or Antonello
da Messina, who apparently introduced oil painting into Venice. It is
not till we come to Giovanni Bellini, born about 1430, that we find a
work of the Quattrocento in the delightful but puzzling Allegory (631),
where Our Lady sits enthroned beside a lagoon in a strange and lovely
landscape of rocks and trees; while beside her kneels St. Catherine of
Alexandria, and again, St. Catherine of Siena; farther away stand St.
Peter and St. Paul, while below children are playing with fruit and a
curious tree; on the other side are Job and St. Sebastian, while in the
background you may see the story of the life of St. Anthony. This
mysterious picture certainly stands alone in Giovanni Bellini's work,
and suggests the thoughts at least of Mantegna; and while it is true
that Giovanni had worked at Padua, one is surprised to come upon its
influence so late in his life.[125]

The influence of the Bellini is to be found in almost all the great
painters of Venice in the Cinquecento. We come upon it first in the work
of Vittore Carpaccio, of which there is but a fragment here, the
delicate little picture, the Finding of the True Cross (583 _bis_);
while in two works attributed to Bissolo and Cima da Conegliano (584,
564 _bis_), we see too the influence of Bellini.

If Carpaccio was the greatest pupil of Gentile Bellini, in Giorgione we
see the first of those marvellous painters who were taught their art by
his brother Giovanni. Giorgio Barbarelli, called Giorgione, was born at
Castelfranco, a little town in the hills not far from Padua, in 1478.
Three of his rare works--there are scarcely more than some fifteen in
the world--are here in the Uffizi, the two very early pictures--but all
his works were early, for he died in 1510--the Trial of Moses (621), and
the Judgment of Solomon (630), and the beautiful portrait of a Knight of
Malta (622). Giorgione was the dayspring of the Renaissance in Venice.
His work, as Pater foretold of it, has attained to the condition of
Music. And though in the portrait of the Knight of Malta, for instance,
we have to admit much repainting, something of the original glamour
still lingers, so that in looking on it even to-day we may see to how
great a place the painters of Venice had been called. It is in the work
of his fellow-pupil and Titian that the great Venetian treasure of the
Uffizi lies. In the Madonna with St. Anthony (633) we have a picture in
Giorgione's early manner, and a later, b