Poldi-Pezzoli: S. Francis in Adoration.
Rome. Vatican: Pieta.

CHAPTER VIII

GENTILE BELLINI AND ANTONELLO DA MESSINA

What, then, is the position which art has achieved in Venice a decade
after the middle of the fourteenth century, and how does she compare
with the Florentine School? The Florentines, Fra Angelico, Andrea del
Castagno, and Pesellino were lately dead. Antonio Pollaiuolo was in his
prime, Fra Lippo was fifty-four, Paolo Uccello was sixty-three. But
though the progress in the north had been slower, art both in Padua and
Venice was now in vigorous progress. Bartolommeo Vivarini was still
painting and gathering round him a numerous band of followers; Mantegna
was thirty, had just completed the frescoes in the Eremitani Chapel and
the famous altarpiece in S. Zeno; and Gentile and Giovanni Bellini were
two and four years his seniors.

Francesco Negro, writing in the early years of the sixteenth century,
speaks of Gentile as the elder son of Jacopo Bellini. Giovanni is
thought to have been an illegitimate son, as Jacopo's widow only
mentions Gentile and another son, Niccolo, in her will. There is every
reason to believe that, as was natural, the two brothers were the pupils
and assistants of their father. A "Madonna" in the Mond Collection, the
earliest known of Gentile's works, shows him imitating his father's
style; but when his sister, Niccolosia, married Mantegna in 1453, it is
not surprising to find him following Mantegna's methods for a time, and
a fresco of St. Mark in the Scuola di San Marco, an important commission
which he received in 1466, is taken direct from Mantegna's fresco at
Padua.

As the Bellini matured, they abandoned the Squarcionesque tradition and
evolved a style of their own; Gentile as much as his even more famous
brother. Gentile is the first chronicler of the men and manners of his
time. In 1460 he settled in Venice, and was appointed to paint the organ
doors in St. Mark's. These large saints, especially the St. Mark, still
recall the Paduan period. They have festoons of grapes and apples hung
from the architectural ornaments, and the cast of drapery, showing the
form beneath, reminds us of Mantegna's figures. But Gentile soon becomes
an illustrator and portrait painter. Much of his work was done in the
Scuola of St. Mark, where his father had painted, and this was destroyed
by fire in 1485. Early, too, is the fine austere portrait of Lorenzo
Giustiniani, in the Academ