_Marco Basaiti_ (Venetian: painted 1500-1521).
Basaiti--born in Friuli; according to some writers, of Greek
parents--was assistant to Alvise Vivarini. He was one of the
early Venetian painters in oils. His works when well preserved
are (says Sir F. Burton) brilliant in colour, and display
great ability in the general management of the accessories,
especially in the landscape backgrounds, which, according to
Zanetti, he contrived to unite with his figures more skilfully
than his contemporaries.
The scenery, says Gilbert (_Cadore_, p. 42), is that of Serravalle
in Titian's country--Serravalle, "the true gate of the hills," with
walls and towers rising steeply on the hill-side. The way in which
the old masters thus consigned their saints and anchorites to
the hill-country is very typical of the mediæval view of
landscape. "The idea of retirement from the world for the sake of
self-mortification ... gave to all mountain solitude at once a sanctity
and a terror, in the mediæval mind, which were altogether different
from anything that it had possessed in the un-Christian periods....
Just in so much as it appeared necessary for the noblest men to retire
to the hill-recesses before their missions could be accomplished,
or their spirit perfected, in so far did the daily world seem by
comparison to be pronounced profane and dangerous; and to those who
loved that world and its work, the mountains were thus voiceful with
perpetual rebuke.... And thousands of hearts, which might otherwise
have felt that there was loveliness in the wild landscape, shrank from
it in dread, because they knew that the monk retired to it for penance,
and the hermit for contemplation" (_Modern Painters_, vol. iii. pt. iv.
ch. xiv. § 10).