Nearly all the Venetian pictures were bought in 1654 by Cardinal Leopoldo de’ Medici from Messer Paolo del Sera, a Florentine merchant in Venice.  More truly representative of the Renaissance, its humanism and splendour, than any other school of painting in Italy, the earlier works of that great Venetian School are not seen to advantage in the Uffizi.  There is nothing here by Jacopo Bellini, nothing by his son Gentile; nor any work from the hands of Antonio or Bartolommeo Vivarini, or Antonello da Messina, who apparently introduced oil painting into Venice.  It is not till we come to Giovanni Bellini, born about 1430, that we find a work of the Quattrocento in the delightful but puzzling Allegory (631), where Our Lady sits enthroned beside a lagoon in a strange and lovely landscape of rocks and trees; while beside her kneels St. Catherine of Alexandria, and again, St. Catherine of Siena; farther away stand St. Peter and St. Paul, while below children are playing with fruit and a curious tree; on the other side are Job and St. Sebastian, while in the background you may see the story of the life of St. Anthony.  This mysterious picture certainly stands alone in Giovanni Bellini’s work, and suggests the thoughts at least of Mantegna; and while it is true that Giovanni had worked at Padua, one is surprised to come upon its influence so late in his life.[125]

The influence of the Bellini is to be found in almost all the great painters of Venice in the Cinquecento.  We come upon it first in the work of Vittore Carpaccio, of which there is but a fragment here, the delicate little picture, the Finding of the True Cross (583 bis); while in two works attributed to Bissolo and Cima da Conegliano (584, 564 bis), we see too the influence of Bellini.

If Carpaccio was the greatest pupil of Gentile Bellini, in Giorgione we see the first of those marvellous painters who were taught their art by his brother Giovanni.  Giorgio Barbarelli, called Giorgione, was born at Castelfranco, a little town in the hills not far from Padua, in 1478.  Three of his rare works—­there are scarcely more than some fifteen in the world—­are here in the Uffizi, the two very early pictures—­but all his works were early, for he died in 1510—­the Trial of Moses (621), and the Judgment of Solomon (630), and the beautiful portrait of a Knight of Malta (622).  Giorgione was the dayspring of the Renaissance in Venice.  His work, as Pater foretold of it, has attained to the condition of Music.  And though in the portrait of the Knight of Malta, for instance, we have to admit much repainting, something of the original glamour still lingers, so that in looking on it even to-day we may see to how great a place the painters of Venice had been called.  It is in the work of his fellow-pupil and Titian that the great Venetian treasure of the Uffizi lies.  In the Madonna with St. Anthony (633) we have a picture in Giorgione’s early manner, and a later, but still early work, in the Flora (626).  The two