there into vividness. How is it possible to forget one's visits
to the sacristy of the Frari, however frequent they may have
been, and the great work of John Bellini which forms the treasure
of that apartment?


VII

Nothing in Venice is more perfect than this, and we know of no
work of art more complete. The picture is in three compartments;
the Virgin sits in the central division with her child; two
venerable saints, standing close together, occupy each of the
others. It is impossible to imagine anything more finished or
more ripe. It is one of those things that sum up the genius of a
painter, the experience of a life, the teaching of a school. It
seems painted with molten gems, which have only been clarified by
time, and is as solemn as it is gorgeous and as simple as it is
deep. Giovanni Bellini is more or less everywhere in Venice,
and, wherever he is, almost certain to be first--first, I mean,
in his own line: paints little else than the Madonna and the
saints; he has not Carpaccio's care for human life at large, nor
the Tintoret's nor the of the Veronese. Some of his greater
pictures, however, where several figures are clustered together,
have a richness of sanctity that is almost profane. There is one
of them on the dark side of the room at the Academy that contains
Titian's "Assumption," which if we could only see it--its
position is an inconceivable scandal--would evidently be one of
the mightiest of so-called sacred pictures. So too is the Madonna
of San Zaccaria, hung in a cold, dim, dreary place, ever so much
too high, but so mild and serene, and so grandly disposed and