Giovanni Bellini

Giovanni Bellini
Oskar Btschmann
giovanni bellini
Giovanni Bellini
Oskar Btschmann
reaktion books
For Mth
Published by Reaktion Books Ltd 33 Great Sutton Street London ec1v 0dx www.reaktionbooks.co.uk
First published 2008 Copyright Oskar Btschmann, 2008 English-language translation by Ian Pepper Reaktion Books Ltd, 2008 All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers. Printed and bound in China by Toppan Printing Co. Ltd. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Btschmann, Oskar, 1943 Giovanni Bellini 1. Bellini, Giovanni, d. 1516 Criticism and interpretation I. Title 759.5 isbn13: 978 1 86189 357 4
Contents
Preface 7
i ii iii iv v vi
Training 13 Orientations 41 Transformations 65 Invention 95 Composition 139 Harmony 183

Chronology 214 References 220 Select Bibliography 233 Photo Acknowledgements 247 Index 248
The church of S. Zaccaria in Venice with Giovanni Bellinis San Zaccaria altarpiece.
Preface
In 1364 Francesco Petrarch paid homage to the majestic city of Venice as the sole home of freedom, peace and justice; as the only refuge of righteous people; as the sole harbour for those who wish to lead decent lives, but are nonetheless pursued by storms of tyranny and warfare; as a city rich in gold, yet richer still in public regard; a city made mighty through wealth, yet made mightier through its strength; a city erected on solid marble, additionally supported by the solid foundation of public harmony; a city surrounded by salty waves, but protected by the ner salt of human intelligence.1 In 1797, after centuries of improbable splendour, the Serenissima Repubblica fell in exhaustion to Napoleons troops; during the nineteenth century the city was transformed irrevocably into a mythic destination for tourists. Today, Venice offers itself up as a narcotic blend of fascination and sadness. The somnambulist light above the lagoon, the sultry lack of visibility of a city shrouded in fog, the stagnant waters and stinking mud of the canals, the echoing steps in the nocturnal calle: all of these become amalgamated into a profound melancholy. Vast technical efforts are designed to protect the city from the destruction that is threatened by the very tourism through which it seeks to ensure its survival. Venice is a metaphor for the world at large. Just ve centuries separate us from the nal decade of life of the leading Venetian painter of the early Renaissance, Giovanni Bellini, who died as a highly regarded artist at an undetermined age in 1516. Albrecht Drer, the German painter who came to Venice from Nuremberg via Augsburg on a commission from the Fugger family, met Bellini in early 1506, and spoke later with reverence and admiration of the older master, the sole Venetian artist to welcome him, he reports, with openness and hospitality. Drer refers to Bellini as being very old, but nevertheless still the pre-eminent Venetian painter, who devoted his attentions to the young German artist. Bellini also promoted younger artists such as Giorgione, Andrea Previtali, Lorenzo Lotto, Titian and many others, whether through deeds or by offering them artistic instruction. In 1771, in a comprehensive book on the works of the Venetian painters, the historiographer Anton Maria Zanetti offered the following resigned observation on the accumulation of redundant publications:
7
Unfortunately, it is true that the incalculable number of books which today ll the world in daily growing numbers consist for the most part of repetitions of things already said, things one repeats again solely out of a compulsion to write and to see oneself in print; and in doing so, one assumes the trappings of the new and the charm of the seemingly original in a manner consistent with the boldness of the attempt to make oneself their author.2 This fatalistic observation seems astonishing, for it concerns an area of research that must have been, or so one would think, still manageable in the eighteenth century although the same state of affairs was already familiar to Nicholas of Cusa and Montaigne. Since the eighteenth century the literature has grown endlessly, much of it redundant, as has the particularization of knowledge. Today, any reliable bibliography of Giovanni Bellini would include many thousands of titles, and could easily ll an entire book. Even the most diligent scholar can hardly begin to absorb the contents of this vast quantity of material. It may be that this impossible task has perhaps fostered a certain superciality in the formulation of arguments, and a certain linguistic campanilismo that takes the form of a tendency to disregard foreign-language publications. In 1968 Giles Robertson published an intelligent monograph on Giovanni Bellini, one that is unsurpassed for its integration of biography and work.3 Appearing in 1972 were Norbert Huses expert studies, together constituting the last German monograph on Giovanni Bellini.4 Rona Goffen published her long-range investigations of Venetian art in various essays, and in 1989 published a monograph on Giovanni Bellini that concentrates on the analysis of the various genres and their relationships to contemporary devotional practices.5 In his catalogue of the works of Giovanni Bellini of 1992, Anchise Tempestini collated the various attributions and datings, but was unable to include bibliographic references.6 The numerous works of Peter Humfrey on Venetian painting and altarpieces of the Renaissance are exemplary. The Cambridge Companion to Giovanni Bellini, edited by Humfrey and published in 2004, contains a wealth of outstanding contributions.7 Still lacking is a catalogue raisonn of the works of Giovanni Bellini. In Montreal in 2004, before the completion of this manuscript, Jaynie Anderson announced the publication of her catalogue raisonn. For a fteenth- and sixteenth-century master who ran a large workshop and whose works are scattered throughout the world, the scholarly and organizational difculties facing the authors of such a catalogue are enormous. Today, one has to incorporate many areas of research, each with a long history of its own, including archival research, connoisseurship, stylistic criticism, the histories of attributions, professional itineraries and provenances, as well as the histories of the diffusion, reproduction, destruction, loss and restoration of individual works, not to mention technological analyses. The challenges facing such an enterprise can be mastered only by a relatively large team of scholars whose members are able to collaborate for a period of ten to fteen years. The contributions dealing with a
8 | Giovanni Bellini
small number of works by Bellini that Ronda Kasl edited and published in 2004 clearly demonstrate that the investigation of working methods, supplemented by connoisseurship and archival research, are capable of producing impressive results.8 I have drawn on numerous documents for this book, and on both recent and earlier research. Particularly difcult archival documents were examined in Venice at the Archivio di Stato and in the library of the Museo Correr. On the basis of new facts and their interpretation, a few novel conclusions have been presented; this is also evident in the chronology. In the foreground stand artistic problems, Bellinis self-understanding and the relationship between work and beholder. For Giovanni Bellini and his friends, competitors and clients, and for the artis studiosi (the new class of connoisseurs and art lovers that appeared in the fteenth century), such issues were of greatest importance. The rst chapter deals with Bellinis artistic training; the second with his dependence on models and his efforts to distance himself from them; the third is devoted to Bellinis transformation of inherited prototypes; the fourth discusses his own inventions and his dependency on poetic models; the fth explores the large subject of gural composition; and the sixth attempts to clarify the role of colour harmony in Bellinis work in relation to music and to the beholder. It is well known that only a few works by Bellini have been rmly dated or are reliably datable by means of documents. To the extent that this proved feasible with some degree of reliability, I have grouped the undated works into ve-year periods. Supercial assertions, for example, that the Piet in the Accademia in Venice precedes the Madonna of the Meadow in London, have been consistently avoided. My work received generous support from various institutions. The staff at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence (Max-Planck-Institute) were extraordinarily hospitable and helpful, hence my thanks to both directors, Max Seidel and Gerhard Wolf, as well as to Maja Hderli and to the research staff. The Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, the library of the Museo Correr and the Fondazione Cini in Venice, and the archive of the Louvre in Paris, all offered their generous support for this project. In the Archivio di Stato in Venice, my thanks go mainly to Maria Tiepolo and Francesca Cavazzana Romanelli for numerous references and suggestions. The Institut National dHistoire de lArt (inha) in Paris, and its former director Alain Schnapp and Jean-Marc Poinsot, director of the Department of Research and Teaching, supported my work with a guest professorship at the Bibliothque Nationale de France, the library of the inha and other institutions in Paris. Michel Laclotte showed great interest in my project. Nathalie Volle, conservateur-enchef of the Louvre, received me in her department with uncommon courtesy and offered substantial support. June Hargrove and Thomas W. Gaehtgens were always reliable and extraordinarily knowledgeable friends. To my discussions with Bernard Aikema in Venice, I owe decisive impulses. For their interest, support and assistance, my thanks to Jaynie Anderson, Reinhold Baumstark, Mikls Boskovits, Albert J. Elen, Frdric Elsig, Marc Fehlmann, Hermann Fillitz, Julia Gelshorn, Anselm Gerhard, Georg Germann,
Preface | 9
Andreas Hauser, Werner Hofmann, Marianne and Hans A. Lthy, Dieter Mertens, Stefano Prandi, Hella and Rudolf Preimesberger, Wolfgang Pross, Christoph Schublin, Wilhelm Schlink, Nicola Suthor, Anchise Tempestini, Johannes Tripps, Christoph Wagner and Tristan Weddigen. On an invitation from Andreas Beyer I delivered a lecture on one aspect of this project at Basel University, while an additional section was discussed with Bernard Aikemas doctoral candidates at the International University in Venice. The initial ideas that led up to this book emerged in London in 2000, and subsequent research activities were carried out for the most part in Berne, Florence, Venice, Paris and Berlin. In Berne I received reliable support from Patricia Bieder, Marianne Flubacher and Monika Schfer. The Istituto Svizzero di Roma made possible extended stays in Venice, for which I owe a debt of gratitude to Christoph Riedweg, the director, and to Jacqueline Wolf. The Stiftung zur Frderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung at the University of Berne supported my efforts to procure documents. My special thanks to my editor and friend Michael Leaman.
Training
Origin
The Barber Institute of Fine Arts in Birmingham contains a small panel showing St Jerome in an untamed landscape below cliffs (illus. 2). A lion, its face bearing a mournful expression, sits before the saint, holding up the paw into which a thorn has become lodged. Jerome is in no hurry to lend his aid, but instead holds his right arm up towards heaven in order to bless the lion and convert it to a Christian life in compliance with Holy Scripture, which he holds open in his left hand. Grazing in the middle distance is the donkey that would later according to the Legenda aurea, Jacopo da Voragines celebrated collection of legends of the saints become the reliable guardian of the healed lion. Behind the desert grassy hills rise up, becoming lost in the greyish distance. Along the horizon the sky is whitish and hazy, but it becomes pale blue in the heights, the blue being traversed by uffy white clouds. In the left foreground a hare or rabbit peers out from its burrow. The artists signature is visible on the small painting on a little slip of paper, or cartellino: ihovanes belinvs. The awkward spelling, the humorous element of the hare and the touching yet clumsy depiction of the lion suggest that this is the work of a young artist. The little panel in Birmingham testies to a remarkable level of independence compared with the six scenes by the artists father, Jacopo Bellini, that show St Jerome in the wilderness either reading or engaging in self-mortication. Five of these depictions are drawings, and are found distributed between two famous books of drawings located in the British Museum, London, and the Louvre, Paris, while the sixth, a panel, is owned by the Museo del Castelvecchio in Verona.1 Visible in one of the London drawings is a seated Jerome who reads the Bible while the lion rests nearby (illus. 3). The other drawing in London shows the saint kneeling while the lion sleeps beside him. In both drawings, massive, bare mountains loom up opposite the saint. In two drawings found in London and Paris, the saint, surrounded by many different animals, strikes his breast with a stone in an act of penance, while in another of the Paris drawings he sits reading in the foreground beneath steeply rising cliffs while the lion stands before him, its female companion sleeping peacefully nearby. In the middle ground, on the shores of a
2 Giovanni Bellini, St Jerome in the Desert, c. 145560, wood. Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham.
13
3 Jacopo Bellini, St Jerome in the Wilderness, 145565, leadpoint. British Museum, London. 4 Jacopo Bellini, St Jerome in the Wilderness, 143055, brown ink. Muse du Louvre, Paris.
bay, two dragons ght one another, and a bird of prey has seized one of the two hares, while the other seeks refuge in a crevice among the cliffs. A ship with a broken mast lies stranded, its crew lying dead on the beach and the cargo is scattered along the shoreline. Beyond the bay, a series of uniformly striated mountains terminates the background zone. The scene illustrates the opposition between the meditative life of the saint on the one hand, and human misfortune, the battle of the wilderness and the fate of hunted prey on the other. In contrast to this topographically and narratively varied depiction by the artists father, Giovannis little panel in Birmingham has been ascetically reduced to just a few elements. Of particular importance for an assessment of the younger artist is his attempt, which contrasts with his fathers approach, to incorporate his own observations of natural phenomena into the work: the simple sequence of hills leading into the distance; the haze above the horizon; the cirrus clouds set in a pale blue sky: none of these ingredients is present in any known painting by Jacopo. The lion seems to have been taken over directly from a drawing by the older artist. One sheet of the Paris book (illus. 5), which contains seven sketches of lions, includes a depiction of a seated lion that holds one paw into the air. Giovanni Bellini took this motif as a point of departure, adding to the lions positioning and gesture its expression of misery.
Two versions of St Jerome with the lion were produced in Venice in the late fourteenth century; these are found today in the Art Institute of Chicago and in the National Gallery in London (illus. 6). Both show St Jerome in the wilderness pictured as a cardinal seated on the throne of a Church Father, and a church set in the distance between two upwardthrusting rocky formations. A lamenting lion sits on the side in front of the saint and holds out one paw to him. The open book bears a sentence written by the Church Father: Iram vince patientia: ama scientiam scripturarum, et carnis vitia non amabis (Patience triumphs over rage: love the study of the scriptures and you will no longer love the burdens of the esh).2 The Birmingham panel, however, has the saint seated on a boulder wearing the white robes of the penitent, with a stone hanging from his belt. In place of the textual admonition, the opposition between patience and wrath, studiousness and lasciviousness is translated into the respective positioning of Jerome, the lion, the Bible and the hare (or rabbit).3 Giovanni Bellini departs from the Venetian-Byzantine tradition to which he relates the lamenting lion and the wilderness, and makes no reference to the locale that is provided by the Legenda aurea for the healing of the lion, and which Carpaccio would use for his humorous depiction of the ight of the
5 Jacopo Bellini, Seven Lions and Three Stags, 143055, silverpoint. Muse du Louvre, Paris. 6 Anon., St Jerome in a Landscape, late 14th century, wood. National Gallery, London.
Training | 15
7 Anonymous, Giovanni Bellini Dead on his Bier, 1516, coloured chalks with pen, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.
monks into the cloister in his painting in the Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni of circa 1502. But Bellini incorporates the donkey, which plays an important role in the tale of the converted lion in the Legenda aurea.4 In contrast to the Legenda aurea, however, Johannes Andreae speaks in his hymn In laudem Hieronymi Carmen of circa 1300 of the encounter between Jerome and the suffering lion in the desert, where the saint has retreated in imitation of John the Baptist and Christ.5 The little painting in Birmingham was rst attributed to Giovanni Bellini in 1871 by an British-Italian research team composed of Joseph Archer Crowe and Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle.6 On account of the signature, this attribution has been virtually universally acknowledged, and by general consensus the work has been recognized as among Bellinis earliest works.7 Uncertainty concerning the absolute dating of this work, which vacillates between 1450 and 1460, is a consequence of the artists unknown date of birth and his inadequately documented career. In 1949, primarily in order to discredit supporters of Giovannis presumed dependence on Andrea Mantegna, Roberto Longhi proposed dating the work to circa 1450, whereby he assumed an early birth date for Giovanni of between 1424 and 1429.8 Longhi, then, perceived in the Birmingham panel the work of an artist of between 21 and 26 years of age. In his monograph of 1968, Giles Robertson dated the panel of St Jerome to circa 1450, and assumed that the painters year of birth fell somewhere in the early 1430s.9 Robertson presumed that the painter of this small panel was only 18 or 19 years of age. Rona Goffen dated the Birmingham panel to circa 1450, and regarded it as testimony to the early maturity and independence of an artist whose year of birth she set between 1433 and 1435.10 In The Cambridge Companion to Giovanni Bellini of 2004, edited by Peter Humfrey, the panel in Birmingham is dated circa 1460, while Humfrey advocates a birth year falling somewhere between 1435/6 and 1437/8.11 Giovanni Bellinis year of birth is not documented, and when he died in Venice in 1516 his age was unknown. But this long-celebrated painter did not pass away unnoticed. An anonymous draughtsman captured an image of the deceased on a sheet of paper, lying on a catafalque and dressed in the habit of the Scuola Grande di San Marco (illus. 7), thereby producing a highly unusual document.12 Bellinis demise was recorded on 29 November 1516 by the Venetian chronicler Marino Sanudo, who left a blank space in his text with the intention of lling in the age of the deceased artist later on. Evidently, Sanudo was unable to procure this information, for he never completed his text. The painter and historiographer Giorgio Vasari of Arezzo, who included biographies of Jacopo Bellini and his sons Gentile and Giovanni in both the rst and second editions of his Vite, dated 1550 and 1568 respectively (illus. 8), recorded Giovanni Bellinis age at death as 90 years.
Based on this information, a birth year of 1426 was calculated for Giovanni. This supposition was defended right up to the mid-twentieth century.13 As for Giovannis brother Gentile (illus. 9), Vasari published the year of his death mistakenly as 1501 (instead of 1507), and attributed to him an age of 80 years, generating the question as to which brother had actually been born rst, all the more so since in the rst edition of 1550 Vasari had named Giovanni as the elder of the two. In 1648 the Venetian historiographer Carlo Ridol presented Gentile as the elder of the two brothers, yet without correcting the birth year that had entered into circulation through Vasari.14 The supposition of early birth dates for Gentile and Giovanni Bellini has caused considerable difculties. Bernard Berensons Venetian Painting in America, published in 1916, illustrates these problems in exemplary fashion. Berenson found himself confronted with the necessity of explaining the artists belated development, as well as the absence of works dated prior to the 1460s. He declared the cause to have been the delayed achievement of independence on the part of both painters: It would seem likely, therefore, that the delayed maturity of both brothers, as well as the exceeding scarcity of their earlier works, were in each case due to the same cause, namely that they had had no independent career till they were middle-aged men, because they remained until then in their fathers employ as his assistants.15 If early birth dates are accepted, then both brothers emerged as independent artists only in their thirties, at the mid-point of their lives, and having no
8 Giovanni Bellini, woodcut from Vasari, Le vite dei pi ecellenti pittori, scultori, et architettori (Florence, 1568). 9 Gentile Bellini, Portrait of a Man (Self-portrait), c. 1496, black pen on paper. Gemldegalerie Berlin.
Training | 17
10 Vittore Belliniano, Giovanni Bellini, 1505, black chalk. Muse Cond, Chantilly.
previous works to show for themselves. Moreover, Giovannis reported venerable age would certainly have exposed the works produced around 1500 to suspicions of senility. Vasari was the rst to claim that Bellinis advanced age had prevented him from completing the Feast of the Gods (illus. 176).16 Carolyn C. Wilson has drawn attention to the fact that a revision of Bellinis birth year is sufcient to dispense with such doubts: Most simply, the recent advancing of his birth date away from 1430 toward 1440 has perhaps freed us from the restraint of awareness of geriatric limitation and engendered instead a readier acceptance of Bellini during the early Cinquecento as a vigorous man of late middle age.17 To be sure, the 35-year-old Albrecht Drer, visiting Venice in 1506, referred to Giovanni Bellini as very old, at the same time assigning him to the rst rank: He is very old, but is still the best painter of them all.18 Vittore Bellinianos portrait drawing of Bellini of 1505 (illus. 10) does not convey the impression of a dotard, but instead of an older man very much in possession of his faculties. In the twentieth century, based on archival indications, a birth year of 1431 was proposed for Gentile.19 For Giovanni, a later date of between 1436 and 1438 is today regarded as more likely.20 Support for this position has been derived from the evidence of his career and from comparisons with the progress typical of a painters professional life. For Mauro Lucco and Peter Humfrey, such a supposition can be coordinated with reports of the initial emergence of Giovanni Bellini, and would also help to reduce the chronological difculties.21 A document of 1459 conrms Giovannis residence in the parish of San Lio in Venice, and he was named by his father Jacopo, together with his brother Gentile, in the signature of the lost Gattamelata altar in Padua of 1459 or 1460. Assuming a birth year of 1435, Giovanni would have been 24 or 25 years of age in 1459/60, which would be consistent with a typical artistic career. For Alvise Vivarini, born between 1446 and 1450, there is documentation for his professional activities from 1476.22
Jacopo Bellinis Strategy

Giovannis early independence, combined with the lack of any mention of him in the will of Anna Rinversi, Jacopo Bellinis widow, of 1471, have long since led towards the supposition that Giovanni should be regarded as Jacopos illegitimate son. Only Robertson (1968) provides plausible alternative explanations for Giovannis omission from her testament, and for his
early establishment of an independent workshop.23 By producing an illegitimate son, Jacopo would seem to have been, so to speak, perpetuating a family tradition, for he himself had an illegitimate half-brother named Giovanni.24 No will for Jacopo Bellini has survived. In the testament of 1471 his widow names her sons Gentile and Niccol as heirs, but not Giovanni or her daughter Niccolosia, who had married the painter Andrea Mantegna of Padua in 1453. The reasons for the omission of both Niccolosia and Giovanni from the will are not claried. An illegitimate origin would have interfered with Giovannis inheritance claims, and possibly with his eligibility to hold ofce as well. Giovanni twice held the ofce of degano at the Scuola Grande di San Marco, receiving in 1483 the title of painter of the city (Pictor nostri Domini), and was moreover entrusted with the most prestigious commission available in Venice, the production of works for the large hall in the Doges Palace.25 In 1459 Giovanni Bellini was residing in the parish of San Lio, while continuing to work together with his brother Gentile in their fathers workshop; he also worked with this workshop later on. It is tempting to conclude that Giovannis independence in San Lio was related to the business practices of the Bellini family enterprise and with the operations of its workshop. Beginning in the late 1420s, and in conjunction with his half-brother Giovanni, Jacopo Bellini maintained the most important painters workshop on Venetian territory apart from the atelier of the Vivarini from Murano. Jacopo Bellini lived in the Procuratie Vecchie on Piazza San Marco, and belonged to the parish of San Geminiano (illus. 11).26 The rst known document concerning Giovanni Bellini (his signature of 1459 as a witness on a will) names his residence as the parish of San Lio, located to the east of the Rialto Bridge (illus. 12). The document names only his place of residence, but he would have operated a workshop in the same location, as was customary. We are missing an important document related to Giovannis early independence, namely the notarial deed of emancipation that would have released him from his fathers custody.27 Nonetheless, the hypothesis that Giovannis early independence might have been a business and political
11 Detail (the Piazza S. Marco with the church of S. Geminiano) from Jacopo de Barbari, Birds-eye View of Venice, 1500, woodcut.
Training | 19
12 Detail (the Rialto with the church of San Lio) from Jacopo de Barbari, Birds-eye View of Venice, 1500, woodcut.
manoeuvre on the part of the Bellini would lead towards further insights into the family business.28 Giovannis early departure from his fathers residence and atelier was certainly not caused by a dispute; on the contrary, it was a function of the subdivision of the workshop, which had been run by Jacopo and his half-brother Giovanni until 1440.29 Giovannis continuing collaboration with his fathers atelier, and later with his brother Gentile, the heir to the paternal workshop, along with Gentiles will, testify to strong familial bonds. The affectionate relationship maintained by the brothers was so legendary that even Vasari received reports of it. In his Vite, Vasari wrote that after the death of his brother Gentile, whom he had always loved with great tenderness, Giovanni remained behind as his widow, so to speak, a metaphor suggestive of both sadness and isolation.30 Gentile named Giovanni as his heir, bequeathing to him their fathers book of drawings, which had remained in Venice, and entrusting him with the completion of his painting of St Mark Preaching in Alexandria (illus. 13) for the Scuola Grande di San Marco.31 As with all workshops of the time, the trade of painting was a business and a bread-winning activity for the Bellini family, one whose economic success and survival (that is, its development and capacity to meet the competition) required commensurate commercial abilities, the requisite customer satisfaction and the production of heirs. For the establishment of the workshop in San Lio around 1459, Giovanni required paternal support, that is, the paying out of his inheritance. This construction is tenable, albeit lacking conrmatory evidence in the form of an act of emancipation or through Jacopos last will and testament. Even after extensive efforts by archival researchers in the past, there is little hope that such documents will surface in the future. Nonetheless, this construction can be supplemented by the
hypothesis that because Giovanni had already received his portion of the inheritance, there was no need to mention him in his mothers will of 1471; according to this hypothesis, his sister Niccolosia remained unmentioned for the same reason: she must have received her share of the estate in 1453 as a dowry when she married Andrea Mantegna.32 The positioning of Giovanni in the parish of San Lio must have been part of a strategy developed by Jacopo Bellini. His younger son was to have taken up the family trade in close proximity to the Rialto, Venices commercial centre, and in the area of the large Dominican church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo, while the father and the elder son and future heir, Gentile, wanted to retain the workshop near San Marco, not far from the centre of political power. The strategy must have been directed at the diversication, expansion and updating of the range of offerings, as well as at checking the reach of the Vivarini from Murano, the other signicant family painting workshop, which had moved to Venice in 1450. Antonio Vivarini and his brother-in-law Giovanni dAlemagna had worked in the Ovetari chapel of the Eremitani Church in Padua in competition with the younger Andrea Mantegna and Niccol Pizzolo between 1447 and 1450. After Giovanni dAlemagnas death in 1450, Antonio Vivarini returned to Venice, where he fullled many commissions as a specialist in polyptychs, together with his younger brother Bartolomeo. In 1456 Antonio was living in the parish of Santa Maria Formosa, only slightly further away from the Rialto than San Lio. Additional documents pointing toward Antonios residence in Santa Maria Formosa are dated between 1457 and 1458. Bartolomeo seems to have become independent in 1459, which may have provided additional motivation for the Bellini to establish a second workshop in order to compete successfully with their rivals.33 As regards volume of production, the Vivarini family seems at times to have succeeded in outanking the Bellini. The Vivarini family exported their altars primarily polyptychs both to the terraferma and to Dalmatia
13 Gentile and Giovanni Bellini, St Mark Preaching in Alexandria, 150515, canvas. Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan.
