20

BARTOLOMEO MONTAGNA

Bartholomew altar-piece can be safely assigned to
1485.” 1 To me the execution of the Bergamo panel
betrays a far less skilled hand than that of the San
Bartolomeo 'paid ; and I am glad to find that Signor
Lionello Venturi’s view is the same.2 As to the trust-
worthiness of the date on the reverse of the Bergamo
panel, the handwriting of the inscription in point is
doubtless that of the time of the picture. But it is
certainly rather hard to think that the artist, five
years before creating that still in many respects defective
work could have been honoured with a commission
by the Scuola Grande di San Marco, as he indeed
must have been, if we are to take the inscription at
its word. If the fresco from Magre really dates from
1481, it seems very natural to suppose that the
closely allied Bergamo panel belongs to much the
same time ; and it might be suggested in explana-
tion of the inscription that it really refers only
to the purchase of the picture, which perhaps
was one of those which Montagna certainly kept in
stock.
So far there reigns a regrettable uncertainty as to
the chronology of Montagna’s early career ; but it is
perhaps not vain to hope that some day the archives
will yield us some information about the dates of the
paintings which belong to the aforesaid group and
once adorned Vicentine churches.
This much is certain, that the high-altar-piece of
San Bartolomeo must have been painted after both
Giovanni Bellini’s burned pdld in SS. Giovanni e
Paolo at Venice and that master’s other pdld once in
San Giobbe in the same town (now in the Venetian
Academy), as several motives of Montagna’s work are
borrowed from the aforesaid celebrated pictures by
1 Berenson, Lorenzo Lotto (ed. 1905), P- 49> n- 3-
2 L. Venturi, op. cit. p. 255.