ch
the baby is being held in the other indicates how little Giorgione
thought of verisimilitude. The colour was the thing.

After the Giorgiones the Titians, chief of which is No.633, "The
Madonna and Child with S. John and S. Anthony," sometimes called the
"Madonna of the Roses," a work which throws a pallor over all Tuscan
pictures; No.626, the golden Flora, who glows more gloriously every
moment (whom we shall see again, at the Pitti, as the Magdalen);
the Duke and Duchess of Urbino, Nos.605 and 599, the Duchess set
at a window with what looks so curiously like a deep blue Surrey
landscape through it and a village spire in the midst; and 618,
an unfinished Madonna and Child in which the Master's methods can
be followed. The Child, completed save for the final bath of light,
is a miracle of draughtsmanship.

The triptych by Andrea Mantegna (1431-1506) is of inexhaustible
interest, for here, as ever, Mantegna is full of thought and
purpose. The left panel represents the Ascension, Christ being borne
upwards by eleven cherubim in a solid cloud; the right panel--by far
the best, I think--shows the Circumcision, where the painter has set
himself various difficulties of architecture and goldsmith's work
for the pleasure of overcoming them, every detail being painted with
Dutch minuteness and yet leaving the picture big; while the middle
panel, which is concave, depicts an Adoration of the Magi that will
bear much study. The whole effect is very northern: not much less
so than our own new National Gallery Mabuse. Mantegna also has a
charming Madonna and Child, No. 1025, with pleasing pastoral and
stone-quarrying activities in the distance.

On the right of the triptych is the so-called Carpaccio (1450-1519),
a confused but glorious melee of youths and halberds, reds and yellows
and browns, very modern and splendid and totally unlike anything else
in the whole gallery. Uccello may possibly be recalled, but only for
subject. Finally there is Giovanni Bellini (1426-1516), master of
Titian and Giorgione, with his "Sacra Conversazione," No. 631, which
means I know not what but has a haunting quality. Later we shall
see a picture by Michelangelo which has been accused of blending
Christianity and paganism; but Bellini's sole purpose was to do
this. We have children from a Bacchic vase and the crowned Virgin; two
naked saints and a Venetian lady; and a centaur watching a hermit. The
foreground is a mosaic terrace; the backgrou