Training | 21
14 Leonardo Bellini, Doge Nicol Marcello before God the Father Enthroned, miniature, in Promissione of Doge Nicol Marcello (1463). Museo Civico Correr, Venice.
and the rest of the Adriatic region.34 Certainly, Jacopo Bellini was able to place works in Brescia, Ferrara and Padua, but Antonio and Bartolomeo Vivarinis successes as exporters must have been unnerving. Later, the Vivarini would have reasons to react to the successes of the Bellini workshops. On 28 July 1488 Antonio Vivarinis son Alvise, who was born around 1446, confronted the Signoria with his desire to work on the Sala del Gran Consiglio on terms identical to those of the Bellini brothers.35 The Signoria granted his application, and on 24 May 1495 Alvise began work in the Doges Palace at the same annual salary of 60 ducats then being received by Giovanni Bellini, who was perhaps less than enchanted by the actions of his younger competitor.36 In 1453 Jacopo Bellini gave his daughter Niccolosia away in marriage to the aspiring painter Andrea Mantegna, who had recently demonstrated his extraordinary artistic abilities in the Ovetari chapel in Padua in competition with Antonio Vivarini and Giovanni dAlemagna.37 Ten years earlier, Jacopo had taken his nephew Leonardo, the son of his sister Elena, into his workshop, and in doing so made his establishment capable of manuscript illumination as well (illus. 14).38 Giovannis independence must have enabled the Bellini workshop to respond to the growing demand for private collectors pictures and portraits, while the workshop at San Gimigniano remained responsible for ofcial commissions from the scuole, and later, together with Gentile, for the Serenissima Repubblica and for narrative images and vedute.39 A connection between Giovanni Bellini in the commercial centre around the Rialto can be documented at the earliest in the year 1474 with the portrait of Jrg Fugger (illus. 15), which depicts the Venetian representative of the powerful Augsburg commercial family.40 It was not until 1926 that the portrait was attributed to Giovanni Bellini, and this has been accepted virtually unanimously ever since.41 The Venetian headquarters of this northern European commercial dynasty was the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, set immediately alongside the Rialto Bridge. It is not known how contacts were established between Jrg Fugger, who had arrived in Venice in 1474 at the age of 21, and Giovanni Bellini, but in 1474 the Signoria promised Gentile Bellini a sansaria, or benece, at the Fondaco dei Tedeschi. As a model for his portrait of Fugger, Giovanni Bellini had recourse to the Netherlandish type of threequarter view as deployed by Hans Memling in 1470 for a portrait of Tommaso Portinari, manager of the Medici bank in Bruges.42 In Venice, this type had become known by the return of Marco Barbarigo, who had himself portrayed in the style of Jan Van Eyck during his term as Venetian consul in London in 1449 (illus. 16), either in London or, more likely, in Bruges. This
15 Giovanni Bellini, Jrg Fugger, 1474, wood. Norton Simon Foundation, Pasadena.
portrait follows the portrait type developed by Jan Van Eyck, which is documented in his so-called Tymotheus in the National Gallery in London. As Bernard Aikema has emphasized, the signicance of the portrait of Marco Barbarigo lies in the fact that on the one hand it reveals a taste for Netherlandish painting on the part of a Venetian patrician who was to become doge in 1485, while on the other hand it stimulated and expanded an awareness and admiration of Netherlandish painting in Venice.43 Already in 1460 Andrea Mantegna had adapted this type for his portrait of Cardinal Lodovico Trevisan, now in the Gemldegalerie, Berlin.44 The Fugger portrait of 1474 is only one of many works, some also dated earlier, that testify to Bellinis preoccupation with Netherlandish models. It is likely that this artistic interest was reinforced by the prescriptions and tastes of clients for certain
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16 Follower of Jan Van Eyck, Marco Barbarigo, c. 1449, canvas. National Gallery, London.
pictorial types and artistic techniques. Like the large altarpiece for the church of San Francesco in Pesaro, produced around the same time, the Fugger portrait was executed with pigments bound in oil. Additional early conrmatory evidence of connections between Giovanni Bellini and the German commercial centre in Venice is unavailable. Still in the 1470s, Giovanni experienced success with two large commissions for Santi Giovanni e Paolo, the polyptych of St Vincent Ferrer (illus. 118) and the Sacra Conversatione with SS Thomas Aquinas and Catherine (illus. 119). After 1479, however, Giovannis career shifted in the direction originally intended for Gentile. In 1474 Gentile received the commission for the restoration and renewal of the paintings in the Sala del Gran Consiglio in the Doges Palace, a prestigious state commission; as compensation, he was promised the next available sansaria held by the headquarters of the German merchants.45 In 1479 an envoy of Sultan Mehmet ii, with whom Venice had just ended a lengthy war, requested the dispatch of artists to the Ottoman court in Constantinople. The Signoria decided to send Gentile Bellini to the Sultan, together with a bronze caster and a pair of assistants, and to appoint Giovanni to succeed his brother.46 Giovanni Bellini took over the work in the Doges Palace, and was appointed an ofcial painter of the Republic (Pictor nostri Domini). The Signoria guaranteed him the same form of compensation it had offered to his brother Gentile, namely the next available sansaria at the Fondaco dei Tedeschi. This connection with the German commercial centre may have been the reason why Giovanni was made aware in early 1506 of Drers presence in Venice, newly arrived from Nuremberg, and why he developed an interest in the German artists work.47
The Bellini Workshops

Like most painters well into the nineteenth century, the Bellini family operated busy workshops (illus. 17). The painter who consummates his vision or his idea at his easel in the solitude of his studio appears only in the iconography of the evangelist St Luke, according to popular tradition a painter, and in images of him derived from that motif. Prior to the nineteenth century, painting was only exceptionally a solitary activity at the start of a career, for instance. One exception to this rule was Nicolas Poussin in the seventeenth century, an artist who was simply incapable of running a workshop, as demonstrated by the facts surrounding his appointment as court painter and head of royal art production
in Paris in the years 164042. Although workshop production was the norm, we still know far too little about the actual conditions of production, the division of labour, the training of assistants and the deployment of modelli, stencils and similar accoutrements. Despite all contemporary refutations, research efforts are still regularly led astray by romantic notions of the lonely, brooding artist. To be sure, substantial research has been undertaken and published in the past two decades, steadily increasing our knowledge of workshop operations and their signicance for the activities of the Bellini family as well.48 This new awareness also necessitates a revision of one of the most perennial activities of art-historical research, namely the distinction of artistic hands and the awarding of attributions. The consequences of our knowledge of workshop production have often been screened out in order to pursue traditional questions of attribution: which painting was produced by the master of a given workshop? Which parts of a given picture are from his hand, and where can we identify the traces of assistants work? It is even possible to cite many fteenth-century contracts in support of this approach. They often prescribe which parts of a painting are to be executed by the master, and, according to Michael Baxandall, thereby document a growing esteem and appreciation for artistic technique and for an artists individual handwriting.49 There is all the more reason, then, to investigate the production methods prevalent in the workshops and their closely guarded secrets. The analyses published by Ronda Kasl in 2004 make a vital contribution to our understanding of the artistic production of Giovanni Bellinis workshop, and indicate the kind of technical costs and complexity that are necessary to investigate the use of stencils or schemata, preparatory drawings, transfer methods and painting techniques, and the use of binding materials and pigments.50 If such investigations, supported by technological analyses, could be undertaken on a broader scale, then problems of attribution could be readdressed on improved foundations. There is little to be gained from revisions of attribution that are proposed in the absence of appropriate investigations into painting and workshop techniques. In the 1460s Jacopo Bellini was occupied with numerous commissions. For their execution he turned to Gentile and Giovanni, both of whom he had trained himself, as Vasari maintains.51 The sole documentary evidence for this collaboration is a signature once found on a lost polyptych (illus. 18) for the tomb chapel of Erasmo da Narni (Gattamelata) in the Santo in Padua, which has been transmitted in a description of 1590: jacobi bellini patris ac gentilis et joannis natorum opus mccccix ) (The work of the father Jacopo
17 Anon., The Planet Mercury, c. 146064, engraving. Bibliothque Nationale de France, Paris.
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18 A reconstruction of the Gattamelata altarpiece in the Basilica di SantAntonio, Padua.
Bellini and his sons Gentile and Giovanni 1409 [sic]). The mistaken entry of the year, 1409, can be traced back to the damaged state of the ix, which must be corrected to become lix or lx, that is, either 1459 or 1460. By means of the signature, the Bellini father and his sons made a bid for subsequent contracts. Three predella scenes and one of the lost three panels from this altarpiece were identied by Mikls Boskovits in 1986.52 Colin Eisler assumes that both sons worked on the polyptych after designs provided by their father. Of the surviving parts of the altarpiece, he attributes a panel depicting SS Anthony Abbot and Bernardino of Siena to Gentile Bellini, but gives the three predella scenes to Giovanni.53 There exists neither documentary evidence nor any parallel gures or narrative scenes to support these presumptions. The same collaborative team was presumably responsible, in the rst half of the 1460s, for the four triptychs with lunettes executed for four chapels in Santa Maria della Carit, the church of the Scuola Grande of the same name. The documents name the client, but not the painter who received the commission. In 1807 the panels of these triptychs were removed from their frames and later entered the collection of the Accademia in the former Scuola Grande di Santa Maria della Carit, but were not reassembled until the mid-1950s.54 Only one of the total of twelve vertical panels narrates a scene, namely the Nativity with Mary and Joseph with the Annunciation to the Shepherds. Ten of the panels display individual gures of saints standing either on narrow oor spaces or on narrow strips of landscape. One single panel depicts the standing Virgin with the Christ Child. All of the eleven panels bearing standing saints have gold grounds the Nativity is exceptional. The picture elds of all twelve panels are recessed by means of mouldings,
19 Jacopo, Gentile and Giovanni Bellini, triptych with SS John the Baptist, Sebastian and Anthony Abbot, c. 146065, wood. Galleria dell Accademia, Venice.
and are terminated above by semicircular sculptural shell forms. The match between the lunettes and the individual triptychs is not fully secure. The triptych with SS John the Baptist, Sebastian and Anthony Abbot (illus. 19) is distinguishable from the other three by the strip of landscape that claries the relationship between the three panels, and by the illumination of the gures, which emanates from the same direction. The documents provide information about the commissions received by the Bellini workshop during the second half of the 1460s. All these works have disappeared without a trace. The inventory of the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista of 13 April 1466 lists an altarpiece for San Marco with a gold background, said to be executed by maistro Iacomo Belin pentor. The year of the works delivery is not stated. Colin Eisler erroneously assigned a date of 1421 to this entry instead of 13 April 1466, the date of the list to which it is attached.55 In 1465, moreover, Jacopo Bellini executed a cycle with
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episodes from the Life of the Virgin Mary for the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista, and in 1466 received a contract from the Scuola Grande di San Marco for paintings of the Carrying of the Cross and the Crucixion.56 In 1648 Ridol explicitly recorded the works for the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista as collaborations between Gentile and Giovanni.57 A possible collaboration between father and sons may also be assumed for the Scuola Grande di San Marco. On 15 December 1466 Gentile himself received two contracts for the same scuola, which specied two paintings with Old Testament subjects, the rst of which was to be Moses and the Israelites in the Desert and the second the Defeat of Pharaoh. Just one month later, the same scuola awarded two contracts to Bartolomeo Vivarini and Andrea da Murano.58 In a subsequent phase, in 1470, it was the turn not only of Lazzaro Bastiani, but of Giovanni Bellini as well, the latter receiving a commission from the Scuola Grande di San Marco for two pictures with Old Testament themes, a Noahs Ark and a Great Flood. Apparently, the workshops of both Gentile and Giovanni Bellini were now regarded as independent, and were considered for commissions accordingly. Upon delivery, payment was as a rule made out to Jacopo Bellini, who received 375 ducats for the two pictures. Giovanni also received this sum, but not Gentile, who had to be satised with only 300 ducats.59 On the basis of stylistic comparisons, in particular with the triptych of St Sebastian in Venice, Boskovits proposes Giovanni Bellini as the author of the two paintings in the Louvre representing St Anthony Abbot and St Augustine (illus. 20, 21).60 Alessandro Conti, in contrast, claims to recognize familial collaboration in these panels, both remnants of a multi-part altarpiece, basing his judgement on contradictions within the panels, which enabled him to identify an artist working in a more archaic style in the background.61 In order to identify works executed in the rst half of the 1460s by Giovanni Bellini and his workshop that is to say, not in collaboration with the other studio we might do better to turn to smaller-format paintings such as those of the Virgin and Child and scenes from the Passion. The rst great work for which Giovanni was presumably principally responsible is the polyptych of St Vincent Ferrer (illus. 118), begun in 1465. It appears that in 1470 the brothers Gentile and Giovanni Bellini had established artistic proles, if not yet fame. Around 1470, still in Jacopo Bellinis lifetime, Giorgio Sommariva, man of letters and later Venetian governor in Gradisca, composed a sonnet in honour of Gentile and Giovanni Bellini, in which he refers ingeniously to the two beautiful brothers (an allusion to the name Bellini), juxtaposing the good Gentile with a great Giovanni.62 The contrasting judgements are of less interest in this context than the fact that, in 1470, Giovanni was honoured in a sonnet alongside Gentile, suggesting that he had achieved artistic independence. In the 1460s Gentile began his career at the Scuola Grande di San Marco, in which Giovanni would later join as well. In Vasaris view, the Bellini family exemplied the rapid social rise of many artists from humble beginnings to great fame. Vasari, however, had been wrongly informed concerning the
20 Jacopo, Gentile and Giovanni Bellini, St Augustine, c. 146065, wood. Muse du Louvre, Paris. 21 Jacopo, Gentile and Giovanni Bellini, St Antony Abbot, c. 145560, wood. Muse du Louvre, Paris.
social status of the Bellini family. He did not know that the Bellini belonged to the cittadini originari, the privileged bourgeoisie that came in rank immediately after the nobility. In 1648 Ridol recalled the esteem in which the citizens of Venice held the family: In times long gone, the Bellini family, which produced such skilful painters, enjoyed a place of honour among the Venetian citizenry.63 Jennifer M. Fletcher characterizes the cittadini originari as members of an elite group who ranked next to the nobility and from whose ranks
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the Grand Chancellor was chosen. Among their privileges were freedom to trade, eligibility for positions in the administration and voting rights in the leadership committees of the Scuole Grandi. The cittadini originari, on the other hand, did not enjoy the right to engage in handicraft work or to run shops.64 Jacopo Bellini represented the city district (sestiere) of San Marco as a degano (dean) in the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista; at the beginning of the 1460s Gentile entered the Scuola Grande di San Marco and rose to become one of the most important ofcials of the vicario and of the guardian del matin. Both ofces are associated with the representation of the guardian grande, the head of a scuola. Giovanni served in the same Scuola Grande twice as degano, once as a representative of his sestiere Castello. The elevated social status enjoyed by Gentile is conrmed by his being granted a knighthood in 1469 by the Emperor Frederick iii, and by his being named as a count in 1481 by Sultan Mehmet ii in Constantinople.65 The front of his portrait medallion (illus. 22), executed by the Venetian stonecutter and medallist Vettore Gambello, shows him in prole surrounded by the inscription gentilis bellinvs venetvs eqves comesq[ve], thereby referring to him by both titles of nobility: knight and count.66 So far as social status and the ofces he held at the Scuola Grande di San Marco were concerned, Gentile had outstripped Giovanni on several fronts. In 1482, however, Giovanni did attain a singular and unprecedented privilege from the Signoria, namely an exemption from compulsory guild membership and its corresponding payments.67 The obverse of Giovanni Bellinis portrait medallion (illus. 23), executed around 1500 by Gambello, shows the painters bust in prole, surrounded by the inscription ioannes bellinvs. venet[us]. pictor.op[timus]. The inscription praises the Venetian Giovanni Bellini as an outstanding painter.68 On the reverse (illus. 24), these words of praise are supplemented by the gure of an owl perched on a branch and by the addition of the Latin words virtvtis e[t] ingenii. Owl and text substantiate the predicate pictor optimus. The multivalent concept of virtus is best paraphrased as strength and industry, while ingenium refers to those powers of mental creativity that are endowed by nature as talent, and further developed by the possessor for the sake of scientic and artistic achievement. The owl, the attribute of Athena (the Roman Minerva), goddess of wisdom and reason, protector of virtue and the arts, is found on the reverse of Greek coins and Roman medallions. In his publication on medallions of 1559, the cultivated Venetian patrician Sebastiano Erizzo refers to exemplars bearing the image of the Emperor Domitian, whose reverse sides featured images of owls. Given its association with Pallas Athene or Minerva, Erizzo understood the owl as a symbol of wisdom (sapientia), justifying Minervas status as the goddess of the arts by citing her birth from Jupiters head, enabling her to embody ingegno, which stands above everything. Erizzo also explains that an individual whose eye colour approximates that of the owl is said to possess outstanding and acute faculties of ingegno.69 It was Giovanni Bellini who laid claim to ingenium on his medallion, presenting the predicate pictor optimus and Athenas owl.70
Moreover, Bellini had himself depicted with a stola, which was actually reserved for holders of high ofce. The predicate optimo a superlative but not an absolute one could be bestowed on a painter. A note entered by the Venetian chronicler Marino Sanudo into his diarii (daily journals) supplies an appropriate reference to Gentile and Giovanni Bellini. On 29 November 1516 he remarks on the death of the painter Giovanni Bellini, optimo pytor, whose fame is said to be worldwide, adding that Giovanni had been interned at Santi Giovanni e Paolo, the same place where his brother Gentile, etiam optimo pytor (also an outstanding painter), had been buried, as Sanudo had noted earlier concerning Gentiles burial on 23 February 1507.71 The ofcial documents of Venice refer to Giovanni Bellini rst as pictor egregious, just as they had referred earlier to Gentile. The assignment to Giovanni of the restoration of the paintings in the Sala del Maggior Consiglio in the Doges Palace was justied by a reference to his exceptional genius in the art of painting.72 This expression is used in the documentation on the construction and furnishing of the Doges Palace only with reference to Giovanni Bellini, and to no other artist, so that this usage amounts to a form of ofcial recognition rather than a mere topos.
22 Vittore Gambello, Medal of Gentile Bellini, recto, c. 1500, bronze. Galleria Franchetti, Ca dOro, Venice. 23 Vittore Gambello, Medal of Giovanni Bellini, recto, c. 1500, bronze. Galleria Franchetti, Ca dOro, Venice. 24 Vittore Gambello, Medal of Giovanni Bellini, verso, c. 1500, bronze. Galleria Franchetti, Ca dOro, Venice.
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Beyond the techniques of painting, what was it that Jacopo successfully transmitted to his sons who were simultaneously his apprentices and assistants concerning his conception of art and the status of the painter? In two signatures, Jacopo Bellini invoked his own ingenium, his productive mental powers. In 1448 he signed a half-gure of the Virgin with the Christ Child, whose hand is raised in the act of blessing, both set on an illusionistically painted quatrefoil (illus. 25), with 1448. has dedit ingenua belinus mente guras (In 1448, Bellini produced these gures with his creative genius). The painting was probably among a series of depictions of saints located in the Servite church on Riviera di Casalumanese, in the vicinity of Imola.73 In this depiction of the Virgin and Child of 1448, Jacopo emphasized the solidity of both gures by means of a pronounced relief effect. The illusion that the gures
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25 Jacopo Bellini, Virgin and Child, 1448, canvas on wood. Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan.
project in front of the picture plane is heightened by the way in which the crown overlaps the frame. Jacopos reasons for supplying this Virgin, or the series of paintings to which she belonged, with such a amboyant, if not to say pretentious signature, remains undetermined. Already in 1436 Jacopo had supplied his fresco of the Crucixion in Verona Cathedral, which was destroyed in 1759, with an elaborate inscription in which he reproves his own feeble genius in relation to that of his teacher, Gentile da Fabriano, whose fame is said to be universal: [ . . . ] Jacopo Bellini painted this with his slender genius as far as his artistry allowed. Gentile, this Venetians teacher, [was] most renowned for his fame throughout the world [. . . ].74 Jacopo was proud of having trained with Gentile da Fabriano. He painted a portrait of his master, and named the rst of his sons after him.75 Around 151020, according to Marcantonio Michiel, this portrait was found in the collection of Pietro Bembo in Padua, but nothing is known of its possible survival.76 Jacopo, born around 1400 in Venice, the son of the tin caster Niccol Bellini, began his studies in a painters workshop, perhaps that of Jacobello del Fiore, or perhaps Niccol di Pietro. Around 1408 Gentile da Fabriano arrived with his student or assistant Pisanello for a stay in Venice
that would last for several years. Among other things, he was engaged in a project for the Sala del Maggior Consiglio in the Doges Palace, where he painted an important theme from Venetian history, the subjugation of the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa by Pope Alexander iii through the intercession of the doge, along with a battle scene.77 Bartolomeo Facio mentions this fresco in 1456 in his appreciation of Gentile da Fabriano, already noting its heavily damaged state, while mentioning an additional work depicting the effects of a tornado, and designed to strike the beholder with panic: At Venice he painted in the Palace the land battle that the Venetians undertook on the Popes behalf and fought against the son of the Emperor Frederick; but through damage to the wall this has almost entirely disappeared. In the same city he also painted a whirlwind uprooting trees and the like, and its appearance is such as to strike even the beholder with horror and fear.78 Eisler considers it possible that Gentile da Fabriano called upon the young Jacopo as an assistant, taking him to Brescia in the years 141419.79 The earlier assumption that Jacopo must have worked with Gentile da Fabriano in Florence in the 1420s was contradicted by Eisler in 1989 with an argument based on an inventory wrongly dated 1421.80 Since this entry was actually made in 1466, it is possible to turn again to the Florentine court documents, which indeed mention an assistant named Jacopo as working in Florence with Gentile da Fabriano. The name of the assistants father is entered as Piero, but Jennifer Fletcher has pointed out that such errors were not a rare occurrence in contemporary legal documents.81 If Jacopo Bellini did spend time with Gentile da Fabriano in Florence in the 1420s, this would mean that he had come into close contact with decisive artistic and humanistic developments.82 He presumably returned to Venice in 1424. The last will and testament of Jacopos father, Niccol, is dated 11 April 1424, at which time Gentile da Fabriano had completed his masterwork, the Adoration of the Kings, in Florence in 1423; he moved to Siena and Orvieto in 1425, and from there to Rome in 14267. In the fteenth century, both in Venice and on the terraferma, there existed numerous opportunities for establishing contacts with Florentine artists. Many celebrated artists from Florence worked in Venice and in the larger territories of the Serenissima.83 In the 1430s Jacopo received increasing numbers of commissions from Venices land territories. The most consequential contact was with the Este court in Ferrara. As far back as the early 1430s, the marchese, Niccol iii dEste, had called Jacopo Bellini to Ferrara in order to portray the young Leonello dEste (14071450), who had been legitimated by Pope Martin v and who was chosen to succeed Niccol. Jacopo Bellinis Madonna of Humility (illus. 26) in the Louvre may depict the young Leonello kneeling in devotion.84 Leonello had barely succeeded his father in 1441 when he organized two competitions. The rst was for his own portrait, the second for a bronze equestrian monument dedicated to Niccol iii, to be
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26 Jacopo Bellini, Madonna of Humility, c. 1430, wood. Muse du Louvre, Paris. 27 Pisanello, Leonello dEste, 1441, wood. Galleria dellAccademia Carrara, Bergamo.
set up outside the Este palace. Jacopo Bellini was victorious, with Pisanello, for a portrait of the new marchese, but his work has not survived, unlike his competitors portrait (illus. 27).85 In Jacopos book of drawings in London, we nd two drawings related to the competition for an equestrian monument in Ferrara. Other artists participated in this competition, of whom only the two nalists, the Florentine artists Antonio di Cristoforo and Niccol Baroncelli, are known by name.86 By virtue of the appended eagle, Jacopo Bellinis drawings for an equestrian monument (illus. 27) can be related to Leonello dEstes project.87 Jacopos designs did not make it to the nal stages of the competition. During the nal round, when the jury was unable to decide between the two Florentine artists, Leon Battista Alberti was summoned for assistance. He proposed a compromise, with the horse being executed by Niccol and its rider by Antonio.88 Leonello dEste may have met Alberti (illus. 29) already in Florence in 1435. As apostolic secretary, Alberti was among the entourage of Pope Eugenius iv, who was exiled to Florence in 1434; he accompanied the pope to Bologna in 1436, and in 1438 to Ferrara to attend the Council of the Roman and Byzantine Churches. In 1437 Alberti sent the manuscript copy of his Philodoxeos fabula to Leonello
dEste. In the early 1440s, most importantly, Leonello encouraged Alberti to occupy himself with architecture, thereby supplying the initial impulse that would lead to the rst treatise on the art of building in modern times, a work that was published posthumously in Florence in 1485 under the title De re aedicatoria, with Angelo Polizianos dedication to Lorenzo de Medici.89 Around 14356 Alberti composed his treatise on the art of painting in Florence in both Italian and Latin versions, dedicating the Italian version to the architect Filippo Brunelleschi, and presenting the corrected and supplemented Latin edition of 1440 to Giovanni Francesco Gonzaga, marchese of Mantua.90 In his autobiography, written around 1438, a work that mingles the authentic with the fantastic, Alberti describes his attempts to engage in exchanges of ideas with artists, and his occasional direct involvement in the arts of painting and sculpture.91 Vasari, who thought little of Albertis talent as a painter, singled out a perspective view of Venice and San Marco that included gures executed by a third hand.92 This veduta is now lost, and Albertis presumed collaboration with Jacopo Bellini remains a case of wishful thinking.93 At the age of 10, Alberti moved from Genoa to Venice, where his father took over a branch of the Alberti commercial and banking business. In response to a request addressed by Francesco Gonzaga of Mantua to Gentile Bellini, Jacopo had sketched a veduta of Venice.94 Gentile himself was among Venices leading vedutisti, and may well have done his best work in this eld,
28 Jacopo Bellini, Study for an Equestrian Monument, 145565, leadpoint and pen. British Museum, London. 29 Leon Battista Alberti, Self-portrait, c. 1435, bronze. National Gallery of Art, Washington, dc.
