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 Dürer'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, which 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