Tryphonius; Agony in the Garden; Christ in the House of
the Pharisee; History of St. Jerome.
S. Vitale: Altarpiece to S. Vitale.
Lady Layard. Death of the Virgin; St. Ursula taking leave
of her Father.
Vienna. Christ adored by Angels.

CHAPTER XI

GIOVANNI BELLINI

The difference between Gian. Bellini and his accomplished brother, that
which makes us so conscious that the first was the greater of the two
and which sets him in a later artistic generation than Gentile, is a
difference of mind. Such pageant-pictures as we hear that Giovanni
was engaged upon have all been destroyed. We may suspect that their
composition was not particularly congenial to him, and that the strictly
religious pictures and the small allegorical studies, by which we must
judge him, were more after his heart. It is his poetic and ideal feeling
which adds so strongly to his claim to be a great artist; it was this
which drew all men to him and enabled him so powerfully to influence the
art of his day in Venice.

Jacopo's wife, Anna, in a will of 1429, leaves everything to her two
sons, Gentile and Niccolo. Giovanni was evidently not her son, but
Vasari speaks of him as the elder of the two, so that it is very
possible that he was an illegitimate child, brought up, after the
fashion that so often obtained, in the full privileges of his father's
house. Documents show that Jacopo Bellini was living in Venice in 1437,
first near the Piazza, and afterwards in the parish of San Lio. He was a
member of S. Giovanni Evangelista, and probably one of the leading
artists of the city. His two sons helped him in his great decorative
works, and also went with him to Padua, where he painted the Gattamalata
Chapel. Their relative position is suggested by a document of 1457,
which records that the father received twenty-one ducats for "three
figures, done on cloth, put in the Great Hall of the Patriarch," only
two of which were to go to the son. In 1459 Gian. Bellini's signature
first appears on a document, and at about this time we may suppose that
he and his brother began to execute small commissions on their own
account. On these visits to Padua the intimacy must have sprung up,
which led to Mantegna's marriage in 1453 with Jacopo's daughter. At
Padua, too, Bellini, in company with Mantegna, drank in the inspiration
left there by Donatello, the greatest master that either of them
en