It came to Venice from Verona or Padua long after Florence could boast many fine masters, the delay being due to the circumstance that the Venetians thought more of architecture than the sister art.

The first painters to make any success in Venice were the Vivarini of Murano.

The next were Giovanni Bellini and Gentile his brother, who arrived from Padua about 1460, the one to paint altar-pieces in the Tuscan manner (for there is little doubt that the sweet simplicity and gentle radiance of the Giotto frescoes in the chapel of the Madonna dell'Arena, which the Paduans had the privilege of seeing for two or three generations before Squarcione was born, had greater influence than either Jacopo Bellini or Mantegna); and the other to paint church pageants, such as we saw in an earlier room.
Giovanni remained in Venice till his death, in 1516, at the ripe age of ninety, and nearly to the end was he both a busy painter and an interested and impressionable investigator of art, open to the influence of his own pupil Giorgione, and, when eighty, being the only painter in Venice to recognize the genius of Duerer, who was then on a visit to the city.

Duerer, writing home, says that Bellini had implored him for a work and wanted to pay for it.

"Every one gives him such a good character that I feel an affection for him.