As he paints the rich light of a golden interior and the fused and splendid colours, he seems to pass out of his own time and gives a foretaste of the glory that is to follow. The Murano altarpiece is quite a different conception; instead of the seclusion of the sanctuary, it is a smiling, _plein air_ scene: the Mother benign, the Child soft and playful, the old Doge Barbarigo and the patron saints kneeling among bright birds, and a garden and mediæval townlet filling up the background, for which, by the way, he uses the same sketch as in the Pesaro picture. It says much for his versatility that he could within a short time produce three such different versions. Among Bellini's most fascinating achievements in the last years of the fifteenth century are his allegorical paintings, known to us by the "Pélerinage de l'Âme" in the Uffizi and the little series in the Academy. The meaning of the first has been unravelled by Dr. Ludwig from a mediæval poem by Guillaume de Guilleville, a Cistercian monk who wrote about 1335, and it is interesting to see the hold it has taken on Bellini's mystic spirit. The paved space, set within the marble rail, signifies, as in the "Salvator Mundi," the Paradise where souls await the Resurrection. The new-born souls cluster round the Tree of Life and shake its boughs. The poem says: There is no pilgrim who is not sometimes sad Who has not those who wound his heart, And to whom it is not often necessary To play and be solaced And be soothed like a child With something comforting. Know that those playing There in order to allay their sorrow Have found beneath that tree An apple that great comfort gives To those that play with it.[2] [2] This translation is by Miss Cameron Taylor. [Illustration: _Giovanni Bellini._ AN ALLEGORY. _Florence._ (_Photo, Anderson._)]