ems
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 mediaeval 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
"Pelerinage de l'Ame" in the Uffizi and the little series in the
Academy. The meaning of the first has been unravelled by Dr. Ludwig from
a mediaeval 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._)]

This may be an allusion to sacramental comfort. St. Peter and St. Paul
guard the door, beside which the Madonna and a saint sit in holy
conversation. A very beautiful figure on the left, wrapped in a black
shawl, requires explanation, and it has been suggested that it is the
donor, a woman who may have lost husband and children, and who, still in
life, is introduced, watching the happiness of the souls in Paradise.
SS. Giobbe and Sebastian, who might have stepped out of the San Giobbe
altarpiece, are obviously the patron saints of the family, and St.
Catherine, at the Virgin's side, may be the donor's own saint. T