The article aims at a rereading of certain pages of 20th-century historiography on Lazzaro Bastiani, linking them to a new interpretation of the artist's history and particularly the early years of his activity. The starting point is a review of critical opinions and shifting attributions, from Bastiani, to Andrea Mantegna, Giovanni Bellini, and especially to Bartolomeo Vivarini, from Cavalcaselle onwards. Following an in-depth analysis of a painting once heavily debated by critics – the socalled 'Madonna del Baldacchino', formerly attributed to Bellini by Detlev von Hadeln although later assigned to Lazzaro – the essay traces the slow emergence in the 20th century of Bastiani's identity from the complex realm of Vivarini-influenced painting. Within the framework of studies by Adolfo Venturi, Evelyn Sandberg Vavalà, Licia Collobi Ragghianti, and Raimond van Marle, several new attributions thus emerge. These include an initial assignment to a young Alvise Vivarini of a work universally attributed to Lazzaro Bastiani, and an attribution to Bastiani himself of paintings generally considered throughout the 20th century to be by Bartolomeo Vivarini or his close circle. Prominent among these is a 'Madonna with Child' in a private Austrian collection, which fills a significant gap in our understanding of Bastiani's early career: that of the late 1450s and the painter's Mantegnesque phase.