e greater and more
universally recognised in Italy. It was here, as we may safely assume,
that he completed, or, it may be, repaired, Giovanni Bellini's last
picture, the great _Bacchanal_ or _Feast of the Gods on Earth_, now at
Alnwick Castle. It is there that he obtained the commission for two
famous works, the _Worship of Venus_ and the _Bacchanal_, designed, in
continuation of the series commenced with Bellini's _Feast of the Gods_,
to adorn a favourite apartment in Alfonso's castle of Ferrara; the
series being completed a little later on by that crown and climax of the
whole set, the _Bacchus and Ariadne_ of the National Gallery.

Bellini appears in an unfamiliar phase in this final production of his
magnificent old age, on which the signature, together with the date,
1514, so carefully noted by Vasari, is still most distinctly to be read.
Much less Giorgionesque--if the term be in this case permissible--and
more Quattrocentist in style than in the immediately preceding
altar-piece of S. Giovanni Crisostomo, he is here hardly less
interesting. All admirers of his art are familiar with the four
beautiful _Allegories_ of the Accademia delle Belle Arti at Venice,
which constitute, besides the present picture, almost his sole excursion
into the regions of pagan mythology and symbolism. These belong,
however, to a considerably earlier period of his maturity, and show a
fire which in the _Bacchanal_ has died out.[33] Vasari describes this
_Bacchanal_ as "one of the most beautiful works ever executed by Gian
Bellino," and goes on to remark that it has in the draperies "a certain
angular (or cutting) quality in accordance with the German style." He
strangely attributes this to an imitation of Duerer's _Rosenkranzfest_,
painted some eight years previously for the Church of San Bartolommeo,
adjacent to the Fondaco de' Tedeschi. This particularity, noted by the
author of the _Vite_, and, in some passages, a certain hardness and
opacity of colour, give rise to the surmise that, even in the parts of
the picture which belong to Bellini, the co-operation of Basaiti may be
traced. It was he who most probably painted the background and the
figure of St. Jerome in the master's altar-piece finished in the
preceding year for S. Giovanni Crisostomo; it was he, too, who to a
great extent executed, though he cannot have wholly devised, the
Bellinesque _Madonna in Glory with Eight Saints_ in the Church of San
Pietro Martire at Murano, whi