ng and
natural objects, they become most excellent. And it also happens very
often that when one man has begun, many set themselves to work in
competition with him, and labour to such purpose, without seeing Rome,
Florence, or any other place full of notable pictures, but merely
through rivalry one with another, that marvellous works are seen to
issue from their hands. All this may be seen to have happened more
particularly in Friuli, where, in our own day, in consequence of such a
beginning, there has been a vast number of excellent painters--a thing
which had not occurred in those parts for many centuries.

While Giovanni Bellini was working in Venice and teaching his art to
many, as has been related, he had two disciples who were rivals one with
another--Pellegrino da Udine, who, as will be told, was afterwards
called Da San Daniele, and Giovanni Martini of Udine. Let us begin,
then, by speaking of Giovanni. He always imitated the manner of Bellini,
which was somewhat crude, hard, and dry; nor was he ever able to give it
sweetness or softness, although he was a diligent and finished painter.
This may have happened because he was always making trial of certain
reflections, half-lights, and shadows, with which, cutting the relief in
the middle, he contrived to define light and shade very abruptly, in
such a way that the colouring of all his works was always crude and
unpleasant, although he strove laboriously with his art to imitate
Nature. By the hand of this master are numerous works in many places in
Friuli, particularly in the city of Udine, in the Duomo of which there
is a panel-picture executed in oils, of S. Mark seated with many figures
round him, which is held to be the best of all that he ever painted.
There is another on the altar of S. Ursula in the Church of the Friars
of S. Pietro Martire, wherein the first-mentioned Saint is standing with
some of her virgins round her, all painted with much grace and beautiful
expressions of countenance. This Giovanni, besides being a passing good
painter, was endowed by Nature with beauty and grace of features and an
excellent character, and, what is most desirable, with such foresight
and power of management, that, after his death, in default of heirs
male, he left an inheritance of much property to his wife. And she,
being, so I have heard, a lady as shrewd as she was beautiful, knew so
well how to manage her life after the death of her husband, that she
married two v