Giovanni Bellini's long life covers the end of one period and the beginning of another in the history of Italian art. In point of technique this is so: his earliest works are in tempera, his later ones in oil--the use of which medium he learnt perhaps from Antonello da Messina. It is so also in motive. "The iridescence of dying statesmanship in Italy, her magnificence of hollow piety, were represented in the arts of Venice and Florence by two mighty men on either side--Titian and Tintoret, Michael Angelo and Raphael. Of the calm and brave statesmanship, the modest and faithful religion, which had been her strength, I am content to name one chief representative artist at Venice, John Bellini." The years of change were 1480-1520 (roughly speaking those of Raphael's life). "John Bellini precedes the change, meets and resists it victoriously till his death. Nothing of flaw or failure is ever to be discerned in him" (_Relation between Michael Angelo and Tintoret_, pp. 11-13). His position is thus unique: he was the meeting-point of two ways: as great in artistic power as the masters who came after, as pure in religious aim as those who went before. An interesting episode is recorded which marks the transition and Bellini's meeting of it. Isabella Gonzaga, the Duchess of Mantua, wrote in 1501 to her agent in Venice to get Bellini to do for her a picture of which the subject was to be profane, to suit Mantegna's allegories. Bellini suggests that he cannot do such a subject in a way to compare with Mantegna; with such a subject "he cannot do anything to look well." Isabella thereupon is content to put up with a religious subject, but Bellini on his side agrees to add "a distant landscape and other fantasies" (_qualche luntani et altra fantaxia_). Bellini, however, was by no means stagnant in his art, or in his outlook. At the end of his life, he undertook, as we have seen, a Bacchanal, and in his middle period he painted the beautiful little allegories now in the Academy at Venice. "Bellini," says Morelli, "was ever making progress. He knew how to adapt himself to his subject, and was, as occasion required, grand and serious, graceful and attractive, naïve and simple." It is in Venice that Bellini can be best studied; but our National Gallery is fortunate in having more of his works than can be seen in any other collection north of the Alps. And how varied are his powers! The same hand has given us subjects of intense religious conviction, like "The Agony in the Garden" (726) and "The Blood of the Redeemer" (1233); "sunny pictures of devotional sentiment" (280 and 599); the noble portrait here before us; and delicate landscape work, like the "Peter Martyr" (812).