On the right of the triptych is the so-called Carpaccio (1450-1519), a confused but glorious melee of youths and halberds, reds and yellows and browns, very modern and splendid and totally unlike anything else in the whole gallery.  Uccello may possibly be recalled, but only for subject.  Finally there is Giovanni Bellini (1426-1516), master of Titian and Giorgione, with his “Sacra Conversazione,” No. 631, which means I know not what but has a haunting quality.  Later we shall see a picture by Michelangelo which has been accused of blending Christianity and paganism; but Bellini’s sole purpose was to do this.  We have children from a Bacchic vase and the crowned Virgin; two naked saints and a Venetian lady; and a centaur watching a hermit.  The foreground is a mosaic terrace; the background is rocks and water.  It is all bizarre and very curious and memorable and quite unique.  For the rest, I should mention two charming Guardis; a rich little Canaletto; a nice scene of sheep by Jacopo Bassano; the portrait of an unknown young man by an unknown painter, No. 1157; and Tintoretto’s daring “Abraham and Isaac”.

The other Venetian room is almost wholly devoted to portraits, chief among them being a red-headed Tintoretto burning furiously, No. 613, and Titian’s sly and sinister Caterina Cornaro in her gorgeous dress, No. 648; Piombo’s “L’Uomo Ammalato”; Tintoretto’s Jacopo Sansovino, the sculptor, the grave old man holding his calipers who made that wonderful Greek Bacchus at the Bargello; Schiavone’s ripe, bearded “Ignoto,” No. 649, and, perhaps above all, the Moroni, No. 386, black against grey.  There is also Paolo Veronese’s “Holy Family with S. Catherine,” superbly masterly and golden but suggesting the Rialto rather than Nazareth.

One picture gives the next room, the Sala di Michelangelo, its name; but entering from the Venetian room we come first on the right to a very well-known Lippo Lippi, copied in every picture shop in Florence:  No. 1307, a Madonna and two Children.  Few pictures are so beset by delighted observers, but apart from the perfection of it as an early painting, leaving nothing to later dexterity, its appeal to me is weak.  The Madonna (whose head-dress, as so often in Lippo Lippi, foreshadows Botticelli) and the landscape equally delight; the children almost repel, and the decorative furniture in the corner quite repels.  The picture is interesting also for its colour, which is unlike anything else in the gallery, the green of the Madonna’s dress being especially lovely and distinguished, and vulgarizing the Ghirlandaio—­No. 1297—­which hangs next.  This picture is far too hot throughout, and would indeed be almost displeasing but for the irradiation of the Virgin’s face.  The other Ghirlandaio—­No. 1295—­in this room is far finer and sweeter; but at the Accademia and the Badia we are to see him at his best in this class of work.  None the less, No. 1295 is a charming thing, and the little Mother and her happy Child, whose big toe is being so reverently adored by the ancient mage, are very near real simple life.  This artist, we shall see, always paints healthy, honest babies.  The seaport in the distance is charming too.