Bellin was a designer and worker in plaster. He is called in the English accounts both “carver” and “moulder,” as well as “paynter.” His name appears in the French royal accounts between 1517 and 1533, and M. Dimier infers from lack of any later reference to his name, that he died shortly after the latter date; but he had, in reality, moved over to England. He took a considerable share in the decoration of Fontainebleau, where he worked under Primaticcio, and perhaps under Rosso, upon the ornamental borders and decorations in plaster and stucco with which the various wall-paintings were surrounded. “All visitors to Fontainebleau,” says M. Dimier,[625] “carry away a recollection of the extraordinary mixture of painting and sculptured ornament displayed in the gallery. The high relief and the abundance of the stucco, which hems in the pictures on all sides and in places even overlaps their edges, make a unique and inspiring effect, in which the balance of the two arts would have been disturbed if Rosso had not scattered among the stuccos little cartouches of painting and placed grounds of gold behind them charged with paintings in varied colours.” This was the kind of work upon which Bellin was employed in France, as can be gathered from the following entry in the “Account of Nicolas Picart,” which was lot 466 in the sale of the late Sir Thomas Phillips’ collections, 1903: “A Nicolas Bellin dit Modène, painctre, la somme de cent livres tournois ... pour cinq mois entiers qu’il avoit vacqué et besongné avec Francisque de Primadicis dit de Boullongne, aussi painctre, es ouvraiges de stucq et paincture encommancez à faire pour le roy nostre dit seigneur, en sa chambre de la grosse tour de son chasteau au dit Fontainebleau, à 20 livres par mois.”[626] [Sidenote: NICOLAS BELLIN OF MODENA]