If, on the one hand, we have very few records concerning Bartolomeo Vivarini (²), on the other hand, it is not difficult to follow his career through the many signed and dated works he has left to us. As a matter of fact the earliest of these gives us the date of his birth. It is a picture of the Madonna in halflength figure, evidently standing in adoration behind the sleeping Child, which at one time was in the collection of Sir Hugh Lane, London, and on which we read the curious inscription: “Ba(r)tolomei Vi(v)arini De Murano anon VI et X natus sua manu pinxit MCCCCXLVIII” (³); consequently the year of his birth was 1432.

Vincenzo Catena (¹) is a somewhat indefinite artistic personality because, though we have quite a number of signed works from his hand and the appearance of his productions at a certain given moment offers us no difficulty, we have been unable to ascertain the date of his birth; nor do we possess any authentic dated works, with the exception of the altar-piece in the church of Sta. Maria Mater Domini in Venice, which at one time is supposed to have shown the date 1520. Of the few documents we have concerning him, the earliest is a will which he drafted in 1515; he drew up two others in 1518, one in 1530 and again one in 1531. He died in September 1531 and was buried in the church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo. His name appears as witness in 1522 and 1528; on the latter occasion it was at the wedding of the sister of Sebastiano del Piombo. It is now certain that Vincenzo Catena should not be identified, as was previously thought, with Vincenzo dalle Destre of Treviso (²). The father of Catena was called Biagio.

In Venice, as in many centres where the art of painting reached a high standard, there was a group of craftsmen who satisfied the requirements of the more modest classes of society and frequently also those of the inhabitants of the small towns in the Veneto.

With Carlo Crivelli we approach quite a different group of painters from that school which culminated in the art of Giovanni Bellini and his immediate followers. Among the artists I intend to include in this volume there are several who reveal more or less strongly the influence of Giambellino, but on the whole the chief source of inspiration is a different one and as Carlo Crivelli is the most important exponent of this tendency we shall start this volume with him.

The long controversy regarding the origin of Vittore Carpaccio, whom some Istrians imagine to be from their country while at the same time Venetians claimed him as a compatriot, seems to have ended in a victory for the latter. This conclusion has been reached chiefly through the careful documentary research of Ludwig and Molmenti who, in one of the first chapters of their monumental tome on this artist, expound the arguments in favour of this theory. In spite of all this, however, there remains a vague doubt. A document, supposed to be of the 17th century but known to me only from a short article in a newspaper (¹), would apparently establish without any doubt that Capodistria was his native town. The text speaks of a “strage di Erode” in “our cathedral” (doubtless that of Capodistria where there actually is a picture of this subject by Carpaccio) “di mano del Carpatio depentor Justinopolitano”. The anonymous author of this text further tells us of a picture in this town of the martyrdom of St. Dionysius in the church dedicated to this saint and adds that it was by Carpaccio to whom “Heaven gave birth in this same town”. He had seen this in a document of the Vice-domini of this city of 1516 where Carpaccio figured as witness and where he was described as “depentor da Cape d’Istria”. We find a certain confirmation of this statement in the fact that we have an extant picture of 1516 painted by Carpaccio for Capodistria. However, I have since been informed by Professor Majer, librarian of Capodistria, that we cannot put much faith in these documents.