delights even more in fanciful and mythological than in
sacred subjects. A tournament with spectators, a Faun riding a lion, a
"Triumph of Bacchus" with panthers, are among such essays. The fauns
pipe, the wine-god bears a vase of fruit. His love of animals is equal
to that of Pisanello, and S. Hubert and the stag with the crucifix
between its horns is directly reminiscent of the Veronese. His horses,
of which there are immense numbers, sometimes look as if copied from
ancient bas-reliefs. His treatment of single nude figures is often
poor and weak enough, and his rocks have the flat-topped, geological
formation of the Paduan School, but no one who so drank in every
description of lively scene about him could have been in any danger of
becoming a mere archeological type, and it was from this pitfall that he
rescued Mantegna. To judge by his drawings, Jacopo did not overlook any
source of art open to him; he delights in the rich research of the
Paduans as much as in the varieties of wild nature and all the incidents
of contemporary life first annexed by Pisanello. He is often very like
Gentile da Fabriano, he makes raids into Uccello's domains of
perspective, he is frankly mundane and draws a revel of satyrs and
centaurs with a real interpretation of the lyrical and pagan spirit of
the Greeks, and he has an idealism of the soul, which found its full
expression in his son, Giovanni. We cannot call Jacopo Bellini the
founder of the Venetian School, for its makings existed already, but it
was his influence on his sons which, above all, was accountable for the
development of early excellence. His long, flowing lines have a sweep
and a fanciful grace which form an absolute antidote to the definite,
geometrical Paduan convention. In Jacopo we see the thorough
assimilation of those foreign elements which were in sympathy with
the Venetian atmosphere, and while up to now Venice had only imbibed
influences, she was soon to create for herself an artistic _milieu_ and
to become the leader of the movement of painting in the north of Italy.

PRINCIPAL WORKS

_Jacopo Bellini._

Brescia. Annunciation and Predelle.
Verona. Christ on Cross.
Venice. Academy: Madonna.
Museo Correr: Crucifixion.
London. British Museum: Sketch-book.
Paris. Madonna and Leonello d' Este: Sketch-book.

CHAPTER VII

CARLO CRIVELLI

We must turn aside from the main stream when we come to speak of Carlo
Crivelli, who, impor