here, besides several works by
Bartolommeo and his assistants, is a little Madonna in a side chapel,
which may be compared with the Redentore picture. The Mother sits inside
a room, with the Child lying across her knees in the same pose. The two
arched openings in the background of the 1480 altarpiece have become
windows, through which we look out on a charming landscape of lake and
mountain. In the same church a "Resurrection" is not to be overlooked.
It was executed in 1498, and some of the grace and beauty of the
sixteenth century has crept into it. Against the pink flush of dawn
stands the swaying figure of the risen Christ, and below appear the
heads of the two guards, looking up, surprised and joyful. It is perhaps
the very earliest example of that soft and sensuous feeling, that
rhapsody of sensation which was presently to sweep like a flood over the
art of Venice. "What a time must the dawn of the sixteenth century have
been when a man of seventy, and not the most vigorous and advanced of
his age, had the freshness and youthful courage to greet it; nay,
actually to depict its magic and glamour as Alvise does in the
'Resurrection'! Giorgione is here anticipated in the roundness and
softness of the figures, and in the effect of light. Titian's Assunta is
foreshadowed in the fervour of the guards' expressions." Alvise, if he
never thoroughly mastered the structure of the nude, and if his forms
keep throughout some touch of the archaic, some awkwardness in the
thickness of the figures, with their round heads, long thighs, and
uncertain proportions, is yet extraordinarily refined and tender in
sentiment, his line has a natural flow and beauty, and the heads of his
Madonnas and saints cannot be surpassed in loveliness.

His death came when the noble altarpiece to St. Ambrogio in the Frari
was still unfinished, and it was completed by his assistant, Marco
Basaiti. The execution is heavy and probably of Basaiti, but the
venerable doctor is a grand figure, and the two young soldier saints on
his right and left hand are striking examples of the beauty we claim
for him. The architectural plan is very elaborate, but altogether
successful. The group is set beneath an arched vault supported by
columns and cornices. Overhead, behind a balustrade, is placed a
coronation of the Virgin. The many figures are grouped so as not to
interfere with each other, and the sword of St. George, the crozier of
St. Gregory, and the crook of St