d
drawing. A somewhat fanciful theory has been started, that as Venice,
Holland, and England have been distinguished for colour in art, and as
all those States are by the sea, so a sea atmosphere has something to do
with a passion for colour. Within more reasonable bounds, in reference
to the Venetians, is the consideration that no colouring is richer,
mellower, more exquisitely tinted than that which belongs to the blue
Italian sky over the blue Adriatic, with those merged shades of violet,
green, and amber, and that magical soft haze which has to do with a
moist climate.

The two brothers Gentile and Gian or John Bellini, the latter the more
famous of the two, were the sons of an old Venetian painter, with regard
to whom the worthy speech is preserved, that he said it was like the
Tuscans for son to beat father, and he hoped, in God's name, that
Giovanni or Gian would outstrip him, and Gentile, the elder, outstrip
both. The brothers worked together and were true and affectionate
brothers, encouraging and appreciating each other.

Gentile was sent by the Doge at the request of the Sultan--either
Mahommed II, or Bajazet II., to Constantinople, where Gentile Bellini
painted the portrait of the Sultan and the Sultana his mother, now in
the British Museum. The painter also painted the head of John the
Baptist in a charger as an offering--only too suitable--from him to the
Grand Turk. The legend goes on to tell that in the course of the
presentation of the gift, an incident occurred which induced Gentile
Bellini to quit the Ottoman Court with all haste. The Sultan had
criticized the appearance of the neck in John the Baptist's severed
head, and when Gentile ventured to defend his work, the Sultan proceeded
to prove the correctness of his criticism, by drawing his scimitar and
cutting off at a stroke the head of a kneeling slave, and pointing to
the spouting blood and the shrinking muscle, gave the horrified painter
a lesson in practical anatomy. On Gentile's return from the East, he was
pensioned by his State, and lived on painting, till he was eighty years
of age, dying in 1501.

Gian Bellini is said to have obtained by a piece of deceit, which is not
in keeping with his manly and honourable character, the secret,
naturally coveted by a Venetian, of mixing colours with resin and oil. A
Venetian painter had brought the secret from Flanders, and communicated
it to a friend, who, in turn, communicated it to a third painter