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while Alberti in De pictura proposed the use of vellum as a suitable support for the correct and rapid registration of scenes. This discovery was ascribed the same rank by Vasari as the invention of printing.95 No documentation exists for contacts between Jacopo Bellini and Leon Battista Alberti, or for contacts between Alberti and Jacopos son-in-law Andrea Mantegna, who was court painter at Mantua. This seems strange, since Alberti worked for the Gonzaga in Mantua during the 1460s. For Jacopo Bellini, we must make do with the conrmation that he had occasional contacts with the Mantuan court, which was receptive to the kind of humanistic scholarship and the new discourse on art that emanated from Angelo Decembrios book De politia litteraria.96 The competition with Pisanello in Ferrara produced an unusual literary echo. Ulisse Aleotti wrote of Jacopo Bellini as the summo pictore and novelo dia as the best painter and a new Phidias with the ancient Greek sculptor being referred to here as a painter. It is possible that Jacopo Bellini maintained the kind of distance from theoretical and intellectual affairs that was customary for painters, and which Ames-Lewis has characterized as follows: There is little evidence that artists themselves were much concerned about theoretical or intellectual issues during the rst half of the fteenth century.97 Both of Jacopo Bellinis books of drawings reveal an extraordinary and obsessive interest in problems of representation (space, perspective, narration), along with a broad interest in architecture, nature, antiquity, sculpture, inscriptions and iconography of every kind. These are by far the most comprehensive drawing books to survive from a typical fteenth-century workshop.98 The carefully executed drawings constitute invaluable material for the formation and invention of ideal compositions in the Bellini family workshop. The interest in a learned discourse about painting on the part of Gentile and Giovanni Bellini is conrmed by the celebrated mathematician and compiler Fra Luca Pacioli, who was proud of having come from Sansepolcro, the home town of Piero della Francesca. Pacioli had composed his wide-ranging Summa de arithmetica in Milan, and in order to see it through to publication he travelled in 1494 to Venice, a city familiar to him from his youth. In the 1470s Pacioli had given private lessons in Venice, and began teaching in Perugia in 1477. After a stay in his convent in Sansepolcro, Pacioli went to Milan to the court of Ludovico Maria Sforza (il Moro) in 1496, where he met Leonardo da Vinci. The Summa de arithmetica (illus. 30) of 1494 contains two dedications: the rst to the Venetian patrician Marco Sanudo, the second to Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, ruler of Urbino. To Guidobaldo, Pacioli recommended arithmetic, geometry and the doctrine of proportions as being useful in astrology and astronomy, architecture, perspective, sculpture and music. With regard to perspective, Pacioli elevated his countryman Piero della Francesca to a monarch among contemporary painters, and concludes by listing the painters that stood, in his judgement, at the highest summit of art by virtue of the fact that they worked on scientic foundations: included are the brothers Gentile and Giovanni Bellini in Venice, Filippo and Domenico Ghirlandaio in Florence, the painter Pietro
30 Luca Pacioli, title page with authors portrait from Summa de Arithmetica Geometria Proportioni e Proportionalita (Venice, 1494).
Perugino in Perugia, his pupil Luca Signorelli in Cortona, the celebrated Andrea Mantegna in Mantua and the painter Melozzo da Forl and his pupil Marco Palmezzano. Pacioli praises all these artists for certifying their knowledge in repeated conversations and for proportioning their works with libella e circino. Their works strike the beholder as divine rather than human representations, and the gures lack only the breath of life to reach perfection, with perfect imitation manifested through a widespread topos.99 Pacioli is satised with the mathematical interests of these painters and their mastery of the scientic aspects of painting in both praxis and discourse.
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31 Urin diagnosis, woodcut from Johannes Ketham, Fasciculus medicine (Venice, 1500).
That Pacioli includes painters such as Giovanni and Gentile Bellini may be interpreted as an act of courtesy toward Venices premier artists. Contradicting this hypothesis, however, is Giovanni Bellinis mastery in constructing architectural settings with gures, as in the San Giobbe altarpiece (illus. 139), and equally Gentiles outstanding urban vedute of Venice in his works for the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista of 14941500, for example the Procession on the Feast of St Mark or Procession in Piazza San Marco of 1496 and the Miracle of the Reliquary of the Cross at the Ponte di San Lorenzo.100 In the manuscript of his De divina proportione of 1498, Pacioli mentions Leonardo da Vinci as a degnissimo pictore, prospectivo architecto musico (exceptionally praiseworthy painter, scientist of perspective, architect, musician). In early 1500, after the ight of the duke of Milan, Ludovico il Moro, from approaching French troops, Pacioli, along with Leonardo da Vinci and several assistants, travelled to Venice for a few months by way of Mantua.101 In 1509 Pacioli was again in Venice in order to see his long-awaited De divina proportione through to publication. In this work, Pacioli reports in passing that during the era of Pope Paul ii (146471), the Venetian Pietro Barbo, he had lived in Rome at the home of Alberti.102 When Pacioli celebrates those painters who work according to scientic principles, he perceives the fullment of a demand that Alberti had raised earlier. It is crucial here to recognize Paciolis role as a mediating gure between Alberti and the younger generation of artists. The Bellini workshops failed to secure commissions for illustrations for printed books and print reproductions, and may have made no attempt to gain access to these markets, although Jacopo, in hiring his nephew Leonardo, accepted commissions for manuscript illuminations, while Giovanni Bellini also worked in this genre.103 Apparently, the Bellini brothers were not interested in the new possibilities opened up by book illustration, even though Venice was one of the main centres for printing during the last third of the fteenth century, and was a main centre of production alongside Florence for illustrated editions of both religious and profane literature between 1480 and 1520. During the nal years of the Bellini brothers lives, hundreds of illustrated editions were produced by approximately 200 Venetian workshops. Yet only Johannes de Kethams successful medical textbook, which appeared for the rst time in 1491, contains one or two illustrations (illus. 31) that can be related to compositions by the Bellini. In contrast to the Bellini brothers in Venice, their brother-in-law Mantegna immediately recognized copperplate engraving as a medium capable of
disseminating his inventions. Drer, for example, was inspired to imitate Mantegnas engravings as drawings, and they also guided the young Hans Holbein in the faade decorations he carried out in Lucerne. Engraving established Drers fame in Italy and throughout Europe. The young Raphael, who had his compositions duplicated by engravers such as Marcantonio Raimondi and Marco Dente, was the rst to introduce the distinction in printmaking between invention and execution, claiming the role of invenit for himself as draughtsman, and crediting the engraver with the function of fecit.104 It appears that Giovanni Bellini was either uninterested in the reproductive dissemination of his compositions or else failed to recognize the mediums potential, or perhaps simply did not wish to work with engravers. Between 1505 and 1510 Girolamo Mocetto executed three engravings that betray similarities with works of Bellini (illus. 32), but no one credits Bellini with having invented their compositions.105 In 1899, with the rst monograph on Giovanni Bellini, Roger Fry published a small but signicant work. Fry, an art historian and a painter, was simultaneously an admirer of Paul Czanne, Bellini and Venetian painting. For him, it was important to point out the particularly favourable circumstances surrounding Giovanni Bellini, whose father was a renowned painter, and whose brother Gentile was the most learned and the most serious artist of his time in Venice. Fry believed that life in Venice, along with the condence and admiration of the Venetian people and the patronage of the Venetian senate that Bellini enjoyed, an inheritance from his father, explained the character of Bellinis works, the happy serenity of Bellinis art, its tenderness and humanity.106
32 Girolamo Mocetto, Virgin and Child with Saints and Angels, about 1505-10, engraving. Bibliothque Nationale de France, Paris.
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33 Giovanni Bellini, Calvary, c. 1460, wood. Museo Civico Correr, Venice.
ii
Orientations
Andrea Mantegna
Towards the end of the 1450s Giovanni Bellini adopted as an artistic model his brother-in-law Andrea Mantegna, who had demonstrated his extraordinary talent in the Ovetari chapel in Padua and with the large San Zeno altarpiece (illus. 124) in Verona, the result of a commission from Abbot Gregorio Correr, the Venetian Christian humanist.1 In 1459 Mantegna entered the service of Ludovico Gonzaga, marchese of Mantua, moving to Mantua in 1460 as court painter and successor to Pisanello. The younger Bellinis preoccupation with the art of his brother-in-law, several years his senior, became especially intense towards the end of the 1450s, and pertained predominantly in the depiction of gures and the expression of emotions. In the 1460s Bellini took up the new pictorial genre of Mantegna, and may have executed a small painting on parchment after one of his prototypes. Thereafter, he turned back only occasionally to the art of his brother-in-law. Bellini recognized Mantegnas superiority when it came to the creative invention of narratives and allegories, and avoided competition with his work after 1500. In the dispute of a painting for the studiolo of Isabella dEste in Mantua, Bellini fought for the right to supply the artistic invention, and to avoid being juxtaposed with Mantegna in the eld of historia painting. In 2004 Keith Christiansen published a judicious essay on the already frequently investigated relationship between Giovanni Bellini and Mantegna. His point of departure was not the identication of inuence; instead, he explored the various aspects of this relationship.2 Christiansen calls attention to the fact that the young Bellini oriented himself in relation to three different foci: the rst was the art of his father, the second the art of his brother-in-law, and the third Netherlandish painting, admired in Venice to the same extent as in Florence and Naples. The best conrmation for this triple orientation is the Calvary (illus. 33) of circa 1460, now in the Museo Correr in Venice.3 His fathers drawing books include many depictions of the Crucixion, among them a composition that contains three gures: Christ, Mary and St John (illus. 34).4 Their location is outlined, but no landscape is present; instead there are several rows of cherubs above the cross. Giovannis small-format Crucixion presents Christ, Mary and John in the foreground
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34 Jacopo Bellini, Virgin and St John the Evangelist Mourn Christ Crucied, 143055, ink on vellum. Muse du Louvre, Paris.
on a rocky ledge that is broken up into slabs, and which becomes rather nebulous around the hip height of the gures. At this point there begins a new landscape on Netherlandish models, one that extends from the grey strips of the cliffs via meadows, pathways and a meandering river into the distance, and that is set with gures at various distances, all unrelated to the foreground scene.5 Above the bar of the cross oat gilded cherubs in three rows. For the broken-up rock surface, for the gures of Mary and John, and for their expressions, Bellini drew on the Crucixion (illus. 35) of the predella of the San Zeno altarpiece, executed by Mantegna between 1457 and 1459. In the landscape, however, he departed decisively from any models provided by his brother-in-law. It is remarkable that Bellinis foreground gures are illuminated but do not cast shadows, while the gures set in the landscape do. This too indicates that two different types of images have been set behind each other. The rst is a threegured devotional image of the type supplied by his father Jacopos drawing, while the other is a narrative depiction of the Crucixion seen in Mantegnas predella for the San Zeno altarpiece. Bellini combines the three-gured devotional image with landscape, but represses the narrative dimension in favour of the expression of emotion. Antonello da Messina proceeded similarly in his Crucixion in the National Gallery in London, a work that, like Bellinis early version, can be traced back to Netherlandish models related to the works of Jan Van Eyck.6 One repetition of this work was in Padua in 1450, where it was copied. A transformation of the Crucixion group with landscape and donors can be seen in the central panel of the Sforza triptych in Brussels (illus. 36). This painting comes from the workshop of Rogier van der Weyden, and was presumably painted in 1445 for Alessandro Sforza and his wife, and was probably found in Pesaro until circa 1500.7 The evening atmosphere with its contrast between the bright sky above and the shadowed mountains and the dark green leading to the river reects the real artistic interests of the young Bellini. In the Virgin and Child (the Davis Madonna) (illus. 37), probably executed not long before 1460, Bellini adopted a subject well known to painters workshops in Murano.8 His combination of sleep and death suggests an image: just as the child sleeps now in front of the Virgin, the dead Christ will one day lie across her lap in the Piet after being taken down from the Cross. By setting the sleeping gure on a stone slab, Bellini makes explicit the relationship between the sleep of the child and the death of the Redeemer. Bellinis dependency on Mantegna is recognizable in the precise rendering of the childs form and the cool esh tones, but less so in the Virgin and in the
35 Andrea Mantegna, Crucixion, 1459, wood. Muse du Louvre, Paris.
36 Workshop of Rogier van der Weyden, Sforza-triptych, c. 1445, wood, central panel. Muse Royal des Beaux-Arts, Brussels.
attened landscape. The original colouration of the Davis Madonna has been damaged by the loss of lapis lazuli from the cape, which now appears a pale, whitish blue. Mantegna, a master of gural representation, was fond of the extreme difculties involved in depicting gures in unusual positions and extreme foreshortening. Markedly foreshortened gures are also found in the drawing books of Jacopo Bellini. Around 1460 Giovanni Bellini made two attempts to compete with Mantegna in this area. In Bellinis rst depiction of the Transguration (illus. 103), in the Museo Correr in Venice, two of the three apostles lie on the middle step of Mount Tabor, while Peter, who observes, is shown in a seated position with foreshortened thighs. Bellini undertook an even more difcult task in painting The Agony in the Garden
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37 Giovanni Bellini, Virgin and Child (Davis Madonna), c. 145560, wood. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
(illus. 38). This composition has long been compared with a work on the same theme by Mantegna of circa 1455, also now in London, and the hanging of the two works side by side in the National Gallery virtually compels such comparisons.9 For the predella of the San Zeno altarpiece, Mantegna painted a second version of this theme from the Passion of Christ (illus. 39), again with three sleeping apostles in various positions and ingenious fore44 | Giovanni Bellini
38 Giovanni Bellini, The Agony in the Garden, c. 146065, wood. National Gallery, London.
39 Andrea Mantegna, The Agony in the Garden, 1459, wood. Muse des Beaux Arts, Tours.
40 Giovanni Bellini, Three Studies of a Reclining Man, recto, c. 1460, pen and brown ink. British Museum, London.
shortenings of the two reclining gures. Bellini occupied himself with this problem in a Mantegnaesque drawing (illus. 40), which George Goldner has dated to circa 1460.10 Sketched on the sheet are three reclining nudes, one above the other and separated by lines. The uppermost and lowest gures have been set steeply in the space and rendered from head to foot, and vice versa. The reclining nude in the middle is depicted only at a slight angle. Bellini studied the problem that Mantegna had highlighted as an artistic challenge with his two sleeping apostles seen on the predella of the San Zeno altarpiece, and in his version of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane Bellini composed an extremely foreshortened reclining gure for his group of apostles. Bellini had attempted to confront this challenge and then abandoned the task. In 1648 Carlo Ridol explained the pronounced naturalness of Bellinis
gures with reference to the artists renunciation of articially foreshortened poses.11 Alberti had advised against extreme contortions, yet the Florentine artist Andrea del Castagno, who acquainted the Venetians with extreme foreshortenings, was praised by Cristoforo Landino in his Dante commentary of 1481 as a great draughtsman and a lover of artistic challenges, of difcolt dellarte and foreshortenings: Andrea was a great master of drawing and relief, a lover of artistic challenges and foreshortened gures, he was very lively and swift, and work came easily to him.12 Mantegnas greatest challenge, the gure of an angel in ight depicted from below in foreshortening (sotto in su), was never taken up by Bellini. He painted the angel with the Cup of Sorrow as a transparent gure consisting of light. The signicant appearance of this gure conrms an essential difference between the interests of Bellini and Mantegna. Mantegna develops a dramatic opposition between the right-hand side, with its enormous rocky cone and Christ with the sleeping apostles, and the city of Jerusalem towering up above to the left, behind which rises another wall of live rock. Along winding paths the soldiers and Judas have reached the point of greatest depth, and now cross the bridge into the Garden of Gethsemane, from which they are separated by a large, split, withered tree, which contrasts with the fruit-bearing tree near Christ. This compositional drama is decisively attenuated by Bellini: between the settlement on the hill on the left, the town in the background on the attened hill and the cliff formation there spreads a broad plain containing meandering paths, meadows and bodies of water. The contiguity of space and surface is exploited here for the sake of the narrative, but the convergence between Christ in the middle ground and the troop of soldiers in the background makes for a somewhat comical effect, as does the block of living stone, shaped into an enormous prayer lectern. The most astonishing aspect of this picture is the contrast between the blackish-green hillside, the bright foreground, the bright yellow horizon and the reddish and yellowish chain of clouds, illuminated from below. To be sure, Bellini includes the allegorically wizened tree and fenced-in open garden in his picture, but sets them far apart from one another along the edge of the painting. Christ wears a dark blue robe with bright golden stripes, his head held up into the brightest area of sky, while the angel appears as a being made of light: earthly and celestial light converge and intermingle here.13 In the act of transforming Mantegna, Bellini strikes out on a path toward the artistic theme that was to characterize his mature artistic prole. By juxtaposing Bellinis painting of the Blood of the Redeemer (illus. 41) in London and Andrea Mantegnas St Sebastian (illus. 42) in Vienna, Keith Christiansen has called attention to another area in which the younger artist learned from the elder, namely the plastic representation of the human form.14 Mantegna sets his Sebastian, horribly pierced by numerous arrows, in a contrapposto pose, on top of a block of stone in front of a marble column that once formed part of the now collapsed arch. Lying at the martyrs feet are the rubble of this structure and a sculpture. The paving of the oor, composed of
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diagonally positioned white and green stones, terminates at a wall that has collapsed apart from a few remaining ashlars, against which a classical relief bearing a Bacchanalia leans. In the middle ground, a street rises sharply, passing tall cliffs and leading in the direction of the town in the background, apparently the target of the three marksmen leaving the scene of martyrdom. The uppermost cloud, which takes the form of a horse with rider, alludes to classical notions about natural forms drawn from Apollonius of Tyana, and Mantegna has signed this work in Greek letters. On the other side, above St Sebastian and in the direction of his gaze, we nd a gure of Victoria, for according to the Legenda aurea the saint survived, to be martyred on another occasion. It is regarded as highly likely that Mantegna painted this marvellous invention for the connoisseur Jacopo Antonio Marcello.15 Bellinis depiction of the Redeemer, whose blood ows from a wound in his side and is captured in a chalice by an angel, uses a similar patterned ooring in almost the same arrangement as the one in Mantegnas Sebastian. As a terminus, Bellini sets a balustrade at the rear into which is set a pair of classical reliefs, a sacricial scene on one side and a scene with an enthroned Hermes on the other. The prototypes for this work and for these scenes have not yet been determined. Above the balustrade, the landscape begins without a transitional zone and extends broadly all the way into the distance. On the left-hand side lies a fortied town with towers, while on the right appears the stump of a column set on a base, as well as a ruin and a hermit. This preoccupation with motifs from antiquity, restricted here to a pair of classical reliefs, was not pursued further by Bellini, although it was and remained Mantegnas great theme. So far as depictions of the nude are concerned, Bellini was clearly incapable of competing with Mantegna. Bellinis Christ stands insecurely on rather badly proportioned legs, his body only weakly articulated. But in comparison with the affected, multiply bent and suffering contrapposto of Mantegnas Sebastian, Bellinis standing gure follows a less constrained and less exalted conception. Bellini shows neither the bending of the hips towards the rear, nor the projection of the trailing leg beyond the supporting one. Bellini quickly improved his capacity for the plastic depiction of the human body. While the gures of Christ in the London painting and a Sebastian in a triptych from the workshop (illus. 43) are similar, making it
42 Andrea Mantegna, St Sebastian, about 1460, wood. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
opposite: 41 Giovanni Bellini, Blood of the Redeemer, c. 146065, wood. National Gallery, London.
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possible to date both works to the same period, the Piet with Two Angels (illus. 59) in the Museo Correr manifests a stronger articulation of bodily volume and of the chest and stomach musculature, thanks to the use of light and shadow, yet it still does not suggest a fully rounded body. In Bellinis next nude, which appears in the polyptych of St Vincent Ferrer in Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice, Sebastian (illus. 44) is given a whitish body that is modelled with light and shade, and set against a warmly luminous evening sky. Particular trademarks of Bellinis early nudes are the sickle-shaped lower legs with sharply angular shin bones. More fully rounded forms were attained only with the Sebastian of the San Giobbe altarpiece, together with a completely natural and unconstrained posture, and perhaps most signicantly, the depiction of glowing esh. This achievement, which appears extraordinary even in comparison to Antonello da Messina, rests on a new painting technique, the application of pigments bound in oil. It is precisely this glowing esh, which must be distinguished from esh that is merely illuminated externally, would be repeated by Titian in 1511 in the gure of Sebastian in the painting of St Mark Enthroned (illus. 152), found today in the sacristy of Santa Maria della Salute in Venice. Architectural painting, another of Mantegnas inuences, was taken up by Giovanni Bellini only in the 1470s. Mantegna had demonstrated his early mastery of this eld already in the Ovetari chapel and in the throne panel of the San Zeno altarpiece, and he developed it still further in his St Sebastian with miniature-like descriptive exactitude. Such works nourished Bellinis interest in depictions of architecture and its three-dimensional detail. What Mantegna suggested with his relief-decorated pilasters and the ornament of capitals guided Bellini in his great altarpieces, rst in Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice, then in the altar of San Francesco in Pesaro and in the San Giobbe altarpiece. For the young Bellini, Mantegnas art in the 1460s was the most important challenge for his artistic endeavours, as well as for his self-image as an artist. It appears, however, that Mantegna felt little need to respond to Bellinis very different kind of painting, which was orientated towards effects of
44 Detail of St Sebastian from Giovanni Bellini, polyptych of St Vincent Ferrer, (illus. 118), c. 146570, wood. Church of SS Giovanni e Paolo (San Zanipolo), Venice.
opposite: 43 Giovanni Bellini, St Sebastian, central panel of the triptych with St Sebastian (illus. 19), c. 146065, wood. Galleria dellAccademia, Venice.
colour and light. Keith Christiansen has called attention to Mantegnas painting of the Death of the Virgin in the Prado, Madrid, a work begun in 1460, which displays a hitherto unknown sensibility for light and colour in the vedute above the lake near Mantua, the building on the opposite shore and the cloud-lled sky.16 In this work, Mantegna exploits the motif of an interior opening onto the outside, one occasionally taken up later by Antonello da Messina and Giovanni Bellini, in Antonellos case, in the Annunciation in Syracuse, in Bellinis case, in his Annunciation for the organ in Santa Maria dei Miracoli (illus. 108).17 This motif has its origins in Netherlandish painting and probably goes back to an invention by Jan Van Eyck.18 Even during the periods of his most intensive preoccupation with the art of Mantegna, Giovanni Bellini was never exclusively dependent upon his brother-in-law. It is probable that Bellini adopted only one compositional model from Mantegna, the Presentation in the Temple (illus. 76), now in the Pinacoteca Querini Stampalia in Venice. To Mantegnas composition Bellini added further gures, and later developed the new genre of narrative painting with half-gures.19 It has occasionally been assumed that in the work on parchment representing The Descent into Limbo (illus. 45), Bellini transformed a model borrowed from his brother-in-law into painting. Mantegna treated the theme of the Deliverance of the Ancestors from Limbo in two drawings, an engraving (illus. 46) and a small painting.20 In a letter of 1468 addressed to Ludovico Gonzaga, Mantegna mentions that he has begun a commissioned painting on the theme of instoria del limbo. For the gure of Christ, seen from the back and striding into the depths, a copy of a drawing by Mantegna is preserved in Berlin.21 It has not been explained why Bellini would have transformed an engraving or drawing by his brother-in-law into a small painting on parchment at this relatively late date (circa 147580), and the dating of this small work, which was rst attributed to Bellini in 1952, is highly uncertain.22 It seems implausible that Bellini would have executed such an ill-proportioned nude during the second half of the 1470s. What is genuinely interesting about Mantegnas shaping of this theme, with the infernal music and the reactions to it, is the gesture of holding the ears. This is a motif that often interested Bellini, and one he had perceived in Mantegnas Christ in Limbo, even if it is unlikely that he executed the little painting in Bristol. In 1916 Bernard Berenson attempted to capture the contrast between Andrea Mantegna and Giovanni Bellini. His grandiloquent opposition of the two artists rests on the contrast between intellect and intuition. In Berensons view, Mantegna had quickly arrived at the height of artistic skill, thereafter remaining static, while Bellini experienced an extraordinary development: Where the former is all dogma, the other was all faith; where the one worked on a programme, the other relied on spontaneity; where the Paduan had a schematic outline the gure had to ll, the Venetian had a contour that was vibrating exteriorisation of a indwelling energy. Mantegna was professionally intellectual, Bellini may never have harboured an abstract thought. The Paduan was a bigoted Roman, the
Venetian was not deliberately and intentionally of any time or place. Hence the growth of the former was necessarily limited, while that of the latter never stopped. The history of art knows almost no great master whose end was so close to his beginnings as Mantegnas, or so far away as Bellinis. For fty years Giovanni Bellini led Venetian painting from victory to victory. He found it crawling out of its Byzantine shell, threatened by petrifaction from the trip of pedagogic precept, and left it in the hands of Giorgione and Titian, an art more completely humanized than any that the Western world had known since the decline of Greco-Roman culture.23 Berenson regarded it as commendable that Bellini may never have entertained a single abstract thought. His juxtaposition is based on the idea of a manifest overcoming of academicism by modern painting. It was Berensons opinion that modern painting had overcome academicism. For Berenson, Mantegna appears as a representative of the academic position, and Giovanni Bellini, by contrast, as an innovator and as the founder of the grand future of Venetian painting. Today, the difference between Mantegna and Bellini would be conceptualized differently, and the various working conditions and the larger social context would be taken into account. On the one side stands Mantegna, with his precociously brilliant career, moving from Padua, Venices university
45 Anon., The Descent into Limbo, after 1470, parchment. City Art Gallery, Bristol. 46 Andrea Mantegna (workshop), The Descent into Limbo, c. 1470, engraving. Bibliothque Nationale de France, Paris.
