n of the younger
man. Christ and the Baptist, traditional figures, are drawn without much
zest, in a weak, conventional way, but the artist's true interest comes
out in the beauty of face and gesture of the group of women holding the
garments, and above all in the sombre gloom of the distance, which
replaces Cima's charming landscape, and which keys the whole picture to
the significance of a portent. In the enthronement of the old hermit, S.
Chrysostom himself, painted in 1513, Bellini keeps his love for the
golden dome, but he lets us look through its arch, at rolling mountain
solitudes, with mists rising between their folds. The geranium robe of
the saint, an exquisite, vivid bit of colouring, is caught by the golden
sunset rays, the fine ascetic head stands out against the evening sky,
and in the faces of the two saints who stand on either side of the aged
visionary Bellini has gone back to all his old intensity of religious
feeling, a feeling which he seemed for a time to have exchanged for a
more pagan tone.

In 1507, at Gentile's death, Giovanni undertook, at his brother's
dying request, to finish the "Preaching of St. Mark," receiving as a
recompense that coveted sketch-book of his father's, from which he had
adopted so many suggestions, and which, though he was the eldest, had
been inherited by the legitimate son.

In the preceding year Albert Duerer had visited Venice for the second
time, and Bellini had received him with great cordiality. Duerer writes,
"Bellini is very old, but is still the best painter in Venice"; and
adds, "The things I admired on my last visit, I now do not value at
all." Implying that he was able now to see how superior Bellini was to
the hitherto more highly esteemed Vivarini.

At the very end of Bellini's life, in 1514, the Duke of Ferrara paid
him eighty-five ducats for a painting of "Bacchanals," now at Alnwick
Castle; which may be looked upon as an open confession by one who had
always considered himself as a painter of distinctively religious works,
that such a gay scene of feasting afforded opportunities which he could
not resist, for beauty of attitude and colour; but the gods, sitting at
their banquet in a sunny glade, are almost fully draped, and there is
little of the _abandon_ which was affected by later painters. The
picture was left unfinished, and was later given to Titian to complete.
In his capacity as State Painter to the Republic, it was Bellini's duty
to execute the