The condition of the picture is perfect too.

The flight into Egypt, in two phases, goes on in the background.

I reproduce it opposite page 266.
And then we move to the room devoted to Giovanni Bellini, performing as we do so an act of sacrilege, for one cannot pass through the pretty blue and gold door without interrupting an Annunciation, the angel having been placed on one side of it and the Virgin on the other.
[Illustration: S.GEORGE FROM THE PAINTING BY MANTEGNA _In the Accademia_] Giovanni Bellini was born in 1426, nearly a century after Giotto died.
His father and teacher was Jacopo Bellini, who had a school of painting in Padua and was the rival in that city of Squarcione, a scientific instructor who depended largely on casts from the antique to point his lessons.

Squarcione's most famous pupil was Andrea Mantegna, who subsequently married Giovanni Bellini's sister and alienated his master.
According to Vasari, oil-painting reached Venice through Antonello da Messina, who had learned the art in the Netherlands.

But that cannot be true.