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town, to Mantua, the provincial town amidst lakes, in order to work as court painter for the ruler and condottiere Gonzaga, striving to rise in society and to maintain a tting cultural and educational prole. Mantegna fullled the commissions of his masters in Mantua with artistic air, boldness and antiquarian erudition. Furthermore, he immediately recognized the enormous signicance of engraving as a medium for the reproduction and distribution of his pictorial inventions.24 Giovanni Bellini was oriented in a number of directions. He always remained receptive to the art of others, and attempted to comprehend and explore these stimulations. He worked with perseverance, slowly, continuously and unspectacularly, as a master with a large workshop in a metropolis, providing his customers with various products and modications of pre-established types. As a respected burgher, as a member of the Scuola Grande di San Marco and with the title of City Painter of the Serenissima, he was in position to contend with clients such as Isabella dEste, marchesa of Mantua, in order to establish his artistic freedom, and to hold out long enough in order to compel her to acknowledge his ingegno and to recognize his competence for artistic invention. In 2004 Jennifer M. Fletcher published a thorough study of Giovanni Bellinis friends and his connections with humanists and poets in Venice.25 She calls attention to overlappings between the circle of Mantegna and that of Bellini, and in particular to Felice Feliciano, the traveller, collector, antiquarian and alchemist who knew the world.26 Fletcher characterizes the differing social environments of Mantegna and Bellini as follows: Mantegna, whose classical culture and reputation have been the focus of recent study, was a big sh in a small pond operating in a classically founded city at a court where praise of an artist was rarely separate from direct or implied praise for his patron. Giovanni was raised in a republic whose political system encouraged different themes in humanist writing.27
Flemish Painting
Since the publication of research by Millard Meiss and Giles Robertson, the relationship between Giovanni Bellini and Netherlandish painting has been generally recognized. Despite this, it is extraordinarily difcult as Mauro Lucco emphasized in 2004 to identify specic works from the Netherlands with which Bellini could have been acquainted.28 The large-scale exhibition Renaissance Venice and the North: Crosscurrents in the Time of Drer, Bellini and Titian, organized by Bernard Aikema and Beverly Louise Brown in 19992000 at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice, featured the varied nature and the continuity of artistic relationships, and explored the topic in a number of essays contained in a wide-ranging catalogue.29 The marked interest shown by Venetian art lovers for Netherlandish artists and their works was stimulated by intensive commercial relationships and diplomatic contacts.30 It should not be overlooked that, during the fteenth and sixteenth centuries,
intensive relationships of exchange between the Netherlands and Venice also existed in the eld of music. Between 1491 and 1565 three Netherlandish musicians served as music directors at the Cappella ducale in the basilica of San Marco. The most prominent promoters of ofcial music were the brothers Marco and Agostino Barberigo, who were elected as doges sequentially, in 1485 and 1486 respectively. The portrait in the style of Jan van Eyck that Marco Barbarigo brought back with him to Venice from London in 1449 has already been mentioned (illus. 16). This portrait was one of numerous Netherlandish works present in Venice and the Veneto during the second half of the fteenth century.31 In 1456 Bartolomeo Facio wrote in his De viris illustribus of four celebrated painters, Jan Van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden, both Netherlandish, and the Italians Gentile da Fabriano and Pisanello.32 Around the mid-fteenth century the Este court in Ferrara possessed a number of works by Rogier van der Weyden, among them a celebrated triptych that was praised in detail by Ciriaco dAncona in 1449. The Sforza of Pesaro owned a small, exquisite triptych (illus. 36) from the workshop of Rogier van der Weyden representing a donor kneeling at the feet of a Crucixion group. In 1451 the church of Santa Maria della Carit in Venice paid 78 ducats to a maestro piero de andra probably Petrus Christus for an altarpiece, and an additional 22 ducats for transport costs and import duties.33 In the catalogue of his collection in north-eastern Italy, the scholar and collector Marcantonio Michiel counts many paintings of Northern provenance, which he groups together under the stylistic designation alla ponentina.34 With regard to the artists mentioned by collectors and art lovers, many such attributions were probably motivated by the desire for prestige, as suggested by the large numbers of works attributed to Jan Van Eyck, who is called Giovanni de Bruggia. But it also indicates the high level of esteem of connoisseurs in Venice and the Veneto for paintings from the Netherlands, especially for the ars nova of Jan Van Eyck and his followers.35 At the same time, Michiels list also documents the interest among patricians for the arts of antiquity and for Venetian painting, for Mantegna, for the Bellini, for Giorgione and many others. Present in fteenthcentury Venice, as in Florence and many other Italian cities and towns, was a conspicuous interest on the part of connoisseurs referred to by Alberti in 1435 as artis studiosi in art and artistic achievement. The catalogue of Michiels collections in Venice and the Veneto, dating from the rst decade of the sixteenth century, makes it clear that the collecting of portraits, landscapes and religious images was among the prestige-bearing obligations of the patrician class.36 The religious themes that are shown in virtually all fteenth-century paintings, with the exception of the genre of portraiture, by no means interfered with the development of artistic value and expertise or with the assembly of collections. In his essay Die Sammler (The Collectors) of 1893, Jacob Burckhardt remarks that private devotional images, for instance sculpted half-gure depictions of the Virgin and Child that were duplicated in Florence, and moreover paintings of the same motif, were the occasion and origin of
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collecting. Burckhardt raised the difcult question of the degree to which these private images, of the Virgin and Child, for example, still served religious functions, or whether their production was merely a beautiful custom, and the images were by now experienced only artistically. Later, Burckhardt discussed the progressive substitution of religious connections to images by aesthetic valuation, recalling that the sacred forms and stories formed the principal and self-evident substrate by means of which Italian art became grand and lively, and it was obliged to remain attached to this principle substrate even when clients no longer intended to use images for devotional purposes.37 That the enjoyment of art could lead to the praising of other works of art than religious images can be seen especially clearly in the delight taken by Petrarch in portable painted panels and in the revaluation of classical sculptures.38 A characteristic example was the Venetian cardinal Pietro Barbo, who was later elected pope (Paul ii, 146471), and who became known as a connoisseur. He had one of the main pieces in his collection, the Querini diptych a late antique ivory enclosed in a gilded frame and had an inscription added to the reverse, in which he professes how much he admires works of art and how he surrenders to loving delectation in a way that corresponds to the attitude of the art-addicted gaudium in Petrarchs treatise on human happiness and unhappiness.39 The reverse side displays two classical loving couples with a Cupid: Hippolytus with Phaedra and Diana with Endymion.40 In his donation of the classical statues of 1471, Pauls successor to the papal throne, Sixtus iv, gave back antique bronzes from the Lateran to the Roman people for the Capitol. This gift corresponded to the ofcial revaluation of pagan idols, now regarded as admirable works of art by the sculptors of antiquity and as exempla virtutis.41 The main motifs that Bellini adopted from Netherlandish painting were the landscape and the portrait, in addition to technical-aesthetic innovations related to the saturation and transparency of pigments, now ground with linseed oil as a binder. Regarding the use of the Netherlandish portrait type, it seems odd that Bellinis engagement with this genre began only in 1474 with his portrait of Jrg Fugger (illus. 15). Like the portrait of Marco Barbarigo, the small Portrait of a Boy (illus. 47) in Birmingham depends on a portrait by Jan Van Eyck, the so-called Tymotheus (illus. 48), now in the National Gallery in London. The correspondences between Bellinis Portrait of a Boy and Jan Van Eycks Tymotheus are evident in the high stone parapet and in the three-quarter view of the chest, set against a dark background. According to Jill Dunkerton, Bellinis works may have been painted in oils on top of a summary underpainting, and around the same time as the portrait of Jrg Fugger.42 The pigment layers of the face of the Portrait of a Boy have been severely abraded, depriving the face of its nely rendered plasticity. It had already been assumed that the inscription, nonaliter (meaning quite so, referring to the likeness), was added in the sixteenth century.43 The few portraits executed by Giovanni Bellini in the ensuing years have given rise to controversy concerning dating. In some cases, Bellinis authorship has been doubted. As before, most of the portraits appear to be based on Netherlandish prototypes, with one exception, the portrait of Doge
Leonardo Loredan, which must have been executed in 1501, the year of his election. The Portrait of a Young Senator (illus. 49), presumably painted in the early 1480s, shows a half-length gure in three-quarter view behind a narrow balustrade. The red robe and black stole, the wealth of blond hair and the black cat are set against a blue background that passes from bright to dark. A work such as Antonello da Messinas Portrait of a Young Man (illus. 50) in Berlin, which remained in the collection of the patrician Bartolomeo Vitturi in Venice during the eighteenth century, might have been used by Bellini for his own portraits as an adaptation of a Netherlandish formula. In the Berlin portrait, landscape and sky are problematic, since all Antonellos other portraits have dark backgrounds. Possibly, the landscape and sky were painted only later on the dark ground, in imitation of portraits with landscape backgrounds by Hans Memling, which were well known and highly favoured. In the early 1480s Memling began to set his half-length portrait gures against landscapes and skies, as seen in an early example in Antwerp (illus. 51), the Portrait of a Man with a Coin of the Emperor Nero (Bernardo
47 Giovanni Bellini, Portrait of a Boy, 147075, wood. Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham. 48 Jan Van Eyck, Portrait of a Young Man (Tymotheus), 1432, wood. National Gallery, London.
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50 Antonello da Messina, Portrait of a Young Man, c. 1475/76, wood. Gemldegalerie, Berlin.
Bembo?). The sitter has not been identied by name, but there is agreement about his Italian origins.44 Giovanni added a landscape in the manner of Memling to a half-length portrait for the rst time in his Portrait of a Man (Pietro Bembo) (illus. 92). It seems, however, that in the 1480s Bellini began to portray gures that are set against blue skies. The Portrait of a Young Man (illus. 53) in Washington may be the second instance of this new conception, inspired perhaps by a work of Memling, such as the portrait in Antwerp.45 None of Giovanni Bellinis portraits displays that expression of brisk alertness, occasionally rising to the level of impudence, so characteristic of the portraits of Antonello da Messina. The individuals portrayed by Bellini never make direct eye contact with the beholder. In contrast to Antonello,
opposite: 49 Giovanni Bellini, Portrait of a Young Senator, c. 148085, wood. Musei Civico, Padua.
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51 Hans Memling, Portrait of a Man with a Coin of the Emperor Nero (Bernardo Bembo?), c. 14734, wood. Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp. 52 Antonello da Messina, Portrait of a Man (Il Condottiero), 1475, wood. Muse du Louvre, Paris.
Bellini never shows us liveliness by means of momentary action as in the case of the singular Portrait of a Man (Il Condottiero) (illus. 52) in the Louvre, whose immediacy of presence is heightened by the lighting. Bellini painted restrained young men whose expressions remain indenite, and who look past the beholder into the distance, which appears as a blue background.46
Technique
In the Vita of Antonello da Messina (illus. 54), Giorgio Vasari tells of a trip taken by the Sicilian painter from Naples to Bruges to see Jan Van Eyck, who was regarded as the inventor of oil painting. Finally, he says, Antonello transmitted the technique of oil painting to Domenico Veneziano in Venice.47 In connection with this event, Vasari repeats an actual calumny against Andrea del Castagno. The latter is said to have murdered his friend Domenico Veneziano, who had been summoned to Florence because of his familiarity with the technique of oil painting, out of jealousy, and to have confessed this deed only on his deathbed.48 Towards the end of the eighteenth century, Luigi Lanzi, a creditable researcher of Italian painting, still recalled Andrea del Castagno with shame (nome infame nella storia), although the falseness of this slander had been exposed not long after.49 In his Meraviglie dellarte of 1648, Carlo Ridol, the historiographer of Venetian painting, moulded Vasaris reports into a legend according to which Giovanni Bellini had discovered the secret of Antonellos oil painting
opposite: 53 Giovanni Bellini, Portrait of a Young Man, c. 148590, wood. National Gallery of Art, Washington, dc.
by subterfuge.50 This legend of artistic espionage was circulated through collections of anecdotes, and was given new life in 1831 with the new edition of Ridols Vita di Giovanni Bellini. In the collection of anecdotes and legends about the ne art world, published anonymously in Paris in three volumes by Pierre-Jean-Baptiste Nougaret in the years 177680, the incident is recounted as follows: All authors honour Giovanni Bellini by supposing that he openhandedly disseminated his knowledge of oil painting, of which Antonello da Messina had made a great secret. Giovanni Bellini was able to deceive Antonello da Messina as follows. He dressed up as a Venetian nobleman and went to see Antonello, who did not know him, in order to commission a portrait from him. Then Bellini observed Antonello mixing his pigments while painting, and in this way discovered the secret, which he then immediately made public in accordance with his sense of duty.51 Nougaret justies this artistic espionage as a seless act of theft and a blow against the unjustied privatization of technical progress.52 J.F.L. Mrime, on the other hand, decided to omit this anecdote from his highly informative history of oil painting, published in 1830.53 In the nineteenth century, an era fond of anecdotes about artists, Bellinis purported act of artistic espionage was given pictorial form on a number of occasions. The rst was a work by the young Antonio Zona, whose painting of 1847 was exhibited at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice. In 1870 the student Roberto Venturi won the gold medal, valued at 2,000 lire, at the Accademia di Brera in Milan for a painting devoted to this theme, while Edmond Lechevalier-Chevignard exhibited his version at the Paris Salon of 1872, at which time it was reproduced in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts.54 In 1848 the magazine Gemme darti italiane, whose self-proclaimed task was to publish high-quality reproductions of paintings exhibited in Italy, accompanied by commentary, published a steel engraving by Domenico Gandini (illus. 55) after Zonas painting. The commentary was composed by the well-known architect, art critic and later president of the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice, the Marchese Pietro Selvatico.55 He praises Zonas painting for showing the snifng out of the secret, for Giovanni is said to have been able to smell the decisive ingredient of the painting medium, the mastic resin. Selvatico also liked Zonas depiction of the studio with the lost San Cassiano altarpiece, whose fragments in Vienna, which David Teniers had reproduced in his Theatrum pictorium of 1660 under the name Bellini, had not yet been identied as the work of Antonello.56
54 Antonello da Messina, woodcut, from Vasari, Le vite dei pi ecellenti pittori, scultori, et architettori (Florence, 1568).
These legends contained in biographies, collections of anecdotes and paintings conrm the importance attributed to the potentialities of the new oil medium. Apparently, Giovanni Bellini used linseed oil as a binder earlier than had hitherto been supposed, and during the 1460s even used egg tempera along with oil pigments. Investigations undertaken at the Museo Correr in Venice have concluded that linseed oil was used both in the early Transguration (illus. 103) and in the Piet with Two Angels (illus. 59), both executed around 1460. In the triptych with St Sebastian in the Accademia in Venice, both egg tempera and linseed oil have been identied as binding media.57 Because the technical expenses entailed by such investigations are considerable, we have results only for a few works. Jill Dunkerton has deduced that the Calvary (illus. 33) in the Museo Correr, whose binding medium has not been analysed, was at least partly executed in oils.58 Giovanni Bellini probably based this painting on a small panel originating either from
55 Antonio Zona, Giovanni Bellini, disguised as a Venetian Senator, in the studio of Antonello da Messina, steel engraving by Domenico Gandini, in Gemme darti italiani 4 (1848).
Orientations | 63
Jan Van Eycks workshop or from one of his followers, which may have arrived in Padua by the mid-1450s, where it was presumably copied by an Italian artist.59 Drying oils such as linseed oil had long been used in Italian workshops in varnishes, gilding and for other purposes, and even in painting itself, as recommended around 1400 by Cennino Cennini for working on walls, panels, iron and everything else, supplying a recipe for the preparation of the best linseed oil.60 The problem was not the grinding of pigments with drying oils as binders in place of egg or size, but instead rst the acceleration of the drying process, which was affected by the addition of lead white, and second the investigation and exploitation of the new possibilities offered by linseed oil as a binder as regards saturation, luminosity and transparency of colours. Colours of such brilliancy and depth as those seen in the Crucixion came from the workshop of Van Eyck, and had hitherto been seen nowhere in Italian painting.61 As we know, the scientic investigation of binding media is neither simple nor free of problems, since it involves a certain degree of damage to the works of art. The recent investigation of Antonellos St Sebastian in the Gemldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden was based on the removal of test materials from the paint layer and of the ground at the edge of the painting. The results were disillusioning, since glue size was identied as the binder in the ground, and egg binder in the paint layer. Whether Antonello may have used an oil binder in the central areas such as the gure or the architectural setting can be neither veried nor dismissed.62 It may be that his legendary fame arose in Venice because he had mastered the layering of transparent pigments and chromatic harmony better than local painters. It seems probable that Antonellos legendary secret was not the use of linseed oil as a binder, but instead the achievement in Italy of a new degree of luminosity and a new colouristic harmony, as if he had learned it as a secret from Flemish painters.
iii
Transformations
The Imago pietatis
When Giovanni Bellini took up his trade as an artist, the Imago pietatis the half-gure depiction of the dead Christ as Man of Sorrows was already well established. Beginning in the second half of the twelfth century, Byzantine passional images were known in the West, either taking the form of doublesided icons or diptychs. Icons of the dead Christ, his hands crossed on his chest in keeping with burial custom, were often seen as counterparts to the Virgin and Child, and found on the obverses of processional images or united with the latter as the second halves of diptychs. Around 1385 a Byzantine mosaic icon depicting the Man of Sorrows arrived in Rome at the church of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme. Reports transformed it into the legendary icon that Pope Gregory the Great had had painted around the year 600 according to a vision he had experienced (illus. 56). The mosaic icon, measuring just 19 x 13 centimetres, was set in a silver frame and incorporated into a reliquary cabinet, where it was surrounded by hundreds of small relics that invited the veneration of the faithful and enhanced the icons miraculous reputation.1 Other churches wanted to participate in this lucrative cult, and commissioned copies of the Passion image. Towards the end of the fteenth century, the Carthusian monks of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme sought to attract pilgrims into the church once again. In connection with the holy year of 1500, they commissioned the well-known engraver Israel van Meckenem to reproduce their icon in both a smaller and a larger version. The inscription on the larger reproduction (illus. 57) was called Christ basileus tes doxes (King of Glory), and guaranteed that it faithfully reproduced the original image of the Imago pietatis that Gregory the Great had had executed according to a vision he had experienced during Mass.2 In order to persuade a doubting woman of the truth of transubstantiation, Christ appeared to the pope during the liturgy as a Man of Sorrows, accompanied by the instruments of his Passion. Israel van Meckenems engraving shows the Imago pietatis in the sarcophagus on the altar, while the pope celebrates Mass in the presence of prelates, clergy, and common people.3 Visible on the opened wings of the altarpiece are three scenes from the Passion of Christ: the Bearing of the Cross, the Crucixion and the Resurrection. With its highly rened super65
56 Israhel van Meckenem, The Mass of St Gregory, c. 1495, engraving. Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich. 57 Israhel van Meckenem, Imago pietatis, c. 1490, engraving. Bibliothque Nationale de France, Paris.
opposite: 58 Giovanni Bellini, Imago pietatis, c. 146065, wood. Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan.
position of altar, paten, altar cloth, chalice, pax, sarcophagus, retable, cross, instruments of the Passion and the terminating vera icon, the engraving makes an immediate connection between the Passion on the retable, the apparition of the Imago pietatis and the Eucharist. The Christological axis ends below with the kneeling pope, the representative of Christ on Earth.4 The faithful, who say their prayers in front of the image, are granted 20,000 years of indulgences; in a later print, this is increased to 45,000 years. Venice was the rst and most important station for the reception and diffusion of Byzantine passional images.5 Two different versions of the passion image by the so-called Master of Torcello, dating from circa 1300, are known. In Venice, as elsewhere in Italy in the fourteenth century, the Imago pietatis was used in accordance with Byzantine practice as one element of a diptych, or as a central image in combination with the Virgin and John the Evangelist.6 Giovanni Bellini introduced two important changes to the Imago pietatis: he replaced the neutral or gold background with a landscape, and he grouped Christ, Mary and John together within a unied pictorial eld, thereby creating a new form of the Piet (illus. 83). In the small panel of the Imago pietatis (illus. 58) in the Museo Poldi Pezzoli in Milan, the front wall of the sarcophagus bears the signature
59 Giovanni Bellini, Piet with Two Angels, c. 146065, wood. Museo Civico Correr, Venice.
ioannes bellinvs on a cartellino.7 The half-gure of the dead Christ stands in a short open sarcophagus with crossed arms in front of a varied landscape, which extends into the distance at the gures sides. Visible beneath Christs left elbow is the steep surface of a rocky platform, while a path winds its way from right to left towards a body of water whose surface is rufed by the wind. On both the right and left sides, reddish-grey cliffs rise in the middle distance. In the narrow strip separating the branches of the cliffs, the at landscape extends into the distance. Above the horizon line, the natural sky appears in pale pink, while above it a darker grey cloud extends horizontally across the image behind the neck of Christ, contrasting with his brighter body. That it is the evening light is conrmed by the greyish-green shadows falling across the landscape. A gentle light falls on Christs body from the sides, modelling it with light and shade. In contrast to Byzantine models of the Imago pietatis, the Christ in Bellinis painting wears a crown of thorns, although the stigmata on the hands are absent. Hans Belting drew attention to the conict arising from the combination of icon gure and landscape: the portrait of the dead Christ in a natural setting struck him as a relic left over from a different image concept.8 The combination of the Imago pietatis with a landscape effects a temporalization of the image, intended to situate the Redeemer and his suffering directly in the presence of the pious viewer.9 The evening sky and the shadows falling on the landscape indicate the time of day, while the spatial extensions into the landscape and the crown of thorns suggest a narrative of the Passion that culminates with the presentation of the dead Christ standing in the sarcophagus. In contrast to the icon, Bellinis work raises problems of visual logic: in a setting that presents itself as naturalistic and that introduces a temporal index, there arises a conict with the gure of the dead man, who holds himself upright. In a subsequent attempt Giovanni Bellini combined a relief drawn from Donatellos high altar in the Santo in Padua with a landscape to create the Piet with Two Angels (illus. 59). In 1897, in the Museo Correr in Venice, Giovanni Morelli identied this painting which bears a forged monogram of Albrecht Drer and a false date of 1499 as the work of Giovanni Bellini.10 It was Roger Fry who connected the Piet with Two Angels to Donatellos relief in Padua (illus. 60), not without expressing his regret at the absence of additional traces linking Giovanni Bellini to the Florentine artist.11 During the protracted genesis of the high altar in Padua, Donatello was paid piecemeal according to work delivered; for his bronze relief of Christ in the Tomb with Two Mourning Angels, that is, the Piet with Angels, he received payment on 23 June 1449.12 Donatello presents Christ in conformity with the Byzantine Imago pietatis in Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, but has him joined by a pair of juvenile angels, each of whom rests one leg on the sarcophagus, while both join together in holding up a piece of cloth behind Christ. Their faces and the gesture of the chin supported by one hand convey sorrow. A fteenth-century imitation of Donatellos Piet with Angels, probably produced in Padua, was set into the exterior of the eastern wall during
60 Donatello, Piet with Two Angels, 1449, bronze. Basilica del Santo, Padua.
the reconstruction of Santa Maria del Rosario (the Gesuati) in Venice (illus. 61). In contrast to Donatello, Bellini did not take up the form of the Byzantine icon in Rome for his Piet with Two Angels, but instead posed Christ with opened arms, as seen earlier in the work of Giambono (illus. 99) and Mantegnas St Luke altarpiece. On the hill in the background is a town whose walls with many towers enclose buildings modelled on classical Roman triumphal arches, temples and the Colosseum in Rome. It is tempting to conclude that in this depiction of the city of Jerusalem, Bellini followed Mantegna, who had often used an antique-style city, for the rst time in the Ovetari chapel in Padua, and then in his various renderings of the Agony in the Garden (illus. 39) and in the predella painting of the Crucixion in Paris. Did Bellini base this work on a combination of two different models? First of all, Christs pose deviates conspicuously from Donatellos, a fact explicable by the assumption that he was drawing here on a different model of the Imago pietatis. This model, however, was not a binding prototype either, since in contrast to Giambono and Mantegna the palms of the hands are turned outwards. Additional differences can be identied: Bellini reinforces the narrative element by means of the two nails from the Cross on the sarcophagus lid, through the small gures moving along the winding path to
61 Anon., Piet with Two Angels, fteenth century, marble. Church of S. Maria del Rosario, Venice (east wall).
Jerusalem, and through the small angels who attempt to support Christs towering body, and have mouths open in lamentation. Moreover, as in the Imago pietatis in the Museo Poldi Pezzoli, the time of day is indicated by the lateral illumination and the warm light. These are deviations from the models that Bellini considered as visual references. The results are hardly revolutionary, but instead try out a differing solution, one that perhaps could be referred to as a process of testing, but not as experimental, since there is a certain inherent timidity. Bellini introduces subtle transformations. Hans Belting saw in the Piet with Two Angels in the Museo Correr an initial attempt to re-conceive the principle of the icon both spatially and psychologically. Beltings verdict of Giovanni Bellini, the icon painter who was in search of a new pictorial concept, does not really work to the advantage of the Piet with Two Angels: When Bellini mixed the allegorical presentation of altar sacrice with the ritual angel together with the biblical Passion narrative, things were bound to turn out badly.13 Already in the second half of the 1460s, with the polyptych of St Vincent Ferrer for the church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice, Bellini had produced a variant of a Piet with Two Angels (illus. 62), one that does not show a landscape background, but instead a strip of dark sky containing a few
Transformations | 71
62 Giovanni Bellini, Piet with Two Angels, from the polyptych St Vincent Ferrer (illus. 118), c. 146570, wood. Church of SS Giovanni e Paolo (San Zanipolo), Venice.
bright clouds. This decision can be explained by its destination for the central eld of the upper register of a multi-panel retable.
