flowing hair. In
this composition he triumphs over all difficulties of perspective; our
eye follows the canals, and the boats pass away under the bridge in
atmospheric light. All the joy of Venice is in that play of light on
broad brick surfaces, light which is cast up from the water and dances
and shimmers on the marble facades.

Gentile made his will in 1502, as well as others in 1505 and 1506. He
left word that he was to be buried in SS. Giovanni e Paolo, and begged
his brother Giovanni to finish the work in the Scuola, in return for
which he is to receive their father's sketch-book. The unfinished piece
is the "St. Mark preaching at Alexandria," and it shows Gentile still
developing his capacity as a painter. It is pale in colour but brilliant
in sunlight. The mass of white given by the head-dresses of the Turkish
women is cleverly subdued so as not to detract from the effect of the
sunlight. The thronged effect of the great square is studied with more
than his usual care, and the faces have all the old individuality. The
foremost figures in the crowd have a colour and richness which we may
attribute to Giovanni's hand.

Gentile was always fully employed, and the detailed paintings of
functions became very popular; but he was a far less modern painter
than his brother, and, in fact, they represent two distinct artistic
generations, though Gentile's work was so much the most elaborate and,
as the quattrocento would have thought, the most ambitious.

Gentile is essentially the historic painter, yet his is a grave, sincere
art, and he has an unerring instinct for the right incidents to include.
He cuts out all unseemly trivialities, his actors are stern, powerful
men, the treatment is historic and contemporary, but not gossipy. We
realise the look of the Venice of his day, in all its tide of human
nature, but we also feel that he never forgot that he was chronicling
the doings of a city of strong men, and that he must paint them, even in
their hours of relaxation and emotion, so as to convey the real dignity
and power which underlay all the events of the Republic.

We gather from his will and that of his wife that they had no children,
which perhaps makes the more natural the affectionate terms upon which
he remained all through his life with his brother. Their artistic
sympathies must have differed widely. Gentile's love for historical
research, for costume and for pageants, found no echo in the deeper
idealism o