nts of the agony
of bereavement. In the other, the dead Redeemer is supported by angels,
who express the amazement and grief of immortal beings who see their
Lord suffering an indignity from which they are immune.

Mary and St. John _inside_ the sarcophagus shows that they are conceived
mystically; Mary as the Church, and St. John as the personification of
Christian Philosophy--a significance frequently attached to these
figures. Such a picture was designed to hang over the altar, at which
the mystical sacrifice of the Mass was perpetually offered.

In his treatment of the Brera example Bellini has shaken off the Paduan
tradition, and is forming his own style and giving free play to his own
feeling. The winding roads and evening sky, barred with clouds, are the
accessories he used in the "Agony in the Garden," but the figures are
treated much more boldly; the drapery falls in broad masses, and
scarcely a trace is left of sculpturesque treatment. Careful as is the
study of the nude, everything is subordinated to the emotion expressed
by the three figures: the helpless, indifferent calm of the dead, the
tender solicitude of the Mother, the wandering, dazed look of the
despairing friend. Here there is nothing of beautiful or pathetic
symbol; the group is intense with the common sorrow of all the world.
Mary presses the corpse to her as if to impart her own life, and gazes
with anguished yearning on the beloved face. Bellini seems to have
passed to a more complex age in his analysis of suffering, yet here is
none of the extravagance which the primitive masters share with the
Caracci: his restraint is as admirable as his intensity.

In the Rimini version the tender concern and questioning surprise of the
attendant angels contrast with the inert weight of the beautiful dead
body they support. Their childish limbs and butterfly wings make a
sinuous pattern against the lacquered black of the ground-work, and Mr.
Roger Fry makes the interesting suggestion that the effect, reminiscent
of Greek vase-painting, and the likeness of the Head of Christ to an old
bronze, may, in a composition painted for Sigismondo Malatesta, be no
mere accident, but a concession to the patron's enthusiasm for classic
art.

In 1470 Bellini received his first commission in the Scuola di San
Marco. Gentile had been employed there since 1466 on the history of the
Israelites in the desert. Bellini agreed to paint "The Deluge and the
Ark of Noah" with al