atest Painter in all Venice, Gian, the
Master."

Then, if you showed curiosity and wanted to know further, the
gondolier would have told you more about this strange man.

The canals of Venice are the highways, and the gondoliers are like
'bus-drivers in Piccadilly--they know everybody and are in close touch
with all the Secrets of State. When you get to the Gindecca and tie up
for lunch, over a bottle of Chianti, your gondolier will tell you
this:

The hunchback there in the gondola, rowed by the Master, is the Devil,
who has taken that form just to be with and guard the greatest artist
the world has ever seen. Yes, Signor, that clean-faced man with his
frank, wide-open, brown eyes is in league with the Evil One. He is the
man who took young Tiziano from Cadore into his shop, right out of a
glass-factory, and made him a great artist, getting him commissions
and introducing him everywhere! And how about the divine Giorgione who
called him father? Oho!

And who is Giorgione? The son of some unknown peasant woman. And if
Bellini wanted to adopt him, treat him as his son indeed, kissing him
on the cheek when he came back just from a day's visit to Mestre,
whose business was it! Oho!

Beside that, his name isn't Giorgione--it is Giorgio Barbarelli. And
didn't this Giorgio Barbarelli, and Tiziano from Cadore, and Espero
Carbonne, and that Gustavo from Nuremberg, and the others paint most
of Gian's pictures? Surely they did. The old man simply washes in the
backgrounds and the boys do the work. About all old Gian does is to
sign the picture, sell it and pocket the proceeds. Carpaccio helps
him, too--Carpaccio who painted the loveliest little angel sitting
cross-legged playing the biggest mandolin you ever saw in your life.

That is genius, you know, the ability to get some one else to do the
work, and then capture the ducats and the honors for yourself. Of
course, Gian knows how to lure the boys on--something has to be done in
order to hold them. Gian buys a picture from them now and then; his
studio is full of their work--better than he can do. Oh, he knows a
good thing when he sees it. These pictures will be valuable some day,
and he gets them at his own price. It was Antonello of Messina who
introduced oil-painting into Venice. Before that they mixed their
paints with water, milk or wine. But when Antonello came along with
his dark, lustrous pictures, he set all artistic Venice astir. Gian
Bellini discovered the sec