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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
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