Tre: Pieta (E.).
Frari: Triptych; Madonna and Saints, 1488.
S. Giovanni Crisostomo: S. Chrysostom with SS. Jerome and
Augustine, 1513.
S. Maria dell' Orto: Madonna (E.).
S. Zaccaria: Madonna and Saints, 1505.
Vicenza. S. Corona: Baptism, 1510.

CHAPTER XIII

CIMA DA CONEGLIANO AND OTHER FOLLOWERS OF BELLINI

The rising tide of feeling, the growing sense of the joy of life and the
apprehension of pure beauty, which was strengthening in the people and
leading up to the great period of Venetian art, flooded round Bellini
and recognised its expression in him. He was more popular and had a
larger following among the artists of his day than either Gentile or
Carpaccio with their frankly mundane talent. Whatever Giovanni's State
works may have been, his religious paintings are the ones which are
copied and adapted and studied by the younger band of artists, and this
because of their beauty and notwithstanding their conventional subjects.
Gentile's pageant-pictures have still something cold and colourless,
with a touch of the archaic, while Giovanni's religious altarpieces
evince a new freedom of handling, a modern conception of beautiful
women, a use of that colour which was soon to reign triumphant. As
far as it went indeed, its triumph was already assured; as Giovanni
advanced towards old age, it was no longer of any use for the young
masters of the day to paint in any way save the one he had made popular,
and one artist after another who had begun in the school of Alvise
Vivarini ended as the disciple of Giovanni Bellini.

It was the habit of Bellini to trust much to his assistants, and as
everything that went out of his workshop was signed by his name, even if
it only represented the use of one of his designs, or a few words of
advice, and was "passed" by the master, it is no wonder that European
collections were flooded with works, among which only lately the names
of Catena, Previtali, Pennacchi, Marco Belli, Bissolo, Basaiti,
Rondinelli, and others begin to be disentangled.

Only one of his followers stands out as a strong and original master,
not quite of the first class, but developing his own individuality while
he draws in much of what both Alvise and Bellini had to give. Cima da
Conegliano, whose real name was Giovanni Battista, always signs himself
_Coneglianensis_: the title of Cima, "the Rock," by which he is now so
widely known, having fi