you wish to stay here longer, it will be well to go back and look at the
very earliest pictures again, or others that you will find by Carpaccio
and the Bellini brothers."

Not long after, they got together one evening to talk about Titian and
Giorgione. They had seen, of course, their pictures in the Florentine
galleries, and Titian's _Sacred and Profane Love_ in the Borghese
Gallery, Rome; and were familiar with the rich color and superb Venetian
figures and faces.

"What a pity that Giorgione died so young!" exclaimed Margery.

"Yes," replied her uncle. "He would doubtless have given to the world
many pictures fully equal to Titian's. Indeed, to me, he seems to have
been gifted with even a superior quality of refinement. We may see it in
the contrast between his _Venus_ in the Dresden Gallery, whose
photograph you know, and Titian's two _Venuses_ in the Uffizi, which you
studied so carefully when in Florence. But there are very few examples
of Giorgione's paintings in existence, and critics are still quarrelling
over almost all that are attributed to him