The essay traces the critical and historiographical reasons that have led studies on Bellini's youth towards an apparent dead end and the preponderance of a highly debatable position regarding his early activity. Recent discoveries and observations, which are briefly touched on, have however indicated the possibility of exploring new hypotheses and again reconsidering the early days of the greatest Venetian master of the 15th century. The second part of the article, instead, presents itself as a precise analytical review of a recent book by Daniel Wallace Maze dedicated to Bellini's early life, a work based on a distorted interpretation of some already widely known archival data, but above all on a grave misunderstanding of the artist's stylistic and qualitative traits.