More elaborate backgrounds were
introduced from the growing resources of technique. In the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries, pictures of the portrait style were
comparatively rare. Raphael, however, was not above adopting this
method, as every lover of the Granduca Madonna will remember. His
friend Bartolommeo also selected this style of composition for some of
the loveliest of his works.

[Illustration: JACOPO BELLINI.--MADONNA AND CHILD.]

The story of the friendship between these two men is full of interest.
At the time of Raphael's first appearance in Florence (1504),
Bartolommeo had been four years a monk, and had laid aside, apparently
forever, the brush he had previously wielded with such promise. The
young stranger sought the Frate in his cell at San Marco, and soon
found the way to his heart. Stimulated by this new friendship,
Bartolommeo roused himself from lethargy and resumed the practice of
art with increasing success. It is pleasant to trace the influence
which the two artists exerted upon each other. The older man had
experience and learning; the younger had enthusiasm and genius. Now it
happened that, by nature, Bartolommeo was specially gifted in the
arrangement of large compositions, with many figures and stately
architectural backgrounds. It is by these that he is chiefly known
to-day. So it is the more interesting that, when Raphael's sweet
simplicity first touched him, he turned aside, for the time, from
these elaborate plans and gave himself to the portrayal of the Madonna
in that simplest possible way, the half-length portrait picture.
Several of these he painted upon the walls of his own convent,
glorifying that dim place of prayer and fasting with visions of
radiant and happy motherhood. One of these may still be seen in the
cell sometimes called the Capella Giovanato. It instantly recalls the
Tempi Madonna of Raphael, both in the pose of the figure and in the
genuineness of feeling exhibited. Damp and decay have warred in vain
against it, and the modern visitor lingers before the Mother and Babe
with hushed admiration.

Two other similar frescoes have been removed to the Academy. They show
the same motherly tenderness, the same innocent and beautiful
babyhood. The mother holds her child close in her arms, pressing her
forehead to his, or bending her cheek to receive his kiss. He throws
his little arm about her neck, clinging to her veil or caressing her
face.

Besides this group of pictu