It is not easy to say if Brescia or Vicenza has most claim to Bartolommeo Montagna, the early master of Cima. Born of Brescian parents, he settled early in Vicenza, and he is by far the most distinguished of those Vicentine painters who drank at the Venetian fount. He must have gone early to Venice and worked with the Vivarini, for in his altarpiece in the Brera he has the vaulted porticoes in which Bartolommeo and Alvise Vivarini delighted. His "Madonna enthroned" in the gallery at Vicenza has many points of contact with that of Alvise at Berlin. Among these are the four saints, the cupola, and the raised throne, and he is specially attracted by the groups of music-making angels; but Montagna has more moral greatness than Alvise, and his lines are stronger and more sinewy. He keeps faithful to the Alvisian feeling for calm and sweetness, but his personages have greater weight and gravity. He essays, too, a "Pietà" with saints, at Monte Berico, and shows both pathos and vehemence. He has evidently seen Bellini's rendering, and attempts, if only with partial success, to contrast in the same way the indifference of death with the contemplation and anguish of the bereaved. Hard and angular as Montagna's saints often are, they show power and austerity. His colour is brilliant and enamel-like; he does not arrive at the Venetian depth, yet his altarpieces are very grand, and once more we are struck by the greatness of even the secondary painters who drew their inspiration from Padua and Venice. Among the other Vicentines, Giovanni Speranza and Giovanni Buonconsiglio were imbued with characteristics of Mantegna. Speranza, in one of his few remaining works, almost reproduces the beautiful "Assumption" by Pizzolo, Mantegna's young fellow-student, in the Chapel of the Eremitani. He employs Buonconsiglio as an assistant, and they imitate Montagna to such an extent that it is difficult to distinguish between their works. Buonconsiglio's "Pietà" in the Vicenza gallery, is reminiscent of Montagna's at Monte Berico. The types are lean and bony, the features are almost as rugged as Dürer's, the flesh earthy and greenish. About 1497 Buonconsiglio was studying oils with Antonello da Messina; he begins to reside in Venice, and a change comes over his manner. His colours show a brilliancy and depth acquired by studying Titian; and then, again, his bright tints remind us of Lotto. His name was on the register of the Venetian Guild as late as 1530.