ave an allegorical meaning underlying each one, and
common to trecento and, in a less degree, to quattrocento art. Paradise
regained is signified by the paved court with the open door, in
contradistinction to the Hortus Clausus, or enclosed court; the type of
the old covenant. In one of the bas-reliefs Mucius Scaevola thrusts his
hand into the fire, the ancient type of heroic readiness to suffer. The
other represents a pagan sacrifice, foreshadowing the sacrifice upon the
Cross. Figures in the background are leaving a ruined temple and making
their way towards the new Christian city, fortified and crowned with a
church tower, and in the midst of all this symbolism, Christ and the
attendant angel are placed, vibrating with nervous feeling.

During the next few years, Bellini devoted himself to two subjects of
the highest devotional order. These are the Madonna and Child, the great
exercise in every age for painters, and the Pieta, which he has made
peculiarly his own.

[Illustration: _Giovanni Bellini._
PIETA.
_Brera, Milan._
(_Photo, Brogi._)]

Close by, at Padua, Giotto had left a rendering of the last subject, so
full of passionate sorrow that it is hardly possible that it should not,
if only half consciously, have stimulated the artistic sensibilities
of the most sensitive of painters; but Bellini's pathos shrinks from
all exaggeration. He conceives grief with the tenderest insight. His
interest in the subject was so intense that he never left the execution
to others, and though not a single one bears his signature, yet each is
entirely by his own hand. Besides the Pieta at Milan, which is perhaps
the best known, there is one in the Correr Museum, another in the Doge's
Palace, and yet others at Rimini and at Berlin. The version he adopts,
which places the Body of Christ within the sarcophagus, was a favourite
in North Italy. Donatello uses it in a bas-relief (now in the Victoria
and Albert Museum), but whether he brought or found the suggestion in
Padua nothing exists to show. Jacopo has left sketches in which the
whole group is within the tomb, and this rendering is followed by
Carpaccio, Crivelli, Marco Zoppo, and others. It is never found in
trecento art, and is probably traceable to the Paduan impulse to make
use of classic remains.

Giovanni Bellini's Pietas fall into two groups. In one, the Christ is
placed between the Virgin and St. John, who are embodime