ch belongs to this exact period. Even in
the _Madonna_ of the Brera Gallery (1510), which shows Gian Bellino's
finest landscape of the late time, certain hardnesses of colour in the
main group suggest the possibility of a minor co-operation by Basaiti.
Some passages of the _Bacchanal_, however--especially the figures of the
two blond, fair-breasted goddesses or nymphs who, in a break in the
trees, stand relieved against the yellow bands of a sunset sky--are as
beautiful as anything that Venetian art in its Bellinesque phase has
produced up to the date of the picture's appearance. Very suggestive of
Bellini is the way in which the hair of some of the personages is
dressed in heavy formal locks, such as can only be produced by
artificial means. These are to be found, no doubt, chiefly in his
earliest or Paduan period, when they are much more defined and rigid.
Still this coiffure--for as such it must be designated--is to be found
more or less throughout the master's career. It is very noticeable in
the _Allegories_ just mentioned.

[Illustration: _Alessandro de' Medici (so called). Hampton Court. From a
Photograph by Spooner & Co._]

Infinitely pathetic is the old master's vain attempt to infuse into the
chosen subject the measure of Dionysiac vehemence that it requires. An
atmosphere of unruffled peace, a grand serenity, unconsciously betraying
life-weariness, replaces the amorous unrest that courses like fire
through the veins of his artistic offspring, Giorgione and Titian. The
audacious gestures and movements naturally belonging to this rustic
festival, in which the gods unbend and, after the homelier fashion of
mortals, rejoice, are indicated; but they are here gone through, it
would seem, only _pour la forme_. A careful examination of the picture
substantially confirms Vasari's story that the _Feast of the Gods_ was
painted upon by Titian, or to put it otherwise, suggests in many
passages a Titianesque hand. It may well be, at the same time, that
Crowe and Cavalcaselle are right in their conjecture that what the
younger master did was rather to repair injury to the last work of the
elder and supplement it by his own than to complete a picture left
unfinished by him. The whole conception, the _charpente_, the contours
of even the landscape are attributable to Bellini. His are the
carefully-defined, naked tree-trunks to the right, with above in the
branches a pheasant, and on a twig, in the immediate foreground of th