As this progress of style was more greatly promoted by Gian Bellini than by any other master, with him I shall commence my account, afterwards proceeding to treat of his contemporaries, and such of his scholars as more or less resembled him. Nor, I flatter myself, will it be unpleasing to the reader, to find mention of the imitation of Giorgione and of Titian, as it were anticipated, inasmuch as it happens with the professors of the art of painting, as occasionally with those writers who have flourished on the confines of two ages; that their style to a certain degree seems to partake of the colour of both. Thus Giovanni Bellini himself will afford us, in his numerous productions, which commence before 1464, and continue down to the year 1516, a sort of regular gradation of his progress, that may be considered, at the same time, the progress of his school. Even in his earliest pictures, we trace the ambition of the artist to ennoble and to enlarge the national manner. The noble house of their Excellencies Corner, which at the time of the Queen of Cyprus, gave frequent commissions to his hand, possesses several specimens of his first style, proceeding gradually to others appearing always to grow more beautiful. Among these last is a San Francesco drawn amidst a thick wood; a piece that might well excite the envy of the best landscape masters themselves. Having reached the period of 1488, in which he produced an altarpiece still preserved in the sacristy of the Conventuali, we find he extorts the praises of Vasari, no less as a good mannerist than a fine designer. With still greater success he executed other works from the examples afforded by Giorgione. It was then he conceived his subjects more boldly, gave rotundity to his forms, and warmth to his colours; he passed more naturally from contrasted tints, his naked figures became more select, his drapery more imposing; and if he had succeeded in acquiring a more perfect degree of softness and delicacy in his contours, he might have been held up as one of the most finished examples of the modern style. Neither Pietro Perugino, Ghirlandajo, nor Mantegna attained to it in an equal degree. The lover of art will find various specimens of him, both in Venice and elsewhere. His altarpiece, painted for San Zaccaria, in 1505, is well worthy his attention, as well as that of S. Giobbe, of the date of 1510. To these we may add a Bacchanal, in the villa Aldobrandini, at Rome, dated 1514, which, on account of the artist's advanced age, was left imperfect. I have seen other pictures by his hand, without date, but of striking merit; more especially a Virgin in the cathedral of Bergamo; a Baptism of our Lord at Santa Corona, of Vicenza, a Holy Child slumbering on the lap of the Virgin, between two angels, a production that lies treasured up in a chest at the Capuchins, in Venice, and which truly fascinates the eye of the beholder. It displays a striking union of that