Round this early school gathered such painters as Antonio da Negroponte and Quirizio da Murano, who were both working in 1450. Negroponte has left an enthroned Madonna in S. Francesco della Vigna, which is one of the most beautiful examples of colour and of the fanciful charm of the Renaissance that the early art of Venice has to show. The Mother and Child are placed in a marble shrine, adorned with antique reliefs, rich wreaths of fruit swag above her head, a little Gothic loggia is full of flowers and fruit, and birds are perched on cornucopias. On either side, four badly drawn little angels, with ugly faces and awkwardly foreshortened forms, foreshadow the beautiful, music-making angels which became such a feature of North Italian art. The Divine Mother, adoring the Child lying across her knees, has an exquisite, pensive face, conceived with all the delicacy and simplicity of early art. It seems quite possible, as Professor Leonello Venturi suggests, that we have here the early master of Crivelli, in whom we find the love of fruit garlands, of chains of beads and rich brocades carried to its farthest limits, who takes keen pleasure in introducing the ugly but lively little angels, and who gives the same pensive and almost mincing expression to his Madonnas. PRINCIPAL WORKS _Antonio da Murano and Bartolommeo Vivarini._ Bologna. Altarpiece. _Bartolommeo Vivarini._ Venice. Academy: Altarpiece, 1464; Two Saints. Frari: Madonna and four Saints. S. Giovanni in Bragora: Madonna and two Saints. S. Maria Formosa: Triptych. London. Madonna and Saints. Vienna. S. Ambrose and Saints. _Antonio da Negroponte._ Venice. S. Francesco della Vigna: Altarpiece. CHAPTER VI JACOPO BELLINI While Venice was assimilating the spirit of the school of Squarcione, which in the next few years was to be rendered famous by Mantegna, another influence was asserting itself, which was sufficient to counteract the hard formalism of Paduan methods.