Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 2.djvu/179

Rh And in that other:—

And was not this same Bellino enumerated among the best painters of his age by the renowned Ariosto, in the commencement of the thirty-third canto of the Orlando Furioso?nota But to return to the works of Giovanni, to his principal works, that is to say, for it would detain us too long were I to make mention of the pictures and portraits which are in the houses of gentlemen in Venice, and other parts of the Venetian dominions. In Bimini he painted, for the Signor Sigismondo Malatesti, a large picture representing the Dead Christ supported by two children, which is now in the church of San Francesco in that city; he also painted among other portraits, that of Bartolommeo da Livianonota Captain-general of the Venetians.

Giovanni Bellini had many disciples, seeing that he instructed them all with great kindness. Among these, now sixty years since, was Jacopo da Montagna,nota who imitated the manner of his master very closely, as the works executed by him in Padua and Venice hear testimony. But the disciple by whom Giovanni was most closely copied, and who did him the greatest honour, was Bondinello of Kavenna, of whose aid he availed himself much in all his works. This artist painted a picture in the church of San Domenico, at Bavenna, with another in the Duomo, which are considered very fine, in that manner; hut the best work performed by Bondinello was that which he executed in the church of St. John the Baptist in the same city. The church belongs to the Carmelite Friars; and in the painting, besides a figure