In the two pictures in the Correr, Bellini is still going with the Paduan current. In both we have the winding roads so characteristic of his father, but the rocks in the "Transfiguration" have the jointed, arbitrary character of Mantegna's and the draperies are plastered to the forms beneath; yet the figures here have a beauty and a dignity which no reproduction seems able to convey. The feeling is already more imposing than the execution. Christ and the two prophets tower up against the belt of clouds, the central figure conveying a sense of pathetic isolation; while below, St. John's attitude betrays a state of tension, the feet being drawn up and contorted. This picture prepares us for the overwhelming emotion we find in the "Redeemer" and the group of Pietàs. The treatment of the Christ was a development of the early _motif_ of angels flying forward on either side of the Cross, but here the sacred blood pouring into the chalice is also sacramental and connected with the intensified religious fervour which had led to the foundation of the Franciscan and Dominican orders, illustrations of which are met with in the miniatures and wood-engravings of fifteenth-century books of devotion. The accessories, the antique reliefs, the low wall, the distant buildings, have an allegorical meaning underlying each one, and common to trecento and, in a less degree, to quattrocento art. Paradise regained is signified by the paved court with the open door, in contradistinction to the Hortus Clausus, or enclosed court; the type of the old covenant. In one of the bas-reliefs Mucius Scaevola thrusts his hand into the fire, the ancient type of heroic readiness to suffer. The other represents a pagan sacrifice, foreshadowing the sacrifice upon the Cross. Figures in the background are leaving a ruined temple and making their way towards the new Christian city, fortified and crowned with a church tower, and in the midst of all this symbolism, Christ and the attendant angel are placed, vibrating with nervous feeling. During the next few years, Bellini devoted himself to two subjects of the highest devotional order. These are the Madonna and Child, the great exercise in every age for painters, and the Pietà, which he has made peculiarly his own. [Illustration: _Giovanni Bellini._ PIETÀ. _Brera, Milan._ (_Photo, Brogi._)]