Tutelary Images
In his contribution to the volume Giovanni Bellini and the Art of Devotion, edited by Ronda Kasl and published in 2004, Keith Christiansen analysed several paintings of the Virgin and Child. Probably around 1460, Bellini began to produce images intended for private homes. Among these early half-gure depictions of the Madonna and Child are the Davis Madonna (illus. 37) and the three versions of the Virgin with standing Child in Amsterdam (illus. 63), Berlin (illus. 64) and Verona (illus. 65). In his study of altar paintings of 18934, Jacob Burckhardts point of departure in relation to depictions of the Virgin and Child was the reciprocal challenges exchanged between the saintly image with miraculous powers the Sacra conversazione as altarpiece and the domestic devotional image. Burckhardt presumed that the loving and maternal type of the Virgin made the transition from domestic to church altar rather than the other way around.14
opposite: 63 Giovanni Bellini, Virgin and Child, c. 146065, wood. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
overleaf: (left) 64 Giovanni Bellini, Virgin and Child, c. 146065, wood. Gemldegalerie, Berlin. (right) 65 Giovanni Bellini, Virgin and Child, c. 146065, wood. Museo di Castelvecchio, Verona.
Like images of the Passion, fteenth-century representations of the Virgin and Child are classied as devotional images, on the assumption that they were primarily objects of private devotion and veneration.15 Beginning with Erwin Panofskys study of 1927, both the art-historical term devotional image, which originated in the Romantic period, and the object to which it refers have been subjected to wider investigations and discussions.16 In her monograph on Giovanni Bellini, Rona Goffen made a basic distinction between profane and religious images, the latter category subdivided according to whether they were intended for private or public devotion.17 This schematic distinction, which refers exclusively to the presumed uses made of these images by contemporaries, neglects other factors. Michael Baxandall has drawn attention to the Catholicon of Johannes Balbus from the end of the thirteenth century, which justies the setting up of images with reference to the need to instruct the illiterate, to strengthen commemoration of the mystery of the Incarnation, the exemplary qualities of the saints, and nally with arousing pious emotion.18 These effects can also be attributed to the religious images found in churches in the fteenth century. The diffusion of the devotio moderna and Thomas a Kempiss successful propagation of the imitation of Christ strengthened the capacity of images with religious themes to stimulate affective piety. Such images offered something in exchange for the pious behaviour devoted to them (whether this took the form of a prayer, a commemoration of suffering, a consciousness of guilt or a confession of sin), specically the reduction of penances for sins by means of indulgences, protection in the hereafter, the warding off of evil or intercession with God on his throne. This interaction between image and viewer activated older, magical notions of imagery: the stimulation of affective piety is related to the powers inherent in images in much earlier periods, which are no longer efcacious in the Romantic notion of the devotional image. This power is evident in the extraordinarily numerous depictions of the Virgin and Child. In 1988 Ronald Kecks assembled more than two dozen visual documents dating from the fteenth and sixteenth centuries that concern the presence of religious images in private spaces in Florence and Venice. A domestic altar with an image of the Virgin is found only in the vita of St Catherine. Only in two cases is an individual shown kneeling before an image of the Virgin: in this pose, both St Vincent Ferrer and a woman who is menaced by the devil call on either an image or a vision of the Virgin to protect them from evil. An altar with crucix is shown in the bedchamber of a dying man.19 All of the other representations document the setting up of religious imagery, usually a Virgin and Child, either on an interior wall or on a house faade. Jost Ammans woodcut of Piazza San Marco, dating from the second half of the sixteenth century (illus. 66), shows a house on the Piazzetta where an image of the Virgin has been set between two windows above a china shop. No one takes any notice of it. Vittore Carpaccios Story of St Ursula of 149095 shows two bedrooms, each containing a painting in a gold frame. In The Dream of St Ursula a framed picture hangs on the wall between the bed and the door. The holy water stoup and candleholder with burning candle imply a religious
66 Jost Amman, Procession in St Marks Square in Venice, detail, second half of the 16th century, woodcut. British Museum, London.
subject matter, while the narrow strip of blue and gold suggest a painting of the Virgin. In the tripartite painting of the Arrival of the Ambassadors (illus. 67), Ursula dictates to her father the conditions for her marriage with the Breton prince. On the wall above the bed and set in a tabernacle frame is a Virgin and Child. One of the last woodcuts in Francesco Colonnas romantic novel Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, rst published in Venice in 1499, shows the protagonist Poliphilo in his room writing a letter to Polia.20 On the wall above a chest between the window and the bed is a half-gure painting of Christ. The few depictions of private rooms dating from the second half of the fteenth century in Venice do not indicate what use was made of religious
67 Detail (the Virgin and Child in the bedroom of St Ursula) from Vittore Carpaccio, The Arrival of the Ambassadors, 1495, canvas. Galleria dellAccademia, Venice.
pictures apart from the lighting of candles or the sprinkling of holy water. These images seem to hang unnoticed on the walls. The actual function of religious imagery in interiors or on faades is the same as the one served by icons as palladia (tutelary images) for cities: the warding-off of enemies and evil. In Constantinople, it was believed that the celebrated icon of the Hodegetria provided protection from enemies, for which reason it received special veneration, which once again was demanded for the maintenance of this protective effect. The Venetians attempted without success to gain possession of the Hodegetria, obtaining instead a late eleventh-century Byzantine icon, the Virgin Nicopeia (illus. 68) the bringer of victory as the new palladium for the Serenissima. This victorious icon, which shows the Virgin holding her son before her breast as protection against all threats, was carried in ofcial processions in Venice.21 As late as the eighteenth century, a marble copy was set into the faade of a house on the Campo Santa Maria Formosa, similar to the one seen in Jost Ammans woodcut of the second half of the sixteenth century. Like most Italian cities, Venice had placed itself under the protection of the Virgin, but claimed a special relationship to her because of the legendary foundation of the city on 25 March of the year 421, the Feast of the Annunciation. The founding of the city was celebrated annually during the feast, which ushered in the new year according to Venetian counting the More veneto. In Venice in 1457 approximately 20 churches and 300 altars were consecrated to the Virgin.22 The signicance of this divine protection for Venice is illustrated by the custom according to which the newly elected doge was obliged to commission a votive image at his own expense, by means of which he commended himself and the city to the Virgins continuing protection. The Votive Picture of Doge Agostino Barbarigo (illus. 79), which the doge commissioned Giovanni Bellini to paint in 1486, was set up not in his private home, but instead in his ofcial residence in the Doges Palace.23 Marian images in private homes served to secure a personal connection to the Virgin and to commend the house and its residents to her protection. The original types of these icons founded their power in a supernatural origin24 that conrmed their authenticity. This icon should not be seen as an artefact of human activity, but instead an imprint of God, or else a portrait of the Virgin and Child painted by Luke the Evangelist, according to his legendary vision. The icons partook in this power by virtue of their similarity to the primeval type. Jacopo Bellini was able to full these functions by translating Byzantine
icons of the Virgin and Child, for instance in his Madonna of the Cherubim (illus. 69), painted around 1435, which modied the schema of the Hodegetria icon.25 During his initial years of artistic activity, Giovanni Bellini produced new half-gure variants of the Virgin and Child. The most novel feature in relation to the icons produced by his father is the combination with landscapes or naturalistic sky, as in the image of the Passion. Already during the rst half of the 1460s Giovanni Bellini evidently adopted or developed procedures that enabled him to copy images of the Virgin, reproducing them in his workshop with varied poses and landscapes. In the case of the Virgin and Child in Amsterdam, traces of a transfer of the gural group were detected in 1978 by means of infrared reectography. This had been done by means of a punched cartoon. Taken together with the similarity between the gural groups in the Amsterdam and Berlin versions, these indications point to the conclusion that Bellini employed a matrix.26 Keith Christiansens expanded analysis of 2004 disclosed a renement of the versions in Berlin and Amsterdam, as seen in a subsequent version found today in Verona, in which the balustrade has been extended vertically, the gural group set against the sky, the individual faces more nely modelled and the esh more natural in appearance.27 A second group involving slightly modied depictions of the Virgin and Child, which probably date from 146570, consists of the version in the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth (illus. 70) and the
68 Virgin Nicopeia, eleventh century, Byzantine image installed in the Church of San Marco, Venice. 69 Jacopo Bellini, Madonna of the Cherubim, c. 1435, wood. Galleria dellAccademia, Venice.
70 Giovanni Bellini, Virgin and Child, c. 145670, wood. Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas.
Madonna dellOrto (illus. 71), which remained until its theft on 1 March 1993 in the church of Santa Maria dellOrto in Venice.28 The Madonna dellOrto was originally acquired by Luca Navagero, Venetian governor in Friuli, for his private residence and only subsequently chosen for his tomb altar, located in the rst chapel on the left of Santa Maria dellOrto. A third version of the Virgin and Child, in which the baby sucks on its middle nger, can be connected to the versions in Fort Worth and Venice. In this version (illus. 64), now in Berlin, the Virgin holds the Child at head height. The modication and variation were connected with the use of one or more cartoons
or stencils. According to Christiansen, these new discoveries lead to the conclusion that tracings and cartoons were maintained in the workshops as reference material is not something scholars usually take into consideration when discussing Venetian art, but I think it was a common practice of Bellinis and became one of Titians too.29 A number of technological investigations of paintings executed by Giovanni Bellini and his workshop have been carried out over the past 30 years.30 There has also been a broadening of interest in the practices of artists studios. In 1999 Carmen Bambach published a marvellous book about workshop practices during the Italian Renaissance.31 In Bellinis case, it remains difcult to make connections between these technological investigations and workshop practices, because neither original information nor the remnants of tools and accessories exist.32 A book edited by Ronda Kasl in 2004 contains a number of contributions dealing with the practices employed for duplicating images in Giovanni Bellinis workshop.33 Similar investigations concerning painting techniques and workshop practices will lead to the discovery of further serially generated images and to the reconstruction of accessory tools such as cartoons and stencils. This will necessitate a profound re-examination of the issues related to originality, the artists individual handwriting, replication, repetition and imitation. Fifteenth-century Italy saw a heightening in the valuation of artistic technique in relation to the use of precious materials, such as lapis lazuli and gold. This revaluation has been demonstrated by Michael Baxandall on the basis of the contractual expectations of clients, who specied which portions of the commissioned work should be executed by the master himself.34 A contract with Piero della Francesca dated 11 June 1445 for the Madonna della Misericordia for the church of the corresponding confraternity in Sansepolcro specied that no other painter was to take up a brush in the production of this work. Luca Signorelli signed a contract for frescoes in Orvieto Cathedral that specied that all portions of the gures from the middle upwards were to be painted in the presence of the master, who must, moreover, prepare all of the pigments with his own hands. Venetian clients probably introduced similar contractual obligations as well. Many depictions of the Virgin and Child executed during the second half of the 1470s and in the following decade betray similarities regarding the poses that suggest the possible use of cartoons. Correspondences, with modications, can be identied, for instance, in a group of images of the Virgin with seated Child dating from the second half of the 1480s, among them the Rogers Madonna (illus. 72) in New York, the Morelli Madonna (illus. 73)
71 Giovanni Bellini, Madonna dellOrto, c. 146570, wood. Stolen in 1993, previously in the Church of Santa Maria dellOrto, Venice.
in Bergamo and the Virgin and Child with Seraphim (illus. 74) in Venice.35 Such practices may also involve continuous variations of the mother and child theme with diverse landscape settings. The combination of schemas for the Virgin and Child must also be considered for their potential use in expanded compositions involving gures of saints. Appearing in the list of Giovanni Bellinis works that was published in Anchise Tempestinis monograph in 2000 are 36 half-gure depictions of the Virgin and Child and nine half-gure depictions with additional saints, as well as 31 attributed works on the same theme. The variations of body and head postures, of looks, of hands and of the setting with balustrade, landscape and curtain, along with variations of illumination, shadow and colour, combine to create an extraordinarily diversity using relatively few elements.
72 Giovanni Bellini, Virgin and Child (Rogers Madonna), 148590, wood. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
A New Genre
Marcantonio Michiel lists a painting by Andrea Mantegna as having been present in the home of the learned literary gure and later cardinal Pietro Bembo in Padua: The little painting on wood, which shows Our Lady bringing the child to be circumcised, comes from the hand of Mantegna, and was executed as a half-gure.36 The work by Mantegna to which Michiel refers has long been identied with the Presentation in the Temple (illus. 75) in Berlin, although the support consists of nely woven canvas, while Michiel explicitly mentions wood. This unexplained difculty should not be neglected, for Michiels notation might well refer to a repetition by Mantegna. Visible in the picture in Berlin on a dark background and set in a painted marble frame are four half-gures of saints and the heads of two individuals, one male and one female, on either side of the group. Mary, shown in prole, supports her right elbow on the lower part of the frame and embraces the tightly swaddled infant Jesus, who seems to stand on a green cushion. The high priest Simeon holds one hand under the feet of the child, ready to receive him. Between the high priest and Jesus is a small, elderly man, recognizable as Joseph. It has been proposed that the two individuals to the left and right should be identied respectively as a self-portrait of the artist and a portrait of Niccolosia Bellini. This would make it tempting to regard this painting as a votive image connected with either a rst or a difcult birth, which would suggest a dating of 1455.37 The Pinacoteca Querini Stampalia in Venice owns a panel (illus. 76) containing half-gures on the same theme. The group of saints was copied after Mantegna, but the contemporary witnesses have been multiplied: to the left we see two women, to the right two young men. Giovanni Bellini who is generally regarded as the paintings author omitted the painted marble frame, and positioned his gural group behind a wide parapet of green breccia marble. None of the gures in Bellinis painting has a halo. The four additional gures have been associated with the names of the Bellini family in Venice and identied as Gentile and Giovanni, Niccolosia and the mother of Giovanni.38
overleaf: 73 Giovanni Bellini, Virgin and Child (Morelli Madonna), c. 148590, wood. Galleria dellAccademia Carrara, Bergamo. 74 Giovanni Bellini, Virgin and Child with Seraphim, c. 148590, wood. Galleria dellAccademia, Venice.
75 Andrea Mantegna, Presentation in the Temple, c. 1454/55, wood. Gemldegalerie, Berlin.
Mantegnas painting in Berlin is the rst known example of a halfgure composition with a narrative element. Compared with a painting containing entire gures, action, bodily movement and the rendering of the setting have been reduced to a minimum.39 Expanded, on the other hand, is the breadth of physiognomic expressiveness. The infant Jesus gazes upwards with an expression of lament, while the face of Joseph expresses profound disquiet or agitated concern. The high priest knits his brows, while Marys demeanour, in contrast, is tranquil and gentle. The onlookers in the picture are neither integrated into the action nor emotionally involved. Mantegna does, however, establish contact between the space of the image and that of the beholder: the aesthetic boundary of the painted marble frame is emphasized to an extraordinary degree, which makes the projection at the centre of the narrative involving the cushion, Marys hands, Simeon and the feet of the child all the more conspicuous. In Mantegnas version, to a lesser degree in Bellinis reshaping, it is apparently a question of the emotional integration of the viewer. The model provided by Mantegna was taken up by Giovanni Bellini and transformed into a successful new genre. Only on one occasion, in the Adoration of the Kings of circa 150005, did Mantegna return to the half-gure, but Bellini and his workshop converted the genre into a permanent branch of production, one that would also be exploited by imitators and successors.40 Exclusively religious subjects were offered, among which the Presentation and the Circumcision were Giovanni Bellinis favourite subjects, various versions of which have survived. There are numerous versions of the Presentation in the Temple with ve gures, as well as of the Circumcision (illus. 77).41 Since it has
proved impossible to identify the original among these numerous variants, we must content ourselves with the assumption that in these two cases Giovanni Bellinis original or primary version has been lost, and that the surviving exemplars are replicas, workshop replicas or copies. The heyday of the popularity of narrative paintings involving halfgures among Roman collectors was reached around 1600 with the achievements of Caravaggio.42 While seventeenth-century collectors were greatly fond of half-gure narratives, there exists no conrmatory evidence for a similar enthusiasm on the part of contemporary clients following the introduction of this type by Mantegna and Bellini. In his important study Die Sammler (The Collector) of 1897, Jacob Burckhardt classied paintings of half-gured saints among domestic devotional images, but regarded those pictures that display scenes from the Passion as belonging to the domestic sphere rather than serving devotional functions. With great circumspection, Burckhardt sought to draw a distinction between the use that might be made of narrative images and the kind of attention normally bestowed upon images of the Virgin with additional gures of saints, among which he explicitly singles out the celebrated picture by Giovanni Bellini in the
76 Giovanni Bellini, Presentation in the Temple, c. 146065, wood. Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice.
77 Giovanni Bellini, Circumcision, about 1500, canvas. National Gallery, London.
academy (illus. 78). Giovanni Bellini is classied by Burckhardt as the central master of this very large group of splendid images, displaying related contents and styles, which have been scattered throughout the world, that is to say, domestic devotional images. On the whole, Burckhardt was extraordinarily enthusiastic about these pictures and about Titians subsequent development of this type, praising its character, the pride of Venice, which often attained its greatest maturity here.43 In his book Icon to Narrative, which rst appeared in 1965, Sixten Ringbom deals comprehensively with the new genre of the half-gure image established by Mantegna and Bellini, images that present scenes without genuinely elaborating their narrative elements. With Bellini in particular, Ringbom notes the reduction of the action and the tranquil compositional type, which promotes elevated sentiments. Moreover, the Presentation in the Temple and the Circumcision were favoured subjects in popular devotional literature all the way from Jacopo da Voragines Legenda aurea to the Meditationes of the Pseudo-Bonaventura.44 By bringing these saintly protagonists to life, and through their portrait-style presence and tranquilly spiritual expressions, these gures directly address the sentiments and emotions of the beholder. Towards the end of the 1460s, in his important Piet (illus. 83), now in the Brera in Milan, Bellini developed the emotional response of the beholder
into a virtual interaction between viewer and image. The uplifting function of half-gure images of the Presentation and Circumcision did not hinder his artistic performance, as seen in the brilliant rendering of precious garments, which depends upon Netherlandish painting.
78 Giovanni Bellini, Virgin and Child with Sts Catherine and Mary Magdalen, 148590, wood. Galleria dellAccademia, Venice.
The Protection of Venice

On 30 August 1486 Agostino Barbarigo was elected doge, and thereby succeeded his deceased brother Marco, who had assumed ofce just one year earlier. Shortly after his election, Marco had appointed his brother Agostino as Procuratore di S. Marco, providing him with one of the highest ofces in the Venetian Republic.45 Upon his election as doge, Agostino Barbarigo, in accordance with his obligations, commissioned a votive image at his own expense in order to maintain the Virgins protection of Venice. His choice fell on Giovanni Bellini, and the result was a large-format painting (illus. 79) showing the Virgin enthroned with the Holy Child, St Mark, who recommends the doge shown kneeling before the throne to the Virgin, and St Augustine, the doges patron saint. The Virgins throne stands upon the pedestal with two steps, whose front displays the Barbarigo coat of arms along with the corno dogale the horn-shaped biretta of the doge. Standing at the left and right of the Virgins throne are two angels with musical instruments. The scene is framed by a wide red curtain that has been drawn to the sides; the group of the Virgin and Child is further distinguished by a green baldachin. The setting is an outdoor terrace enclosed by a balustrade. To the left, the view is delimited by a nearby wood, while to the right the
79 Giovanni Bellini, Votive Picture of Doge Agostino Barbarigo, 1486/87, canvas. Church of S. Pietro Martire, isle of Murano, Venice.
