s that Titian was lodged at Venice with his uncle,
an "honourable citizen," who, seeing his great inclination for painting,
placed him under Giovanni Bellini, in whose style he soon became a
proficient. Dolce, apparently better instructed, gives, in his _Dialogo
della Pittura_, Zuccato, best known as a mosaic worker, as his first
master; next makes him pass into the studio of Gentile Bellini, and
thence into that of the _caposcuola_ Giovanni Bellini; to take, however,
the last and by far the most important step of his early career when he
becomes the pupil and partner, or assistant, of Giorgione. Morelli[5]
would prefer to leave Giovanni Bellini altogether out of Titian's
artistic descent. However this may be, certain traces of Gentile's
influence may be observed in the art of the Cadorine painter, especially
in the earlier portraiture, but indeed in the methods of technical
execution generally. On the other hand, no extant work of his beginnings
suggests the view that he was one of the inner circle of Gian Bellino's
pupils--one of the _discipuli_, as some of these were fond of describing
themselves. No young artist painting in Venice in the last years of the
fifteenth century could, however, entirely withdraw himself from the
influence of the veteran master, whether he actually belonged to his
following or not. Gian Bellino exercised upon the contemporary art of
Venice and the _Veneto_ an influence not less strong of its kind than
that which radiated from Leonardo over Milan and the adjacent regions
during his Milanese period. The latter not only stamped his art on the
works of his own special school, but fascinated in the long run the
painters of the specifically Milanese group which sprang from Foppa and
Borgognone--such men as Ambrogio de' Predis, Bernardino de' Conti, and,
indeed, the somewhat later Bernardino Luini himself. To the fashion for
the Bellinesque conceptions of a certain class, even Alvise Vivarini,
the vigorous head of the opposite school in its latest Quattrocento
development, bowed when he painted the Madonnas of the Redentore and S.
Giovanni in Bragora at Venice, and that similar one now in the Vienna
Gallery. Lorenzo Lotto, whose artistic connection with Alvise Mr.
Bernard Berenson was the first to trace, is to a marked extent under the
paramount influence of Giovanni Bellini in such works as the altar-piece
of S. Cristina near Treviso, the _Madonna and Child with Saints_ in the
Ellesmere collection