ANIMAL LIFE IN ITALIAN PAINTING 



defends itself against a snake. There may be some 

 religious symbolism in this episode/ but the scene must 

 always have been a familiar one in Italy. Virgil long 

 before had noticed it — 



" But when the golden spring reveals the year, 

 And the white bird returns whom serpents fear, 

 That season deem the best to plant thy vines." ^ 



The stork comes over in the spring after its wintering 

 in Africa. A Syrian goat with pendulous ears gives 

 local colour.^ The earlier Venetians made a point of 

 this, anticipating in some degree the method of Tissot 

 and Holman Hunt. One of the Bellini — Gentile, 

 Giovanni's brother — had been on an embassy to Con- 

 stantinople and had painted the portrait of the Sultan. 

 No doubt his sketch-books were eagerly taken advan- 

 tage of on his return in 1481. An eagle is seen 

 perching on a tree to the left. 

 Giorgione, Giorgio of Castelfranco, familiarly called Giorgione, 



to whom the name of Barbarelli has been given by an 



^ " As the bird is the clothed power of the air, so this is the clothed 

 power of the dust ; as the bird is the symbol of the spirit of life, so this of 

 the grasp and sting of death." — Ruskin, Queen of the Air, § 68. 



^ Georgics, bk. ii., Dryden's translation. 



' Syrian goats with long ears are specially mentioned as being in the 

 zoological garden of the Cardinal of Aquileja at Albano in 1463. — The 

 Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy, Jacob Burckhardt. Trans. S. G. C. 

 Middlemore, 1890, p. 295. 



c. 1477-1510 