landscape stretches out into the far distance beyond a fortication with many towers and a stepped mountain. Against segments of the cloud-lled sky and the red curtain hover four groups of cherubs. It can be deduced that after 1478 Gentile and Giovanni Bellini had executed a votive image for Doge Giovanni Mocenigo (illus. 80).46 Mocenigo had occupied the ofce of the doge from 1478 to 1485, and was the immediate predecessor of Marco Barberigo. The votive image for Doge Mocenigo retains the traditional asymmetrical arrangement of the enthroned Virgin and Child. The doge kneels down on the right-hand side of the picture with the saint after whom he is named, John the Baptist, standing behind him. The enthroned Virgin is set on the left-hand side, and the image terminates with St Christopher and the infant Jesus. The gure of Christopher is a citation from the polyptych of St Vincent Ferrer, while the enthroned Virgin and Child is similar to a painting by Gentile, and the doge, shown in prole, corresponds to a portrait by him. At rst glance, this composition, assembled from pre-existing motifs, seems to be a workshop production, but it does not seem likely that Gentile and Giovanni would have failed personally to conceive a prestigious work intended for the new doge. It seems likely that Gentile, in his capacity as Pictor nostri Domini, began to work on this votive picture shortly after Giovanni Mocenigos election in 1478, and that Giovanni Bellini completed the work after his brothers departure in 1479 for Constantinople, where he attended the court of the Sultan.47 In the painting known as the Votive Picture of Doge Agostino Barbarigo, Giovanni Bellini situates the enthroned Virgin and Child at the centre of the
image beneath a baldachin, emphasizing the pictures bilateral symmetry by means of the red curtain, the two music-making angels, the groups of cherubs and the lateral sections of landscape and sky. The colours and positions of the other gures impart a subtle dynamic quality to this symmetrical arrangement. St Augustine is shown standing and wearing a splendid cloak of white damask with gold and red. His counterpart opposite is the kneeling doge, who wears a gold habit with an ermine cloak and an extremely precious version of the corno, the so-called zogia, worn by the doge at his coronation, and annually at Easter for the procession to the church of San Zaccaria. Behind the kneeling doge wearing coronation robes stands St Mark, who repeats Marys colours. The asymmetry of this votive picture was readapted already by this doges successor, Leonardo Loredan.48 Unusual for a votive picture for a doge is the inclusion of the two angels with musical instruments. The motive for their inclusion was probably Agostino Barbarigos fondness for music, a trait that should be seen in the context of the growing prestige associated with music and of the multiplication of musical activities at Italian cultural centres and courts during the nal decades of the fteenth century.49 On 19 September 1485, when Marco Barberigo was still a procurator of San Marco, Pietro de Fossis, born in France or Flanders, was appointed as a singer and awarded an exceptionally high annual salary at the Cappella ducale in San Marco. In 1491 Agostino Barberigo appointed the singer as the rst maestro of the Cappella ducale, in a bid to engage in competition with the popes Cappella ponticia in Rome. With the appointment of Pietro de Fossis, the ofce of maestro di Cappella
80 Giovanni and Gentile Bellini, Votive Picture of Doge Mocenigo, after 1478, canvas. National Gallery, London.
ducale gained a high level of prestige, which explains his annual salary of 70 ducats, while Giovanni Bellini and Alvise Vivarini received 10 ducats fewer, the same number as the organist of San Marco.50 It was recently proposed that this painting, dated 1488, was found in the doges private residence in Venice during his lifetime, and that, based on the provisions of his will, it was moved from there to the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Murano.51 Based on a more precise examination of this document, however, the identication of the rst-named location must be rejected.52 In his detailed will, Agostino Barbarigo specied that the large pala should be deposited in the convent of Santa Maria degli Angeli, where it was to be set up on the high altar of the church with the appropriate ornamentation, that is to say, surrounded by a frame with gures. The current location of the panel is given as la crozola de el palazzo, and Barbarigo explicitly forbids his heirs, his son-in-law, his daughter and grandchildren from setting up the panel in his large house (la caxa granda nostra) or at any other location besides the high altar of the church in the above-named convent. The palazzo named by Barbarigo in his will can only be the Doges Palace, which must be distinguished from his own large house opposite the church of San Trovaso.53 This accords with contemporary Venetian idioms, which were for the most part followed well into the eighteenth century: the term palazzo was reserved for the Doges Palace, while private homes, regardless of their degrees of splendour, were always referred to by the terms casa or casa grande (house or large house). The relevant passage in Agostino Barbarigos will reads: At the same time, we specify that our large Pala, which is found in la crozola of the palace should be sent to the above-mentioned cloister of the S. Maria degli Angeli. And so that the gure of the Madonna with Angels should be as suitable as possible to being set up on the large altar of a church, our commissary should have them ornamented, both below and on the sides, in a way that is satisfactory to ourselves and to our venerable Madonna. And the more quickly this picture is set up in that location, the sooner we can hope to have the divine Virgin Mary as our intercessor with our most exalted Creator and God. And under no circumstances should either our son-in-law, our daughter, or our grandchildren entertain the idea of bringing [this picture] to our large house, nor to any other place besides the high altar of that highly devout and religious cloister.54 It is possible that the shrewd Agostino Barbarigo requested a symmetrical votive picture from Giovanni Bellini in order to ensure that he could reuse the image for himself once its titular function for Venice no longer stood in the foreground. A prototype for this image may have been supplied by the Virgin and Child with Saints executed by Paolo Veneziano for the tomb of the deceased Doge Francesco Dandolo in Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in 1339. Visible in a lunette above the sarcophagus, which rests on two consoles set
high above the oor, is a centrally positioned painting of an enthroned Virgin and Child framed by St Francis and St Elizabeth, who commends the doge and his wife to the Virgin with highly affecting intercessory gestures. Barbarigos motive for bequeathing Bellinis picture to Murano, where it was to be set up on an altar, must have been the fact that in Venice it was not permissible to insert portraits into altar paintings at least until this interdiction was transgressed in 1526 by the Pesaro family, which acquired a combination of votive picture and Sacra conversazione from Titian for their tomb in the Frari. Among the typological preconditions for Titians Pesaro Madonna is Bellinis Votive Picture of Doge Agostino Barbarigo. Seen on the left-hand portion of the picture behind the balustrade is a little copse, and above it a cloud-lled sky. On the right is a terrace and a balustrade that is occupied by three birds: a partridge, a heron and a peacock. Behind appear a bare tree and a castle with many towers on a hillside. In the far distance is another castle atop a hill. The castle on the rst hill resembles the one seen through the throne window of the Pesaro altarpiece, whose resemblance to the Rocca di Gradara near Pesaro has long been noted. That these pictures are actually meant to depict the fortication seized from the Malatesta by Alessandro Sforza in 1463 can be dismissed. As Deborah Howard has correctly noted, the repeated use of the same fortication permits the conclusion that it belonged to the workshops general repertoire of backgrounds.55 The signicance of this fortication in both cases can be deduced from the Piet with Two Angels (illus. 59) in the Museo Correr, whose background includes such a multi-towered, rising structure, which is meant to depict the walls surrounding the city of Jerusalem. On this basis, we could accept that in both the Pesaro altarpiece, with the Coronation of the Virgin as its subject, and in the Votive Picture of Doge Agostino Barbarigo the castle structure is intended as an allegory of the Heavenly Jerusalem. According to a fourteenth-century hymn, the castrum muris institum (the fortication surrounded by a wall) was among Marys attributes.56 The symbolic dimension is also opened up by the birds: the peacock whose esh was imperishable, according to St Augustine, announces the Annunciation; the partridge or rock partridge alludes to the Imitation of Christ, the heron to the love of Christ, and the goldfinch on the left-hand side to the Passion.57
iv
Invention
Emotions
Three half-gures appear on the small panel of Giovanni Bellinis rst Piet with the Virgin and St John (illus. 81), executed before 1460 and currently on view in the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo.1 Mary and John have been set against a dark background behind a narrow parapet on either side of the dead Christ. Mary, whose eyes and down-turned mouth express innite sorrow, gazes at her sons head, which is crowned with thorns, while holding one of his bent arms in her own right hand. To the right, John supports one of Christs elbows with one hand while bringing the other up to his face in a gesture of lamentation, not unlike that of Donatellos lamenting angel. Johns gaze is directed towards the spectator, and he expresses his emotional state by his furrowed brows, partially lowered eyelids, tears owing down the sides of his nose and half-opened mouth. The conguration of the dead Christ together with Mary and John was familiar to fourteenth-century Italy. In 1345 Paolo Veneziano had executed a protective cover intended for everyday use a Pala feriale for the Pala dOro in San Marco in Venice. It comprises fourteen scenes, with the Man of Sorrows at the centre of the upper register and Mary and John at his sides.2 For his own composition, Giovanni Bellini reused models that had been varied repeatedly ever since Giusto da Menabuois altarpiece of circa 1370 in the Baptistery in Padua. The usual location of the Piet with three gures of this triadic icon, was the multi-panel altar retable. In works such as the Praglia polyptych by Antonio Vivarini and Giovanni dAlemagna, now in the Brera in Milan, we nd a new version of the triadic icon at the centre of the upper register. In his St Luke polyptych, executed in 1453 for the church of Santa Giustina in Padua, Andrea Mantegna set a unied scene consisting of three separate panels and including half-gures of Christ, Mary and John the Evangelist at the centre of the upper register, directly above the panel showing St Luke.3 The Piet with the Virgin and St John, with SS Mark and Nicholas (illus. 82) was probably painted in the early 1460s for the chapel of San Nicola in the Doges Palace.4 This painting on canvas was removed from its original location in 1525. In 1571 it was enlarged and painted over, and was nally
opposite: 81 Giovanni Bellini, Piet with the Virgin and St John, before 1460, wood. Galleria dellAccademia Carrara, Bergamo.
95
82 Giovanni Bellini, Piet with the Virgin and St John, with SS Mark and Nicholas, c. 146065, canvas. Palazzo Ducale, Venice.
restored and reduced in size in 1948. Attempts at determining its authorship or date of execution are complicated by its ruinous condition. A collaboration between Gentile and Giovanni for this commission for the Doges Palace cannot be ruled out.5 In comparison to the rst attempt in Bergamo, the expression of anguish, in which the dead Christ is also involved, has been heightened to the point of exaggeration. The mouths of all three gures are opened as though they are crying out, and the result is a visible song of lamentation in three voices. Giovanni Bellinis reformulation of the triadic icon that has received the greatest attention is the Piet (illus. 83) in Milan. It takes up the motif of Christs downward-falling arm that extends forward, and that of the gure of John turning away, while restricting the motif of the cry of sorrow to John. The inventory of 1795 of the collection of Marchese Luigi Sampieri in Bologna lists this painting among works that were displayed in the second room of the gallery: Nostro Signore, la Beata Vergine, ed un Appostolo. Di Giovanni Bellini. In Tavola, mezza gura.6 In 1811 the Piet entered the Pinacoteca of the Accademia di Brera in Milan as a gift from Eugne Beauharnais, Viceroy of Italy and Principe di Venezia, adding to the collection of Venetian paintings assembled between 1808 and 1809, primarily through conscation.7 The Piet in the Brera shows Christ as the Man of Sorrows between Mary and John the Evangelist. He is depicted as a standing half-gure in a sarcophagus whose anterior wall serves the function of a parapet a parapetto. On this new presentation of the subject, Roger Fry writes: The subject in this form is derived by Giovanni from Jacopo; but the changes introduced by the son are signicant of his greater depth of feeling. Fry was aware of no other Piet that rendered the tenderness and intimacy of grief to a comparable degree, and emphasized the new humanization in the expression of divine suffering: The sorrow which Bellini has here conceived is divine only in its excess of humanity.8 In contrast to all of the visual references for Bellinis composition cited here, his three gures are shown under a naturalistic sky and in front of a landscape background. As in the Imago pietatis (illus. 58) in the Museo Poldi Pezzoli, the light that here endows the gures especially
the body of Christ with a relief-like three-dimensionality is that of evening. Unlike that image, here the landscape opens towards the city in the distance only on the side of the Virgin, while the sky shades off from the bright streaks of twilight into a leaden grey covering suggestive of the Sirocco. Except for his loincloth, the body of the dead Christ is naked, and his enervation is vividly depicted through his head, which sinks to the side, his slack arm and crumpled left hand. The Virgin brings her face into tender proximity to her sons head, which is inclined towards her own, while holding his right hand by the wrist at breast height in partial conformity to the Byzantine type of the Imago pietatis. John holds Christs body in his outspread left hand, but turns his head away in an expression of suffering and lamentation. Christs left arm hangs downwards, while his folded, powerless hand lies on the edge of the sarcophagus. Afxed directly beneath his bent ngers is the cartellino with its Latin inscription. In 1985 Hans Belting called attention to the signicance of this inscription, whose interpretation entails considerable difculties.9 Two different translations are possible. The rst would be: Every time the swollen eyes elicit lamentations from [the beholder], this
83 Giovanni Bellini, Piet, c. 146570, wood. Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan.
Invention | 97
84 Giovanni Bellini, Raffael Zovenzoni, c. 1474, parchment. Biblioteca Trivulziana, Milan.
work of Bellini Giovanni could [and can] weep. A second and more grammatically correct translation would read: Since these swollen eyes consistently elicit lamentations from [the beholder ], this work by Bellini Giovanni had [and still has] the power to weep [itself].10 Since Belting, various interpretations have been proposed. Despite philological disagreements, all agree that the inscription formalizes a repeatable interaction between image and beholder, according to which the latter evidently erupts in lamentation in the face of the paintings expression of suffering (the swollen eyelids), while in turn Bellinis image as a whole is said to be capable of breaking into tears in response to the viewer. The inscription demonstrates the mode of interaction that was established above with reference to the devotional image.
The inscription was derived from an elegy by the Latin poet Sextus Propertius (5015 bc) from Umbria. The penultimate elegy in the rst book consists of a ctive inscription for the cenotaph of his friend Gallus, who fell in the Perusian War in 41 bc after Caesars assassination. In this ctitious speech, the deceased warrior turns to the poet with the question: Why do you turn with swollen eyes away from my lament?11 While the rst edition of the Elegies of Propertius appeared in Venice in 1472 in a volume that included the Elegies of Tibullus and the Carminae of Catullus, the Elegies of Propertius had in fact already been diffused in numerous manuscripts during the fourteenth and fteenth centuries.12 One of these was in the possession of Petrarch, who in 1362 resolved to bequeath his library to the city of Venice, thereby providing the citys wise and noble burghers with perpetual delectation.13 It has yet to be determined who composed the inscription for Bellinis Piet and who commissioned the work. Among the potential authors is the poet Raffael Zovenzoni from Trieste (illus. 84), who was portrayed by Giovanni Bellini around 1474 for the collection of Zovenzonis Latin poems assembled for Giovanni Hinderbach, bishop of Trent.14 Zovenzoni, born in 1434, was about the same age as Bellini, and circa 1474 was living in the parish of Saint Bartolomeo in Venice, thus in the painters vicinity. Zovenzoni praised Bellini for his skill as a portraitist, comparing him with Apelles, the most celebrated painter of antiquity. But this poet must be excluded as a possible author of the inscription for Bellinis Piet, since he would surely have been capable of formulating a Latin text correctly. In 1971 Michael Baxandall proposed identifying Andrea Mantegnas engraving of the Entombment (illus. 85) with a master sheet that follows Leon Battista Albertis theory of historia. The indications for this are the number of gures, the depiction of the dead body, the sense of corporeal and spiritual movement and the festaiuolo in the form of John, who suggests emotion to
85 Andrea Mantegna, The Entombment, c. 1470, engraving. Eidgenssische Technische Hochschule, Zrich (Graphische Sammlung).
Invention | 99
the beholder.15 In 1985 Hans Belting interpreted Bellinis Piet as a countermodel to a Venetian interpretation of Albertis theory of art. Instead of dramatic effects, Bellini attempts to create lyrical depth with his close-up view of animate or dead individuals, and with the inscription attempts to rival classical poetry.16 In his treatise on painting, Alberti asserts that the emotional effect of the image on the beholder constitutes the highest aim of painting. For the transmission of affects from the depicted gures to the mind of the beholder, Alberti is oriented towards remarks on classical rhetoric, borrowing from Cicero and Quintilian the notion that the physical expressiveness of the speaker in the actio is more important for emotional effect than words, since gesture and physiognomic expression are immediately comprehensible. With Horaces Ars poetica, Alberti invoked the natural correspondence between individuals and the exhibited affects. Hence Alberti formulated the following precondition for the transmission of affects: if the beholder is to be moved, then the depicted gures must clearly display their own mental agitation outwardly. Since such mental agitation can be perceived only through outward bodily movements, the painter must be as familiar with the movements of the body as he is with the physical expression of such inner agitation. But Alberti also demanded that all the bodies in an image must move in concert according to a certain mutual harmony, and that all the objects in the image must correspond to the events transpiring there.17 The concept of concinnitas, introduced by Alberti for the composition of gures and for colours, paves the way for the idea that emotional expression ought not to be restricted to individual gures, but must instead encompass the image as a whole. The inscription on Bellinis Piet combines this idea with the notion of an interaction between image and beholder. The inscription, however, not only enhances the relationship between image and beholder.18 Rather, it introduces a new idea into the realm of aesthetic lifelikeness, one that has been understood since Alberti in relationship to the emotional or physical movements of depicted gures, and one that was described by Nicholas of Cusa as the alert and watchful gaze of an icon of Christ.19 By analogy with the aesthetic lifelikeness of a depicted gure, the inscription asserts that the image as a whole Bellinis opus is capable of bursting into tears.
Poetry
In the Dialogo di pittura of 1548 by the Venetian painter Paolo Pino, a Venetian, Lauro, and a Florentine, Fabio, discuss the seemingly antiquated question of whether painting should be regarded as one of the mechanical or one of the liberal arts. In favour of categorizing painting as one of the four mathematical liberal arts (geometry, arithmetic, music and astronomy), Fabio submits a far-reaching rationale, following this with a bold assertion concerning the art of painting:
[Painting] is a type of poetry which not only compels belief, but also renders sayings visible: the heavens, emblazoned by the sun, the moon and the stars, the rain, snow and fog created by the wind, the water and the earth; it allows us to enjoy the manifold phenomena of springtime, the beauty of summer, and makes us huddle together before depictions of the cold, damp winter season.20 Fabio denes painting as the imitation of all natural phenomena, and subdivides it into disegno, invenzione and colorire: drawing, invention and colouring. The author, Pino, attributes to Fabio the contention that painting is poetry, further specifying that invention is rst of all the ingenious, praiseworthy and rare capacity for discovering poetry and histories. Secondly, invention also encompasses the capacity for differentiating, ordering and dividing well those things said by others, and furthermore for harmonizing the actions of the gures in relation to the scene, while embellishing the work with a great diversity of contrasting gures, animals and perspectives. In circumscribing invention, Fabio uses Albertis exposition on composition contained in his second book on the art of painting.21 This is followed once again by the assertion that painting is poetry. This assertion is no longer based on the imitation of things, but instead on invention, which enables things to appear that do not actually exist: And painting, hence, is actually poetry, meaning a form of invention which allows things to appear that do not actually exist.22 In the rst chapter of his book on painting, written in Padua around 1400 and primarily concerned with the craft of painting, Cennino Cennini makes several brief yet fundamental remarks on the status of the art of painting, on the demands made on the painter and on his freedom. Painting, he says, is based on handicraft and fantasy, since it is a question of discovering unseen or never before seen things and xing them with the labour of the hands in order to display that which does not exist. For this reason, painting must be accorded a secondary position after science, and crowned together with poetry. From this Cennini derives the painters claim to be entitled to the same freedom enjoyed by the poet, who connects and conjoins things according to his fancy: In the same way the painter is given freedom to compose a gure, standing, seated, half-man, half-horse, as he pleases, according to his imagination (fantasia).23 The assertion of this free conjoining of man and horse to create a centaur runs directly counter to the Ars poetica of Horace, who, while attributing the same audacity to both poet and painter, rejected such ludicrous inventions with reference to the example of the chimera. This expansion of freedom in the direction of amusement and arbitrariness is well known, but more important is the fact that Cennini relates this artistic freedom rst and foremost to compositions with gures, a realm for which the painter is responsible.24 For Alberti, who always insisted on the observation and imitation of nature by the artist, invention and imitation are not antipodes. With regard to invention, he named the following preconditions: the painter should
Invention | 101
86 Nicoletto da Modena, Apelles, c. 1507, engraving. Kunstmuseum Basel (Kupferstichkabinett).
master geometry (the foundation of painting), while being sufciently well educated to enjoy the company of poets and rhetoricians, who can be helpful in composing pictures. Alberti sees the success of a painting principally dependent upon inventio, which can also give pleasure without being translated into painting, and for which Lucians description of Calumny by Apelles serves as an examplar. Apelles lost painting is said to have surpassed this description in grace and charm. On Apelles invention, Alberti based the prestige and fame of the painter in relation to the man of letters. This posed the question of the position of rhetoric (or poetry) and painting, and the status of their exponents. This problem was taken up by Nicoletto da Modena in his engraving Apelles (illus. 86), which has been dated circa 1507. In a landscape with ruins, the most celebrated painter of antiquity stands before his monument, which is decorated by a pair of broken columns, and meditates over a panel containing geometric gures. The inscription on the base includes his name and refers to him as a mute poet and formerly of great fame: poeta tacentes a tempo svo ciliberimvs. Below the inscription are a pair of compasses and a pot containing paintbrushes. The laurel wreath of the poeta laureatus claims for Apelles the rank and distinction of a poet; the geometric gures allude to the scientic basis of his art; and the angles and compasses conrm the precision of such work in a way that is related to Filarete and Pacioli; while the broken columns, nally, testify to the transitoriness of earthly might just as at the tomb of Archimedes in Syracuse.25 To be sure, Giovanni Bellini staked out no claim to the rank of poet, in contrast to his brother-in-law Mantegna, who embellished his bronze selfportrait, intended for his sepulchral chapel, with a laurel wreath, and through its tondo form made it into an imago clipeata, the depiction of a celebrated personality.26 In his book of 1648, containing Mantegnas self-portrait with a laurel wreath (illus. 87), Carlo Ridol took up Mantegnas claim. Highly illuminating for Bellinis position in relation to the question of invention are his lengthy discussions with Isabella dEste (illus. 88) concerning a painting for her studiolo in Mantua. The mistress of Mantua wanted to assemble paintings by the most celebrated painters of Italy in her studiolo, adding them to works by her court painter Mantegna, who had already executed his Parnassus (illus. 89) and Minerva Chasing the Vices from the Garden of Virtue.27 These almost seamlessly documented negotiations between the marchesa and her agents and Giovanni Bellini have been analysed many times.28 Participating in these communications, which lasted more than nine years, were (besides the marchesa and Giovanni Bellini) the agent Michele
87 Jacob Picinus, Andrea Mantegna, etching and engraving, from Carlo Ridolfi, Le Meraviglie dellArte (Venice, 1648). 88 Leonardo da Vinci, Isabella dEste, c. 1500, pastel. Muse du Louvre, Paris.
89 Andrea Mantegna, Parnassus, c. 1497, canvas. Muse du Louvre, Paris.
Vianello and the instrument-maker Lorenzo da Pavia, both in Venice, as well as the poet and courtier Pietro Bembo. In 1496 Isabella dEste learned that Giovanni Bellini was willing to accept a contract for her studiolo. Yet nothing occurred during the ensuing ve years. In March 1501 Isabella was informed by her agent Vianello that Bellini who was currently preoccupied with work for the Doges Palace and other commissions had given assurances that he would execute a storia according to the instructions of the marchesa within the coming year and a half. In June 1501, after the marchesa had succeeded in having the price reduced from 150 to 100 ducats and the deadline for delivery shortened to one year, Bellini received a down payment of 25 ducats and instructions concerning the paintings subject matter. As in the case of commissions awarded to Pietro Perugino, these instructions must have consisted of detailed descriptions of the prescribed subject, referred to by Isabella as la poetica nostra invenzione (our poetic invention), and intended for translation into painted form without alteration. Perugino even received his detailed descriptions accompanied by a small sketch, and with an explicit injunction to add absolutely nothing of his own invention. On the other hand, he was permitted to omit some of the ancillary gures should the available space prove too restricted for such a large number.29 With these prescriptions, the noble client created serious difculties for her artist, and even endangered the commission.30 Still in the same month, her agent reported that Giovanni Bellini, while indeed an assiduous worker, had found that he could not make a good picture from such a bad storia, and feared that in the end his picture would be vulnerable both to the judgements of the marchesa and to comparisons with the work of Mantegna. The agent reported that Bellini believed he could serve his mistress much better if she would grant him the freedom to paint what he pleased. At this point, the marchesa withdrew her own subject and expressed her approval: the painter could depict a history or an antique fable according to his own invention, which was to include something from antiquity and to be of ner signicance. In August 1501 the agent Lorenzo da Pavia sent word to Mantua explaining that Bellini had promised una bela fantasia (a beautiful invention) for the painting, but had not yet begun work. At the same time, the agent recommended that the marchesa commission a painting from Perugino during her stay in Florence, since Bellini was in the habit of working very slowly.31 In Peruginos case, Isabella imposed a pictorial invention that had been elaborated by her adviser Paride da Ceresara; but Bellini had succeeded in compelling her to withdraw her own proposed programme. Bellini would not agree to be conned to realizing a pre-established subject. This confrontation pertained to the assignment of responsibility for inventing pictorial ideas, to the conceptualization of the creative process and the status of the artist in relation to the client.32 Bellini regarded the invention of compositional programmes to be the task of the painter, and he was able to enforce this claim in relation to Isabella dEste because, in contrast to his brother-inlaw, he was not a subject of Mantua, but a cittadino of the Republic of Venice. Meanwhile, Isabella saw herself not only as Bellinis client and social superior,
90 Lorenzo Costa, The Coronation of a Poetess, 15046, canvas. Muse du Louvre, Paris.
but also as a poetess and tenth Muse. In 1504 her continuing difculties with Giovanni Bellini prompted her to look around for other artists. Recommended to her was Lorenzo Costa from Ferrara, who was active in Bologna. In accordance with the prescriptions of the client, he painted his Coronation of a Poetess (illus. 90) for Isabellas studiolo. Paride da Ceresaras invenzione for this work has not survived. Costas picture shows a broad landscape divided into two zones: on the right-hand side, as the setting for the coronation, an elevated grove, a garden of harmony, and on the left-hand side, on the lower level, a joust between knights, as well as a ship anchored in an inlet. The coronation group is symmetrically ordered, with Venus, Cupid and the poeta laureata at the centre. Among the members of a group arranged in a circle are a female musician (Harmonia) and a musician with stringed instruments, as well as Pythagoras and mythological gures such as Diana with her bow and arrow to the right and Cadmus with his halberd to the left.33 In 2004 Stephen Campbell proposed identifying the crowned poet as Sappho, who had enjoyed favour with Boccaccio and Poliziano as the inventor of poetry and of the mixolydian mode, and called attention towards supposed parallels between this poet and Isabella dEste. The marchesa was so disappointed with Giovanni Bellini that, on 15 September 1502, she wrote to her agent Vianello that she was withdrawing her order for the studiolo picture, and instead wanted a presepio (Nativity) showing the Virgin and Child with SS Joseph and John the Baptist, along with the animals, that is, the ox and the donkey. Bellini declared his readiness to paint such a picture, and moreover in the same format and for the same price as the previously agreed-upon storia. Isabella would not agree to
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91 Giovanni Bellini, Virgin and Child with St John the Baptist and St Elisabeth, c. 1500, wood. Stdtische Galerie im Stdelschen Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt am Main.
this, since the new proposal involved fewer gures, and she offered him 40 or 50 ducats for a small-format painting intended for her bedchamber, specifying that he should feel free to deliver one of his latest Madonnas. Bellini was unwilling to combine the birth of Jesus with John the Baptist in accordance with Isabellas prescriptions, and instead offered to execute a painting in half-gures including the Virgin, the Child and John the Baptist, as well as a landscape and altra fantaxia, that is, including additional elements to be invented by the artist. Isabella agreed to this proposal, but also desired a St Jerome, explicitly authorizing le altre inventione (other inventions) according to the judgement of the artist, and xing the price at a non-negotiable 50 ducats, provided delivery proceeded promptly. Just ten days later, she expressed her desire for the presepio as well, while granting Bellini permission to omit John the Baptist.34 Two years later, not before issuing threats of serious sanctions, Isabella received a painting from Bellini, upon which she had 25 ducats sent to him. There is no question of a presepio, and the price of 50 ducats suggests that, in accordance with her understanding of 1502, she had received a Sacra conversazione in half-gures of the type that Giovanni Bellini and his workshop produced in numerous variants. The model may be identied with the versions in Frankfurt am Main (illus. 91) or Urbino,
92 Giovanni Bellini, Portrait of a Man (Pietro Bembo), 150005, wood. Royal Collection, London.
possibly executed around 1500, or with a version containing a larger number of invented accessories, such as the Virgin and Child with St John the Baptist and a Female Saint (Sacra Conversazione Giovanelli) (illus. 173), which is datable to circa 1505.35 In a letter dated 9 July 1504 Isabella promised to forgive the artist all of his affronts should his picture correspond to his fame, while refusing to renounce her intention of acquiring a presepio from Bellinis hand for her studiolo. Pietro Bembo (illus. 92), the learned courier and poet, was commissioned with the task of intervening with the painter. In January 1505 Bembo informed Isabella that the painter would be glad to serve her. With regard to the invenzione that was to be elaborated for the painter on commission from Isabella, Bembo stated that it must be adapted to the painters fantasia, for he was accustomed to di sempre vagare a sua voglia nelle pitture
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93 Giorgione or Titian, The Adoration of Shepherds (Allendale Nativity), 1505 / 10, wood. National Gallery of Art, Washington, dc.
