accompanied, that the proper attitude for even the most critical
amateur, as he looks at it, strikes one as the bended knee. There
is another noble John Bellini, one of the very few in which there
is no Virgin, at San Giovanni Crisostomo--a St. Jerome, in a red
dress, sitting aloft upon the rocks and with a landscape of
extraordinary purity behind him. The absence of the peculiarly
erect Madonna makes it an interesting surprise among the works of
the painter and gives it a somewhat less strenuous air. But it
has brilliant beauty and the St. Jerome is a delightful old
personage.

The same church contains another great picture for which the
haunter of these places must find a shrine apart in his memory;
one of the most interesting things he will have seen, if not the
most brilliant. Nothing appeals more to him than three figures of
Venetian ladies which occupy the foreground of a smallish canvas
of Sebastian del Piombo, placed above the high altar of San
Giovanni Crisostomo. Sebastian was a Venetian by birth, but few
of his productions are to be seen in his native place; few indeed
are to be seen anywhere. The picture represents the patron-saint
of the church, accompanied by other saints and by the worldly
votaries I have mentioned. These ladies stand together on the
left, holding in their hands little white caskets; two of them
are in profile, but the foremost turns her face to the spectator.
This face and figure are almost unique among the beautiful things
of Venice, and they leave the susceptible observer with the
impression of having made, or rather having missed, a strange, a
dangerous, but a most valuable, acquaintance. The lady, who is
superbly handsome, is the typical Venetian of the sixteenth
century, and she remains for the mind the perfect flower of that