Art: Master of Venice

Fifteenth Century Venice stood out of the Adriatic in a blaze of gold, ultramarine and many-colored marble. There Giovanni Bellini grew up, amidst a half-Oriental riot of clear colors. Scores of carved and painted ships furled their emblazoned sails at the city's steps. Indoors, Byzantine mosaics shattered the streaming white light into stabs of dandelion yellow, blood, emerald, and midnight blue. Paintings glistened with the burnished metals and translucent glazes evolved by Pisanello and Gentile da Fabriano.

The boy Giovanni breathed in all this brightness and richness like the air, and almost as naturally began painting pictures of his own. Now, in...