(nding his way around his paintings according to his own pleasure). Bembo advised the marchesa, who still wanted to acquire a picture from Bellinis own hand for her studiolo, to address a friendly letter to the artist. Isabella followed his counsel, requesting an additional painting, expressing her agreement with the theme of the Nativity of Christ, and ceding to him all responsibility for the poetic invention.36 Whether or not Bellini actually fullled this commission remains unknown. It has been proposed that the Adoration of the Shepherds (the Allendale Nativity) (illus. 93), which is attributed to either Giorgione or Titian, should be regarded as a response to Bellinis painting of the Nativity of Christ for Isabella dEste.37 Even in relation to a noble client, and one whose husband, Francesco Gonzaga, occasionally served as military leader of the Serenissima, the Venetian Bellini, state painter of the Venetian Republic, was able to prevail in his respectful yet persistent expressed demands for control over artistic invention. He chose inattentiveness and tardiness as methods for indirectly conveying his position, but quite clearly expressed his judgement of the invention that was to be imposed on him. The instrument-maker Lorenzo da Pavia responded with incomprehension, regarding Bellini as incapable of painting istorie, although he was aware of the fact that Bellini had designed and executed storie for both the Scuola Grande di San Marco and the Doges Palace, and was still active with commissions for the palace. Apart from several scenes for predellas, none of Bellinis narrative paintings has survived. A design such as the one seen on paper in Berlin (illus. 94) could serve to investigate the verdict of incapacity. Shown here is an episode from the life of St Mark in Alexandria, in which a
cobbler, who has injured himself while working, is shown being healed by the saint.38 Lorenzo da Pavias attempt to attribute this invention to a poet indicates that in his judgement Bellini was incapable of inventing istoria. When Isabella and her agents referred to a storia or to an istoria, they meant a narrative or allegory taking a textual form. This colloquial notion coincided only partially with Albertis concept of historia, described by him as the ultimum et absolutum pictoris opus (the highest and most absolute work of the painter). Such a work resulted rst from art, which was entrusted to the hand of the artist, and which was subdivided into description, composition, illumination and colouration, and secondly from invention, which emerged from the painters ingenium. A work of this kind exercised classical effects on the beholder.39 The customary restriction of Albertis historia to pictorial narratives or to later history painting is unjustied. Instead, compositions with gures, architecture and landscape must be grouped under the category historia, dened as the painters great opus, which demands all of the art of his hand and all of the inventiveness of his ingenium. During the period when Giovanni Bellini asserted his artistic claims in relation to Isabella, he had Vettor Gambella execute his portrait medallion (illus. 24), whose reverse displays an owl and the motto virtvtis e[t] ingenii: perspicacity, strength and ingenium.
94 Giovanni Bellini (attrib.), St Mark Healing the Cobbler Ananias, c. 1485, pen on paper. Gemldegalerie Berlin.
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Song and Light

In the house of Taddeo Contarini in Venice in 1525, Marcantonio Michiel listed a series of extraordinary paintings. Contarini, who owned no precious objects besides paintings, could with justice be numbered with Alberti among the artis studiosi, the committed connoisseurs of art. In Contarinis possession were three paintings by Giorgione, two by Jacopo Palma il Vecchio, two by Giovanni Bellini, and an anonymous work from Milan and another from Brescia. One of the paintings by Bellini was a portrait of a woman, now lost; the other, which entered the Frick Collection in New York in 1915, depicts St Francis in the Desert (illus. 95). Of extraordinary interest is Michiels notation of 1525: The panel of St Francis in the wilderness, in oil, was the work of Giovanni Bellini, begun by him for Messer Giovanni Michiel, and it has a landscape close by, marvellously nished and studied.40
95 Giovanni Bellini, St Francis in the Desert, 147580, wood. Frick Collection, New York.
Apparently, Giovanni Michiel provided the initial commission, which was then passed along for reasons yet to be ascertained. Marcantonio Michiels designation of the subject, St Francis in the desert or wilderness, is remarkable, and Michiel used the expression paese to refer to the marvellous landscape, while Isabella dEste around 1500, for example, still used the lovely term luntani, meaning view into the distance. The word paese occurs often in Michiels descriptions of Venetian collections. In 1521, for example, he noted the presence of molte tavolette de paesi in the house of Cardinal Grimani, and in 1530, in the home of Gabriel Vendramin, he refers to Giorgiones Tempest as A small landscape, on canvas, with a thunderstorm, a gipsy, and a soldier, by the hand of Giorgio of Castelfranco.41 Michiel notwithstanding, the determination of the subject of Bellinis painting of St Francis in the desert encountered unexpected difculties.42 The reasons for this lay in its deviations from established Franciscan iconography. Millard Meiss summarizes his researches as follows: As an ecstatic St Francis in an extended landscape, Bellinis painting would thus seem to be both unprecedented and unique until a much later time.43 Meiss referred to the former high altarpiece for the church of San Francesco in Borgo Sansepolcro, commissioned from Sassetta (Stefano di Giovanni) in 1437, painted in Siena and installed by the artist in June 1444 in its intended setting.44 One side of the central panel of this altar shows an enthroned Virgin and Child surrounded by music-making angels; the other shows St Francis within a mandorla of angels, as he triumphs over the Vices with outstretched arms (illus. 96). The three subjugated Vices of Lasciviousness, Ire and Miserliness are complemented by three angels personifying Chastity, Obedience and Poverty hovering above the saint. Sassetta represents St Francis in Gloria.45 Meiss assumes that Bellinis painting depicts an episode from the saints life, which he tries to identify. An idea proposed by Kenneth Clark in 1949, that the saint is shown in the act of composing the Canticle to the Sun, is rejected by Meiss on the grounds that his pose is receptive rather than creative, and that the setting must be a hut in the vicinity of the convent of San Damiano outside Assisi. Bellini did not follow the prevailing representation of the stigmatization although earlier, in the predella of the high altarpiece for the church of San Francesco in Pesaro, he had adhered to the standard iconography, according to which Francis is shown kneeling before a hovering crucied seraph from which he receives the wounds in his hands (illus. 97). Brother Leo, conceived as an eyewitness, conventionally makes his status known with a gesture of astonishment. Instead, Bellini shows
96 Sassetta (Stefano di Giovanni), Stigmatization of St Francis, 143032, wood. National Gallery, London.
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97 Giovanni Bellini, Stigmatization of St Francis, 147075, wood. Museo Civico, Pesaro.
Leo reading, paying no attention to the miracle. Similarly, in both of the drawings in the two books now in Paris and London, Giovannis father, Jacopo, shows Brother Leo reading, but otherwise adheres to the traditional iconography with one exception: the radiance emitted by the seraph, which causes the stigmata to appear, is omitted (illus. 98).46 Meiss attempts to salvage the thesis that Bellinis painting of St Francis in the desert represents a stigmatization: [Bellini] took the bold step of symbolising a supernatural power in a Stigmatization not by a seraph but by a partly natural, partly unnatural radiation in the sky.47 Despite the fact that both the radiance and stigmata are missing, other scholars have attempted to support the thesis of a stigmatization by assuming that the seraph was present in a now apparently lost upper section of the picture.48 Numerous subse-
quent proposals have purported to identify a reference text for this scene from the wide-ranging literature on St Francis.49 Such endeavours overlook the fundamental question of whether or not this image can be traced back to textual sources at all, whether one or several. As a rule, iconographical analyses do not pose this question. Is it conceivable that a painting such as St Francis in the Desert was not invented on the basis of textual sources? Or could it be instead that texts played only a subsidiary role here, and that in this instance the primacy of the text assumed by iconography was reversed by Bellini? Can we concede the possibility that Bellini composed his St Francis on the basis of visual, and not textual precedents? A depiction of Francis in this pose was unprecedented: striding forwards with one outstretched leg and slightly outspread arms, the upper body arched backwards, the gaze directed upwards. This is a pose of reverence and pious surrender, but not of rapture. A similar if not in all respects identical pose is seen in Andrea Mantegnas Man of Sorrows in his St Luke altarpiece, which was set up in Santa Giustina in Padua 1454/5.50 Franciss attitude corresponds to that of the dead Christ in Michele Giambonos Piet (illus. 99) in New York, which dates from circa 1430. Christ, crowned with thorns, stands in a sarcophagus that is covered with a cloth, in front of the
98 Jacopo Bellini, Stigmatization of St Francis, 143055, brown ink, from Bellini book of drawings. Muse du Louvre, Paris.
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99 Michele Giambono, Piet, c. 1430, wood. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
beams of the cross and against a gold ground. His arms fall downwards in front of the sarcophagus, the palms turned outward. The crown of thorns and the blood from the wounds are rendered in plaster in three dimensions and painted. Flowing from the stigmata are thin threads of blood that are drawn towards the small gure of Francis, who kneels behind the sarcophagus. This is an unusual depiction of the stigmatization.51 Bellini shows St Francis in the attitude of such an Imago pietatis, thereby pointing out the similarity between Christ and the saint, who is depicted elsewhere displaying the stigmatization. Titian, who cites Bellinis Francis in his Madonna of the Pesaro Family (illus. 100) of 151926 for the Franciscan church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, has the saint assume the same pose in order to commend the family of Benedetto Pesaro to the infant Jesus.52 Titian reinterpreted Franciss pose in the context of an act of intercessio, of intercession, an act of speech. In an effort to interpret Franciss attitude, Jaynie Anderson cites a woodcut appearing in Franchinus Gaffurius Pratica musicae of 1512, which contains a gure with slightly outspread arms among the singers (illus. 101).53 This image demonstrates that a pose similar to the one assumed by St Francis could be used to depict someone who is singing. Since Bellinis St Francis has his mouth slightly open, it seems plausible to take up again the proposal that he is shown here singing, albeit without renewing the unveriable claim that he is intoning the Canticle of the Sun. Francis presents himself to the light of the sun, and Bellini depicts the presence of sunlight in this image: originating from a light source located outside the picture on the upper left, the sunlight falls on a laurel tree that bends inwards into the picture, and onto the town and fortress in the background, and onto the eld with the herd in the middle ground, while also illuminating the cliffs that tower above one another. The light falls without interruption onto the gure of the saint, clad in the habit of his order, onto the lectern with its book, and onto the deaths head, while also singling out the little pergola with its grapevines. The light falls in a similar way in all three versions of St Jerome in the Desert (illus. 102), among which the large version in Florence may have been executed during the same period as the New York St Francis, between 1475 and 1480. The layouts of both pictures the piled-up and layered cliffs on the right, the open landscape, the town, the mountain surmounted by a castle are closely related. But Jerome sits with his back to the light in a way that suitably illuminates the book he is reading, while St Francis faces the light in a broad landscape. For his presentation of Francis, Bellini actualized a variety of problems. One of these is the under-researched relationship between the optical and the
acoustic, between light and tone, through which both the painting and the beholder are carried to the limits of art and of perception. The problem was discovered by Bellini in the Piet in Milan and named in an inscription. He would never again be free of it. The other problem is the relationship between natural and transcendental light. This problem of conversion preoccupied Bellini subsequently in his Transguration and Annunciation. The third problem is the transcendence of the landscape, or actually, of the world vedute. This question is raised insistently in St Francis in the Desert. Plants, animals, the desert, the town, the castle: the objects contained in the picture are interwoven into a symbolic text about humility (the donkey), sinfulness (the grey heron), the Eucharist (the grapevines), redemption (the g tree), the Lords providence (the water that the bird drinks) and divine inspiration (the light), to the promise of the hereafter (in the form of the Heavenly Jerusalem). The view of the world offered by Bellinis singing St Francis bathed in light is permeated by signs that must be understood as religious symbols.
100 Titian, detail of St Francis from Madonna of the Pesaro Family, 151926, canvas. Church of S. Maria Gloriosa del Frari, Venice. 101 Singing Monks, woodcut from Franchino Gaffurio, Pratica Musicae (Venice, 1512).
The Transguration
The rst version of the Transguration (illus. 103) in the Museo Correr in Venice dates from around 1460, and was intended for a polyptych.54 The panel has been cut down above, and in the process a red patch from one of
overleaf: (left) 102 Giovanni Bellini, St Jerome in the Desert, 147580, wood. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. (right) 103 Giovanni Bellini, Transfiguration, about 1460, wood. Museo Civico Correr, Venice.
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104 Giovanni Bellini, Transfiguration, 1478/79, wood. Museo e Gallerie Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples.
the seraphs has remained. Christ in white robes stands on Mount Tabor between Moses and Elijah, while the apostles Peter, James and John rest on a strip of grass between two rocky steps. Visible on the lower step on the right is a tree stump, beside which a new branch grows upwards, bearing leaves. The foreground is divided between a meadow with blossoming owers and a pool with a rufed surface. Inscribed on the plaque is a verse from Job 19: 21: Miseremini.mei.saltem / vos.amici.mei (Have mercy on mine, have mercy on mine, my friend). The severed tree-trunk with its new growth, the water, the invocation of Job, who maintained his faith in the Redeemer through all adversity, suggest that Bellinis rst Transguration was in some way connected to a funeral.55 In a second version of The Transguration (illus. 104), which followed in 14789, Giovanni Bellini took extraordinary liberties with 900 years of iconographic tradition.56 He neglected the topographic element, referred to explicitly in St Marks Gospel (9: 1) as a high mountain (mons excelsus). In Bellinis painting, the setting for these events is a at area that is delimited on the right by a town, and on the left by buildings set atop a hill. The rocky barrier in front of the apostles and the cliffs rising on the right-hand side, contained by a fence,
refer symbolically to the wanderings of Jesus with his apostles, while at the same time closing off the picture space to beholders. A text on Moses scroll dates the Transguration of 14789 to the year 5239 of the Jewish calendar, that is, between September 1478 and October 1479. The inscription and its dating were decoded for the rst time on the encouragement of Meinolf Dalhoff.57 After the portrait of Jrg Fugger of 1474, the Transguration is the second dated painting by Bellini, and the sole dated work from the important second half of the 1470s.58 Its original destination is unknown. The horizontal format with the dimensions of 116 x 154 centimetres suggests neither a private nor a public function. The vertical Transguration (illus. 105) in Berlin, which measures 148 x 128 centimetres, originally stood on an altar endowed by Marin Zorzi in a choir chapel of the Venetian church of San Michele in Isola.59 In 1956 Edoardo Arslan proposed identifying the Transguration in Naples with a work by Giovanni Bellini, which was, at least according to a seventeenth-century document, found formerly in the chapel of the Fiocardo family in Vicenza Cathedral.60 In his last testament of 8 July 1467, the archdeacon Alberto Fiocardo specied, among other things, that the as yet unnished chapel that had been reserved for him in Vicenza Cathedral should be elaborately furnished with two monuments, bars that could be locked and polychrome marbles.61 This will, which in general attempts to provide for all foreseeable details, makes no mention of a painting. Battista Fiocardo, who had been named by Alberti as executor of his estate and as his heir, specied in his own will of 8 July 1484 that he wanted to be interred in a sepulchre designated for this purpose in the Capella Salvatoris that he himself had built in Vicenza Cathedral.62 Bellini alludes to a funereal context with the Mausoleum of Theoderic in Ravenna, visible in the background below Christs left arm. In 1641 the Transguration was entered in the inventory of the Farnese collection in Rome as a work of Giovanni Bellini.63 At the centre of the picture, dressed in white and assuming the posture of an orator, Christ stands with bent arms between Moses and Elijah, each of whom holds a scroll in one hand while using the other to declare his role as a witness. Only a few barely visible radial beams of light behind the clouds indicate the participation of heaven. The synoptic Gospels describe the transguration as an optical and acoustic phenomenon: Christs face is radiant like the sun, his clothes are luminous white, while a voice cries out from a cloud, identifying Jesus as the beloved son and demanding that his words be heeded. According to Luke 9: 32, the apostles fell asleep, and awoke to the sight of Jesus between the prophets, while the cloud struck terror into their hearts. In Matthew 17: 6 the youths fall onto their faces in fear, while in Mark 9: 6 they are confounded by the appearance of the cloud. The voice and the terror of the youths make it clear who is identifying Jesus here. In the second version of the Transguration, Bellini concentrates on the problematic of hearing and seeing: James, who is shown kneeling with one hand stretched out before him, gazing over his left shoulder, expresses terried
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106 Giovanni Bellini, Christ (fragment of a Transfiguration), 150005, wood. Galleria dellAccademia, Venice.
astonishment. Peter, who mirrors Jamess kneeling pose, gazes upwards in the direction of the cloud from which the voice resounds, which is located, however, outside the picture eld, somewhere above the beholder. John has raised himself from his reclining position, and reaches out with one hand, which, like Peters, is covered by his robes, up into the sky above. His gaze is directed neither at Jesus nor in the direction of the cloud, identifying him as being able to hear what is transpiring, yet unable to catch sight of it. Moses and Elijah, the pair of prophets, lower their gazes reverentially. Christ, in his luminous white robes, set in the sunlight-bathed landscape in
opposite: 105 Giovanni Bellini, Resurrection, 147580, wood. Gemldegalerie, Berlin.
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107 Giovanni Bellini, Fragment with signature, c. 150005, wood. Galleria dellAccademia, Venice.
front of bands of clouds, presents himself to the beholder to be recognized in his dual nature as a man who walks upon the earth yet at the same time reveals his divinity. Bellini manipulates the range of registers involving the opposition of and interdependency between the visual and the aural. First, he shows how the three apostles cannot see Christ, yet are able to hear the voice that emerges from the cloud. Second, he shows us the prophets, who can see Christ, but who look away from him out of deference. And third, the beholder of the image, who can neither enter the space of the picture nor hear the voice emanating from heaven, is able to gaze upon the transgured form of Christ, and to perceive that the apostles are caught up in the act of listening. The Naples painting stimulates the interaction of eye and ear, of eye and memory. The luminous Christ, his head wreathed in beams of light, presents himself as the lux mundi, the light of the world, as written in verse 8: 12 of St Johns Gospel, where Christ, prompting the indignation of the Pharisees, announces himself and promises his followers the light of life. At the same time, the landscape is set with symbolic motifs: to the left stands a severed tree that springs to new life, while Christ, situated in the middle distance, has been set against a ock of sheep and a city with a church and mausoleum; on the right is a fortied city, in front of which stands a bearded man who addresses a pagan. Of the third version of the Transguration, only two fragments have survived, both found today in the Galleria dellAccademia in Venice. They show the Face of Christ (illus. 106) and a stalk with buds and a cartellino bearing the revealing signature ioannes bellinvs me pinxit (Giovanni Bellini painted me) (illus. 107).64 In this form, seldom used by Bellini, the rhetorical image with its signature attests to its author, while in the form ioannes bellinvs.p. (where the p. stands for pinxit), used by Bellini in the Morelli Madonna, for example, the picture is identied as a nished product.65
Incarnation: The Transgured Body

Between 1481 and 1489 Pietro Lombardo built the church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli in Venice as a marble shrine for a miraculous image of the Virgin that had brought in 30,000 ducats in donations in a brief period of time. This sum, as Francesco Sansovino reported, made possible the purchase of the site and the erection of the splendid structure, along with a small cloister.66 The same author notes that Bellini delivered an altarpiece of Jerome in the Desert,
now lost, for the church, and that a certain Giovanni de Pennacchi of Treviso painted several heads of prophets. Sansovino mentions classical putti below the organ, then regarded as the work of Praxiteles, but not the wings of the organ, whose exterior displayed the Annunciation (illus. 108) and whose interior showed the apostles Peter and Paul. The organ wings were removed and dispersed in the early nineteenth century, and in the process the canvas of Paul was lost. In the early twentieth century the three surviving pictures came into the possession of the Accademia in Venice, and were caught up in the back-and-forth of attributions, since in 1664 Boschini had named the painter Pier Maria Pennacchi of Treviso as their author.67 In her examination of the organ wings, Deborah Howard calls attention to the fact that Bellini paid close attention to the architectural setting for which his images were intended.68 Until the radical restoration of the church between 1865 and 1887, the organ had been located on the left side wall; the asymmetrical layout of the Annunciation, its vanishing point, shifted to the right, and its interior furnishings took account of this fact. Mary, in her bedchamber, kneels upon a precious intarsia prayer stool, using one hand to hold open the book she is reading, the other laid on her breast. Breaking into this reverential silence as a dynamic gure from the left is the Archangel Gabriel with his wind-blown robes. He carries a large lily in his left hand, raising his right in greeting. Mary displays no reaction whatsoever to the angels sudden entry, but maintains an attitude of humiliatio, humble submission.69 The event of the Annunciation is indicated by means of the entering light, which thrusts the angel into the room and falls onto the praying gure of the Virgin: the pale embrasure, the opening of the window with its pale shutters and the door shutters in front of the illuminated Mary, all of which serve to capture the light. Through the open aedicule appear a landscape and a column with a Corinthian capital, which is aligned with the Virgin. Set below a large white cloud in the sky, the landscape shows a raised fortress, and in the middle distance is the Flight into Egypt. The clouds, the lily, the vegetation, the fortress, the light: everything alludes to or praises Mary in a way that is consistent with the Mariale of the pious Jacopo da Voragine, published in Venice in 1497, which species numberless names and predicates for the Virgin.70 It was Giovanni Bellinis invention to represent the Annunciation being effectuated by ooding light instead of a single beam of light that falls onto the Virgin, albeit perhaps inspired by a version of the Annunciation (illus. 109) painted by Antonello da Messina. Shortly before his stay in Venice, or when already in that city, Antonello painted two halflength pictures of Mary shown bathed in light while reading a psalter. In the version in Palermo, she displays a slight conturbatio (alarm), while the version in Munich is characterized by humiliatio, as seen also in Bellinis version.71 Both Carpaccio and Titian responded to Bellinis ingenious representation of the Annunciation. In his Dream of St Ursula of 1495 for the Scuola di SantOrsola, Carpaccio exploited a similar association between the angels entrance and the divine light. Titian took up this idea on many
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108 Giovanni Bellini and workshop, Annunciation, 1500, canvas. Galleria dellAccademia, Venice.
109 Antonello da Messina, Annunciation, 1473/74, wood. Alte Pinakothek, Munich.
occasions, for the rst time in 1519 in his Annunciation for Treviso Cathedral, then again in 1530 in the Annunciation in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco in Venice, which includes a ying angel that surpasses Bellinis in vivacity, and takes up the older notion of light radiating from heaven and falling onto the Virgin at her prie-dieu. The most impressive version is the Annunciation of 156065 in the church of San Salvatore in Venice, with its onward-rushing angel and open sky. Here, the esh-coloured edges of the clouds, suffused with light, are a vivid reminder of the Incarnation effected by this heavenly illumination.72 Noteworthy here is the substitution of the Word that is God, and which, according to the Prologue of the Gospel of St John (1: 118), becomes esh, and is sent into the world as the true light the lux vera. It is a question of an exchange of an acoustic phenomenon the enunciation of the Word
for an optical one, namely the appearance of the light. The connection with the act of becoming esh the incarnatio, to use the theological term with incarnadine, the esh colour used in painting to represent human skin, was discussed for the rst time by Cennino Cennini in Padua around 1400. In chapter 67 of his Libro dellarte, Cennini describes a procedure for colouring, or incarnating, hands and faces, that is, di colorire o incarnare.73 Giovanni Bellini approached the connection between light and esh colour only slowly. One stage in the conversion of the illuminated body into a luminous esh tint is detectable in the works from the rst half of the 1470s, in the Berlin Piet (illus. 110) and in the Piet with Angels in the National Gallery in London.74 In the Berlin Resurrection (illus. 105) of 147580, which shows Christ hovering above the horizon line, the glowing incarnadine colour is deployed for the transgured body of the resurrected Christ in a way that is thematically effective.75 Moreover, Bellini also calls our attention to the contrast between the glowing incarnadine of the transgured Christ and the dull brown of the dazed, naked gure seated below on rocks next to a shield bearing the head of Medusa. Christ hovers in the rising light of dawn in front of the clouds and the dark sky, his uttering loincloth stabilizing the glowing esh colour, which occupies the spectrum between the white of the cloth and the reddish glow of the clouds. Like the Virgin and Child (Morelli Madonna) (illus. 73) from the second half of the 1480s, the Madonna degli Alberetti (illus. 111) of 1487 displays the new connection between light, colour and form in a simple composition.76 The position of the Virgin in front of a suspended cloth emphasizes the compositions vertical and bilateral symmetry. Several displacements enliven this symmetrical arrangement: in both paintings, the child is shifted from the central axis, and in the Morelli Madonna the Virgin is set at a slight angle, and the golden brown cloth deviates from the central axis. The ultramarine of the Virgins cloak forms a swinging, ascending form, and creates a lightdark contrast with the incarnadine of the child and Mary. This marked contrast is attenuated by subtle interpolations: the golden trimming, the transparent white veil, the iridescent lining of the cloak and the red of the dress. The importance attributed to achieving genuinely lifelike and glowing esh tints is indicated by the works of a number of other painters as well. Antonello da Messina, who arrived in Venice in 1475, was probably responsible for a pair of male nudes, a Sebastian for the San Cassiano altarpiece and a Piet with Angels, both found today in heavily damaged conditions in the Museo Correr in Venice. A third nude, a St Sebastian (illus. 112) in Dresden, which was intended for a three-part altarpiece in the church of San Giuliano, was probably shipped to Venice by the artist from Messina, together with the other parts of the altarpiece.77 In the San Cassiano altarpiece, St Sebastian is positioned as a luminous nude in front of column, as we know from a copy by Teniers the Younger. In the San Giobbe altarpiece (illus. 139), Bellini positions the gure of St Sebastian, composed of glowing incarnadine, on the side of the incidence of light.
overleaf: 110 Giovanni Bellini, Piet, c. 147075, wood. Gemldegalerie, Berlin. 111 Giovanni Bellini, Madonna degli Alberetti, 1487, wood. Galleria dellAccademia, Venice.
