ctures for the illustrations. At first, you
know, the books they printed in Venice had no title-pages, initials or
illustrations. My father was a printer and he remembers when the first
large initials were printed--before that the spaces were left blank and
the books were sent out to the monasteries to be completed by hand.

Gian and Gentile had a good deal to do about cutting the first blocks
for initials--they got the idea, I think, from Nuremberg. And now there
are Dutchmen down here from Amsterdam learning how to print books and
paint pictures. Several of them are in Gian's studio, I hear--every
once in a while I get them for a trip to the Lido or to Murano.

Gentile Bellini is his brother and looks very much like him. The Grand
Turk at Constantinople came here once and saw Gian Bellini at work in
the Great Hall. He had never seen a good picture before and was
amazed. He wanted the Senate to sell Gian to him, thinking he was a
slave. They humored the Pagan by hiring Gentile Bellini to go instead,
loaning him out for two years, so to speak.

Gentile went, and the Sultan, who never allowed any one to stand
before him, all having to grovel in the dirt, treated Gentile as an
equal. Gentile even taught the old rogue to draw a little, and they
say the painter had a key to every room in the palace, and was treated
like a prince.

Well, they got along all right, until one day Gentile drew the picture
of the head of John the Baptist on a charger.

"A man's head doesn't look like that when it is cut off," said the
Grand Turk contemptuously. Gentile had forgotten that the Turk was on
familiar ground.

"Perhaps the Light of the Sun knows more about painting than I do!"
said Gentile, as he kept right on at his work.

"I may not know much about painting, but I'm no fool in some other
things I might name," was the reply.

The Sultan clapped his hands three times: two slaves appeared from
opposite doors. One was a little ahead of the other, and as this one
approached, the Sultan with a single swing of the snickersnee snipped
off his head. This teaches us that obedience to our superiors is its
own reward. But the lesson was wholly lost on Gentile Bellini, for he
did not even remain to examine the severed head for art's sake. The
thought that it might be his turn next was supreme, and he leaped
through a window, taking the sash with him. Making his way to the
docks he found a sailing vessel loading with fruit, bound for Veni