renzo of Pavia writes
that it is quite beautiful, and that "though Giovanni has behaved as
badly as possible, yet the bad must be taken with the good." The joy of
its acquisition appeased Isabela, who at once began to lay plans to get
a further work out of Bellini, and in 1505 Bembo wrote to her that he
would take a fresh commission always providing he might fix the subject.
From the catalogue of her Mantovan pictures we gather that the picture
"sul asse" (on panel) represented the "B.V., il Putto, S. Giovanni
Battista, S. Giovanni Evangelista, S. Girolamo, and Santa Caterina."

The great altarpieces which remain strike us less by their research,
their preoccupation with new problems of paint or grouping, than by
their intense delight in beauty. Bellini was now nearly eighty years
old, and in 1504 the young Giorgione had proclaimed a revolution in art
with his Castelfranco Madonna. In composition and detail the Madonna
of San Zaccaria is in some degree a protest against the Arcadian,
innovating fashion of approaching a religious scene, of which the Church
had long since decided on the treatment, yet Bellini cannot escape the
indirect suggestion of the new manner. The same leaven was at work in
him which was transforming the men of a younger generation. In this
altarpiece, in the Baptism at Vicenza, in others, perhaps, which have
perished, and above all in the hermit saint in S. Giovanni Crisostomo he
is linked in feeling and in treatment with the later Venetian School.

The new device, which he adopts quite naturally, of raising the line of
sight, sets the figures in increased depth. For the first time he gives
height and majesty to the young Mother by carrying the draperies down
over the steps. He realises to the full the contrast between the young,
fragile heads of his girl-saints and the dark, venerable countenances of
the old men. The head of S. Lucy, detaching itself like a flower upon
its stem, reminds us of the type which we saw in his Watcher in the
sacred allegory of the Uffizi. The arched, dome-like niche opens on a
distance bathed in golden light. Bellini keeps the traditions of the
old hieratic art, but he has grasped a new perfection of feeling and
atmosphere. Who the saints are matters little; it is the collective
enjoyment of a company of congenial people that pleases us so much. The
"Baptism" in S. Corona, at Vicenza, painted sixteen years later than
Cima's in S. Giovanni in Bragora, is in frank imitatio