s of
that Saint, and for that of S. Spirito he painted a little altar-piece
with a S. Mark seated in the midst of certain Saints, in whose faces
are some portraits from life done in oils with the greatest diligence;
which picture many have believed to be by the hand of Giorgione. Then,
a scene having been left unfinished in the Hall of the Great Council
through the death of Giovanni Bellini, wherein Frederick Barbarossa is
kneeling at the door of the Church of S. Marco before Pope Alexander
IV, who places his foot on Barbarossa's neck, Tiziano finished it,
changing many things, and making there many portraits from life of
his friends and others; for which he was rewarded by receiving from
the Senate an office in the Fondaco de' Tedeschi, called the Senseria,
which yields three hundred crowns a year. That office those Signori
are accustomed to give to the most excellent painter of their city, on
the condition that he shall be obliged from time to time to paint the
portrait of their Prince or Doge, at his election, for the price of
only eight crowns, which the Prince himself pays to him; which
portrait is afterwards kept, in memory of him, in a public place in
the Palace of S. Marco.

[Illustration: MADONNA WITH SAINTS AND DONOR

(_After the panel by =Tiziano da Cadore=. Ancona: S. Domenico_)

_Anderson_]

In the year 1514 Duke Alfonso of Ferrara had caused a little chamber
to be decorated, and had commissioned Dosso, the painter of Ferrara,
to execute in certain compartments stories of Aeneas, Mars, and Venus,
and in a grotto Vulcan with two smiths at the forge; and he desired
that there should also be there pictures by the hand of Gian Bellini.
Bellini painted on another wall a vat of red wine with some Bacchanals
around it, and Satyrs, musicians, and other men and women, all drunk
with wine, and near them a nude and very beautiful Silenus, riding on
his ass, with figures about him that have the hands full of fruits and
grapes; which work was in truth executed and coloured with great
diligence, insomuch that it is one of the most beautiful pictures that
Gian Bellini ever painted, although in the manner of the draperies
there is a certain sharpness after the German manner (nothing, indeed,
of any account), because he imitated a picture by the Fleming Albrecht
Duerer, which had been brought in those days to Venice and placed in
the Church of S. Bartolommeo, a rare work and full of most beautiful
figures painted in oi