es. Bartolommeo had never been very successful
in his dealing with oil-painting, though he had dabbled in it for some
years before Antonello da Messina came his way, but the perception with
which the Bellini at once grasped the new technique gave them the
victory. We have only to compare the formless contours of much of
Bartolommeo Vivarini's work, the bladder-like flesh-painting of the
Holy Child, with the clear luminous colour and firm delicate touch of
Gentile, to see that the one man is leagues ahead of the other.

Alvise Vivarini had more natural affinity with his father than with his
uncle. He never becomes so exaggerated in his forms as Bartolommeo. The
expression of his faces is much deeper and more inward, and he has
something of the devotional sweetness of early art. His first known
work is an ancona of 1475 at Montefiorentino, in a lonely Franciscan
monastery on the spurs of the Apennines. In the centre of the five
panels the Madonna sits with her hands pressed palm to palm, in
adoration of the Child asleep across her knees. The painter here follows
the tradition of his father and uncle, especially in the Bologna
altarpiece, in which they collaborated in 1450. Four saints stand on
either side, framed in Gothic panels; it is all in the old way, and
it is only by degrees that we see there is more sweetness in the
expression, better modelling in the figures, and a slenderer, more
graceful outline than the earlier anconae can show. Only five years after
this ancona at Montefiorentino, with its stiff rows of isolated saints,
we have the altarpiece in the Academy "of 1480," which was painted for a
church in Treviso, and here a great change is immediately apparent. The
antiquated division into panels has disappeared, nothing is left of the
artificial, Squarcionesque decorations, the attitudes are simple, and
the scene is a united one. The Madonna's outstretched hand, the
suggestion of "Ecce Agnus Dei," makes an appeal which draws the
attention of all the saints to one point, and it is made plain that the
one idea pervades the entire assembly. The curtain, which symbolises the
sanctuary, still hangs behind the throne, but the gold background is
abandoned. Alvise has not indeed, as yet, imagined any landscape or
constructed an interior, but he lightens the effect by two arched
windows which let in the sky. The forms are characteristic of his
idea of drawing the human figure; they have the long thighs with the
knees lo