GIOVANNIE BELLINI (1430-31-1516) ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI Panel, 54 inches by 49 inches ST. FRANCIS is standing neat his hut, arms outspread, head thrown back, and gazing upward with raised eyes and open mouth. "Precipitous rocks of horizontal cleavage close the view to the right, and in a nook of them the saint has contrives himself a place of rest and prayer. A vine clambers up the slender poles of an open pergola, and beneath is his chair, with a back of plaited with an intense and delighted minuteness, a combination of the austere with the dainty, both in invention and handling of which only that age held the secret. The rabbit peering from the rocks, the storks, the kingfisher, with every spray and trailer of vegetation, and the foliage of the single tree against the sky, all come out almost microscopically under study, with the general strong sense of mingled sternness and romance which breaths from the whole scene." Sir Sidney Colvin. The picture is first mentioned by the "Anonimo Veneziano," a 16th Century writer, who saw it in the house of Messer Taddeo Contarini in 1525, and said, "The oil picture, or panel, representing St. Francis in the Desert, is by Giovanni Michiel, and has in foreground a wonderfully elaborate and highly finished landscape." In 1853 the painting was the subject of discussion before the Royal Commission on the National Gallery, and the authorities were censured for not acquiring for the Bristish nation this "work of singular importance." It was exhibited at Manchester in 1857, at the Royal Academy in 1912, and has been the subject of appreciative study and discussion by some of the great art critics of the days. 101 HS