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112 Antonello da Messina, St Sebastian, c. 1478, canvas, transferred from wood. Gemldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden.
This light-lled, transgured esh tint is also recognizable in the celebrated portrait of Doge Leonardo Loredan (illus. 113), probably painted by Bellini shortly after the election in 1501 of Agostino Barbarigos successor.78 Instead of simply painting the doge as a half-gure behind the parapetto, Bellini conceived a bust that is fully three-dimensional in appearance. In 1995 Alison Luchs drew attention to the rarity of sculpted portrait busts in Venice in comparison with Florence. Produced in the Tuscan city between 1450 and 1500 were a dozen dated and signed marble busts, along with a countless number of busts in various materials representing men, women and children. For Venice and the Veneto during the same period, only four
works are known, among them a terracotta bust in Budapest, which has been identied as a portrait of Doge Marco Barbarigo.79 The fully plastic quality of the painted bust of Doge Loredan, created by Bellini by means of effects of light and shadow, might lead to the idea that he sought out a paragone (contest) between painting and sculpture.80 It is more probable, however, that he had a different objective. Using light and shadow, Bellini renders the silvery white and gold of the damask with extraordinary subtlety, and shows the golden border of the corno ducale (the biretta of the doge), and the indirect proximity of the doges skin to gold. The silvery white and gold contrast with the reddish-brown of the parapet and the blue of the ground. Bellini insinuates an analogy between this portrait and a reliquary bust in gold and silver. The golden esh colour and the facial expression, effected by the slightly raised corners of the mouth, serve to enliven this portrait or reliquary bust.
Sacred Allegory
Through the mediation of the art historian Luigi Lanzi, an enigmatic painting (illus. 114) was transferred from the Imperial Gallery in Vienna to the Ufzi in Florence in 1793.81 In 1871 Crowe and Cavalcaselle proposed reattributing this allegorical composition, then regarded as a work by Giorgione, to Giovanni Bellini, with the comment: It is hard to divine the meaning of the allegory which Bellini has depicted.82 Only rarely was doubt cast on the new attribution, but divergent views were expressed concerning both dating and composition. To be sure, a number of individuals and many objects are immediately recognizable, but despite many attempts they have never been successfully integrated into a unied interpretation. Bellinis Sacred Allegory belongs to that group of works that refuse to be decoded, and which thereby continually generate new readings. The most celebrated work in this category is Giorgiones little painting Tempest (illus. 115) in the Accademia in Venice.83 The foreground of Bellinis Sacred Allegory contains a large terrace paved in marble that terminates on three sides in a balustrade. This was the second time that Bellini had painted a terrace paved in this way and with an open balustrade, the rst of which appears in Blood of the Redeemer (illus. 41) from the rst half of the 1460s. In the Sacred Allegory, the balustrades to the left and right are quite broad, while the rear side is much thinner, as can be seen by examining the opened double door. A strip of lawn is visible between the openings in the balustrade and the waters edge. The water extends into the depths of the picture to various distances. On the right-hand side, the opposite shore is quite close, while on the left the water continues into the distance between cliffs and precipices until it reaches a small settlement. Behind it, on a forested hill, sits a large fortied castle, while towering up to the left of the settlement is a steep mountain. The surface of the water (a lake, part of a lagoon) is quite still, and reects the surroundings in parts. In contrast to the water, the landscape is markedly ssured, the three strongly eroded
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114 Giovanni Bellini, Sacred Allegory, 1460, wood. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. 115 Giorgione, Tempest, 150510, canvas. Galleria dellAccademia, Venice.
opposite: 113 Giovanni Bellini, Doge Leonardo Loredan, c. 1501/02, wood. National Gallery, London.
masses of cliffs showing splits and cracks, light and shadow, while the darkly forested portions in the cliffs introduce strong brightdark contrasts. Set at the centre of the terrace, marked by a set of four white marble slabs, and in front of the opening leading to the lawn and the water, is a broad, low urn containing a small tree. Four children, three of them nude, play with and around the tree: one little boy stands on the rim of the urn holding the trunk of the sapling as though he wanted to shake it; a second boy picks up an apple; and two additional boys one of whom is seated on a cushion and dressed in a white shirt hold apples. To the right of this central group stand Job and Sebastian in varied contrapposto poses, both nude but for their loincloths. Sebastian holds his hands behind his back, while Job folds his in prayer. To the left, a throne carved from stone stands on a base with four steps. The ombrello, an insignia of the doge, is suspended above the throne. Seated on the throne is a female gure with folded hands. Her red dress is visible through small openings in her blue cloak, and her hair is covered by a white cloth. Kneeling to her left is the gure of a woman dressed in blue and red and wearing a golden crown. To the right of the throne stands an elongated female gure who wears a grey skirt and a black cloak. Painted like reliefs on the black surface of the throne base are two satyrs with a vase, or a satyr and a sea monster. Behind the balustrade is a bearded man wearing a red cloak who raises a large sword, while a man wearing a red robe with a yellow cloak observes the playing children, his hands folded. On the far left, a man wearing a white turban is shown about to stride off. On the near bank of the water are various primitive structures and a cave that serves as a natural dwelling. A hermit descends from a terrace that has been provided with a crucix and which is delimited by a wooden fence, while a centaur waits below on the narrow strip of riverbank. A shepherd in a red cloak, accompanied by a lamb or sheep, sits on a block of stone in front of the entrance to the cave. Along the waters edge, nature has assumed articial form: the natural terrace is strikingly delimited by three stones that form an obelisk, while the spur of the cliffs terminates at the waters edge in two blocks that imitate human physiognomies. Conspicuous in the background landscape is the contrast between the natural forms of the mountains and cliffs and the buildings at the waters edge or set atop the hill. The shapes of the buildings, though diverse, are regular in form, while the cliffs are rough and irregular. Visible along the banks of the river in front of the buildings are four gures and a donkey. In the twentieth century a large number of interpretations were proposed for this picture. In general, these can be grouped into two tendencies. The rst approach invokes textual sources either as keys or as guarantors and claims to identify a unied meaning in Bellinis composition. The other tendency casts doubt on this approach, even to the point of denying the possibility of locating or constructing a unied meaning at all.84 Could this painting be among those that are generated not from a textual source, but that instead emerge from the artists sense of fantasy or inventive faculties? In his negotiations with Isabella dEste, did Bellini not claim and win the right to supply
his own invention, informing the poet Bembo that he loved to nd his way in his paintings according to his own sense of fantasy? Is the Sacred Allegory, as Werner Hofmann postulated in 1996, the rst capriccio of modern times, that is to say, a subjective invention of the artist, one laid out not according to a coherent web of signicance, but instead contradicting this approach, and even more, setting up a composition without order in opposition to the elevated pictorial order achieved in the Sacre conversazioni?85 Hofmanns proposal provokes scepticism: is his characterization of Giovanni Bellini as one of the most revolutionary artists of all time not based on an anachronism?86 In fact, such a projection had already occurred in the area of the capriccio and capriccioso with Giorgio Vasari.87 In 1550 Vasari used the term capriccio for inspirations leading to feats of artistic performance, for difcult representations such as the one Mantegna created in the Cappella Belvedere in the Vatican, where he had introduced a marvellously inspired invention for a special gure in the Baptism of Christ: He had the capriccio to represent among the others a gure, wishing to remove a stocking which clings to his leg owing so sweat, pulls it off inside out across his other leg, while his expression clearly indicates effort and inconvenience. This ingenious detail amazed everyone who saw the painting in those days.88 In the second edition of the Vite, Vasari describes a brilliant invention of Giorgiones that had been prompted by a dispute about the paragone, the argument about the priority of painting or sculpture. By creating an arrangement involving the reective surface of a body of water and a mirror, Giorgione devised a method of visual doubling that permitted the simultaneous depiction of a nude gure from multiple points of view, which could be translated into painted form. With this cosa di bellissimo ghiribizzo e capriccio, which brought him praise and admiration, Giorgione demonstrated that painting demanded greater inventive gifts than sculpture, and also that it was capable of simultaneously displaying more sides of a gure than the three-dimensional medium.89 The phrase cosa di bellissimo ghiribizzo e capriccio refers to the painters cleverness and capricious creativity. As Benedetto Varchi remarked critically in 1547, the terms ghiribizzo and capriccio are plebeian expressions for that which ought to be referred to as beautiful ideas, creative fantasies and divine inventions.90 In his Dialogo della pittura of 1557, the Venetian Lodovico Dolce used the opening of Horaces Ars poetica to distinguish the utterly contradictory combination from the one that the painter truly required, namely a fertile intellect and alert inventiveness. According to Dolce, the contradictory combination of elements having divergent origins, Horaces chimera, arises from the susceptibility of capricious creativity (un suo capriccio) on the part of the painter.91 The term capriccio was used publicly for the rst time in 1534 in Aretinos authorial declaration in his Ragionamento della Nanna e dellAntonia, which reads: Composto dal divino Aretino per suo capriccio.92 Is the Sacred Allegory a capriccio and a capricious fantasy of the painter? Is it really misleading to conceive of it as a pious narrative simply because no one has yet succeeded in identifying its textual source or constructing a
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116 Giovanni Bellini, Allegory of Vanitas or Prudentia, c. 149095, wood. Galleria dellAccademia, Venice.
unied sense for it? Augusto Gentili recently summarized the results of scholarly research as follows: Most scholars attempting to interpret the picture have sought to identify a single literary source that would account for every detail. But any such attempt is misguided, since this is a visual meditation made up of a collage of gurative elements deriving from different traditions and origins.93 As a title for the painting in the Ufzi, Robertson had already proposed A Meditation on the Incarnation in 1968.94 Gentili called attention again to the fact that the identiable gures and objects were derived from different contexts: Job is a preguration of the Christ of the Passion, Sebastian a martyr, the Virgin Mary sits on Solomons throne (the Sedes sapientiae), but is not accompanied by the infant Jesus; the encounter between Anthony Abbott and the centaur takes place on the journey to the hermit Paul, etc. There are also several gures, like the feminine ones at the sides of the throne, that have no recognizable attributes, just as the praying gure behind the balustrade who has been somewhat unpersuasively identied as Peter or Joseph. At the centre stands the Tree of Life, and the children are playfully occupied with its fruits. The terrace has been provided with a balustrade on three sides only, and it opens onto a body of water; thus it is not a hortus conclusus. As in Christ the Redeemer, emphasis is placed on the contrast between the terrace with balustrade and the landscape. In both paintings, the terrace has the appearance of a sacred zone, and the landscape is set apart from it and equipped with hermits, animals and buildings. A hermit in front of a cave beneath a palm tree appears in the central zone of the Baptism of Christ (illus. 145) of 150002, now in Vicenza. The Baptism represents an event taking place in the River Jordan, in the Terra Santa, and was commissioned and endowed by Battista Graziani to ensure his safe return from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. According to religious notions, hermits John the Baptist, Jerome and others were among the God-fearing anchorites in the desert, and with the cartellino beneath Giovanni Battistas feet in the Baptism of Christ, Giovanni Bellini calls attention to his name. Because no over-arching or unied theme has been identied for the Sacred Allegory, the work has been referred to as polyfocal. In fact, Bellini was fond of superimposition and condensation, as, for example, in the augmentation of the Baptism of Christ with the Transguration, the Trinity and the Resurrection. In other cases, he negated clarity, for example in the St Francis in the Desert or in the small allegory (illus. 116), the subject of which is unknown, whether it is a Vanitas or whether it is intended to represent Prudence, Truth, False Fame or Self-Knowledge. Visible in the Sacred Allegory, as in Blood of the Redeemer, is a painstakingly constructed terrace set before a landscape that is at least partially formed as a wasteland a deserto where God-fearing anchorites meditate. On the terrace in Christ the Redeemer, an angel collects the blood of Christ, while the Sacred Allegory alludes to the events of the Redemption. It is the Terra Santa, the Holy Land from which Redemption emanates, and which Paul defends with his sword. On the right-hand side, its effect is the healing of the body, hence the plague
saints, Job and Sebastian, and on the left side the redemption of the soul, alluded to through the communion of the Virgin and saints. The Virgin, enthroned beneath the ombrello of the doge, has another name as well, Venezia, the city that was founded on an island in the middle of a lagoon on the day of the Annunciation, the rst date in the narrative of redemption. In his publication on Venice of 1581, Francesco Sansovino explores exhaustively the coincidence between the foundation of the city and the Annunciation, that is to say, of the event that set the redentione del mondo, the redemption of the world, into motion via the Incarnation of the divine Word. Sansovino presented his observations on the occasion of the ninth official procession of the doge, the Andata per la Madonna di Marzo, which took place on 25 March, and which culminated inside the church of San Marco.95 The Sacred Allegory proffers a meditation on the Terra Santa, on redemption, resurrection, salvation and Venice. The image is an invitation that prescribes little in the way of pre-set meanings. The beholder is solicited to engage with the work on a personal level, perhaps in a pious spirit, and certainly in order to take pleasure in a captivating painting that demonstrates the artists powers of ingegno. To this end, the image not only offers a set of visual data, but also generates a sense of utter tranquillity.
Composition
The Sacra conversazione in Venice
Up until the fateful night of 15 and 16 August 1867, the Dominican church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo (illus. 117) in Venice had retained possession of the two most important early altarpieces by Giovanni Bellini, executed between 1465 and 1475. The polyptych of St Vincent Ferrer (illus. 118), produced on a commission from the Scuola di San Vincenzo Ferrer, has remained in its original and intended location, although it was set during the eighteenth century in a larger stone frame that was intended as a counterpart to the marble frame of Titians large altarpiece, the Martyrdom of St Peter Martyr of circa 1530. For the sake of the new stone frame, the original lunette containing a depiction of God the Father was removed and replaced by a gilded semicircular shell.1 The other Bellini altarpiece in the church, the Virgin and Child with SS Thomas Aquinas and Catherine (illus. 119), was executed on a commission from the Scuola di Santa Caterina, founded in 1461, and fell victim to a still unexplained re in 1867, together with Titians altarpiece in the Cappella del Rosario.2 Both of these large paintings had been removed to a side chapel in Santi Giovanni e Paolo in order to undergo restoration. All that remains of Titians Martyrdom of St Peter Martyr is a graphic reproduction by Martin Rota and a number of painted copies, among them a small-format version executed by Thodore Gricault when the painting was in Paris between 1798 and 1815 as part of the Napoleonic booty, and a large-format version by Niccol Cassana, which now hangs in Santi Giovanni e Paolo as a substitute for the lost original.3 As records of the Virgin and Child with SS Thomas Aquinas and Catherine, on the other hand, we have only a stone frame in the church and a very few pictorial records: a linear copy that was engraved; an engraving by J. A. Raab that appeared in Zanottos publication of 1860, but which includes only the upper halves of the female gures on the right side; and a black-and-white photograph of an anonymous lost watercolour.4 Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle covered three sheets with a number of sketches of the painting, among them a sketch of the composition with colour notations (illus. 120).5 A rough notion of the appearance of Bellinis lost work can be acquired from altarpieces by Cima da Conegliano, such as the Virgin and Child and Saints and Angels of 14923 in the cathedral of his home town of Conegliano.6
139
117 Detail (the Church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo (San Zanipolo) from Jacopo de Barbari, Birds-eye View of Venice, 1500, woodcut.
In their three-volume work on the history of Italian painting, which rst appeared in 18646, Crowe and Cavalcaselle expressed enthusiasm for Bellinis Virgin and Child with SS Thomas Aquinas and Catherine in the church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo: If the word grandiose were applicable to any Venetian picture it would be appropriate here. We have before us a grand manifestation of skill by a man who is a master of his craft, representing a school rising to greatness the rst superior effort of an artist who has gone through every sort of probation and reached maturity7 This afrmative assessment is of special signicance given the fact that these two outstanding connoisseurs were the last experts who were actually able to examine Bellinis altarpiece in situ before its destruction. The authorship and dating of the polyptych of St Vincent Ferrer were matters of controversy for a very long time. The canonization of the preacher Vincent Ferrer of Valencia was carried out in 1455, but proclaimed by Pope Pius ii only 1458. A scuola or religious confraternity had been founded already in 1450, and in 1454, the year before the canonization, a rst provisional altar had been erected. It is presumed that Bellinis polyptych was produced during the second half of the 1460s. Humfrey assumed that the great plague of 1464 provided the decisive impetus for the commission, and for the iconography, which includes Sebastian, healer of plague victims, and Christopher, who offered protection from sudden death.8 In 1581 Francesco Sansovino named Giovanni Bellini as the author of both altarpieces in Santi
118 Giovanni Bellini, polyptych of St Vincent Ferrer, 146570, wood. Church of SS Giovanni e Paolo, Venice.
119 Giovanni Bellini, Sacra Conversazione with SS Thomas Aquinas and Catherine, 147075. Destroyed in 1867; formerly in the Church of SS Giovanni e Paolo (San Zanipolo), Venice.
120 Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle, Sketches of Giovanni Bellinis Sacra Conversazione in SS. Giovanni e Paolo, c. 1860, pencil. Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice.
Giovanni e Paolo, the polyptych and the Virgin and Child with SS Thomas Aquinas and Catherine.9 In opposition to this, Ridol and Boschini regarded the polyptych of St Vincent Ferrer as the work of Alvise or Bartolomeo Vivarini, while additional names were subsequently proposed, including that of the illuminator Lauro Padovano as if any painter could have made such an instantaneous transition from the minute to the monumental.10 Robertson assumed that Sansovino had been able to take advantage of the second half of Marcantonio Michiels notations concerning the works of art contained in the churches of Venice (this second half was later lost).11 Rona Goffen remarks on the divergent qualities observable in the individual parts of the polyptych, arriving at the conclusion that the main panel was Giovannis work, and proposing a date of the mid-1450s, which is surely approximately a decade too early.12 Keith Christiansen labelled it perverse to attribute this crucial work of the Venetian Renaissance to anyone other than Giovanni Bellini, with the exception of the predella, for which Bellini had perhaps supplied the design.13 For Christiansen, the polyptych of St Vincent Ferrer represented the sum of Bellinis strivings towards artistic maturity during the 1460s, under the inuence of Mantegna. He demonstrated a new mastery in the two enormous gures of Christopher and Sebastian in particular, and in the heads, turned upwards and illuminated from below, he took up the challenge represented by Mantegnas depiction of Assumption of the Virgin in the Ovetari chapel in Padua. St Vincent Ferrer, who stands on a bank of clouds and is surrounded by cherubs, now black through oxidization, is Bellinis rst contribution to the rendering of a saint in glory.14 With the Virgin and Child with SS Thomas Aquinas and Catherine, Bellini created a prototype for the specically Venetian form of the single-panel altarpiece with a symmetrically arranged community of saints. The term Sacra conversazione, used for the rst time in 1763, should be understood as a
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121 Bartolomeo Vivarini, Virgin and Child with Saints, 1465, wood. Museo e Gallerie Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples.
holy community, and not in the context, for example, of a conversation. Rona Goffen has also called attention to the biblical, patristic and liturgical references of the Sacra conversazione.15 In the corresponding iconographic type, this saintly community must be arranged symmetrically within a unied pictorial eld or space around a centrally positioned individual. In most cases, the centre is occupied by the enthroned Virgin and Child, and only seldom do other saints take the place of honour, for example, in Titians St Martin Enthroned with Saints of 1511 in the sacristy of Santa Maria della Salute in Venice.16 The convention of an undivided pictorial eld distinguishes the Sacra conversazione from the symmetrical arrangement of saints around a centrally positioned Virgin in a polyptych. Only with the representation of several gures within an undivided pictorial eld do compositional problems emerge, along with the requirement for variation within a bilaterally symmetrical scheme. The development of this new pictorial type of the Virgin with the Christ Child and saints set within the same pictorial space began in Florence in the late 1430s in the works of Domenico Veneziano, Filippo Lippi and Fra Angelico. These artists worked out this new compositional type primarily in works whose dimensions were approximately square. In Florence, elsewhere in Tuscany and in northern Italy, this association between type and format
was widely disseminated up to the end of the fteenth century.17 With the square panel depicting the Virgin and Child with Saints (illus. 121) of 1465, intended for a church in Bari, Bartolomeo Vivarini depended upon Florentine models to congure a unied pictorial space for his saintly protagonists, but adhered to the earlier convention of a disparity in size between the Virgin and the saints.18 Peter Humfrey draws attention to a miniature by Leonardo Bellini, contained in a promissione of Doge Cristoforo Moro of 1463 (illus. 122), whose unied pictorial space betrays familiarity with Florentine models of the Sacra conversazione.19 Giovanni Bellinis Virgin and Child with SS Thomas Aquinas and Catherine distances itself from this model. He introduced new premises to dene an independent Venetian type, one that would exert an inuence beyond Venice well into the sixteenth century.20 The photographic reconstruction (illus. 123) showing a drawing of the altarpiece and its stone frame in the form of a triumphal arch, which remained in Santi Giovanni e Paolo, documents the fact that Bellini created an illusionistic setting in which painted pillars correspond to the three-dimensional
122 Leonardo Bellini, Baptism of Christ, frontispiece to Promissione of Doge Cristoforo Moro, c. 1462, miniature. British Library, London.
Composition | 145
123 A reconstruction of Giovanni Bellini, Sacra Conversazione with SS Thomas Aquinas and Catherine.
pilasters of the frame. This space, a baldachin that opens onto the sky and clouds above, terminated in a groin vault. The Virgin with standing Child on her left knee sits atop a high throne exactly at the centre of the picture, and their importance is enhanced by a curtain that is suspended from a cord decorated with a laurel wreath, by a glass lamp that hangs downwards from the apex of the vault, and by three singing putti that stand before the tall base of the throne. Crowding into the narrow spaces on either side of the throne in a symmetrical arrangement are the female saints, Catherine of Siena and Lucy, on the right, and the male saints, Thomas Aquinas and Jerome, on the
left, enlivened by means of variations in pose, attire and dimensions. The sketch executed by Cavalcaselle, and provided with colour notations, enables the colour scheme to be determined: red, blue, white and incarnadine in the centre, set against the throne and cloth in yellow before the blue of the sky, then red and brownish-green on the side of the male saints, black and white for Catherine of Siena terminating in brown-green for St Lucy, which contrasts with the yellow and with the red owers of her dress.21 Cavalcaselles notation reads Temp[era], which suggests that, like Charles Blanc, he did not believe that oil was used as a medium. Giovanni Bellinis innovation consisted in designing for the communion of the Virgin and saints a tall, unied pictorial space with a rounded top, having the character of a baldachin, to which the sculpted triumphal arch of the frame and painted architecture contribute.22 The perspectival construction and the positions of the saints, who are depicted life-size, take into account the position of the beholder standing in front of the altarpiece. The ground plane of the saints and the Virgin and Child has been set somewhat higher than the eye level of the priest and faithful. The photographic reconstruction shows that a strip of the painting is missing below. It is not known who executed the stone frame for Bellinis altarpiece, but its maker should be sought in the workshops of architects and sculptors such as Mauro Codussi, Andrea Rizzo and Pietro Lombardo, who were preoccupied with the new Renaissance forms.23 Pre-eminent among the preconditions for Bellinis new depiction of the Sacra conversazione was Andrea Mantegnas altarpiece for San Zeno in Verona, which was completed in 1459, and perhaps the large Montefeltro altarpiece, painted by Piero della Francesca around 1472 on a commission from Federigo da Montefeltre, the ruler of Urbino, and certainly the Trinity, the fresco executed by Masaccio around 1427 in the church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence.24 Mantegnas altarpiece for San Zeno in Verona (illus. 124), with its three-dimensional frame in the form of a temple front, its painted pilasters behind the actual sculpted half-columns of the frame, and the creation of an illusionistic throne-room, may have provided the immediate impetus to redene the relationship between frame and pictorial architecture. For the vertical format with arched top of the Virgin and Child with SS Thomas Aquinas and Catherine, for its painted architectural setting, and for the technique involved in executing such a large wooden panel one that in the case of the San Giobbe altarpiece has been substantially preserved Piero della Francescas Montefeltro altarpiece (illus. 125) was a more important precedent than Mantegnas altarpiece from Verona. Doubly unfortunate for the elaboration of this important relationship is the fact that Piero della Francescas altarpiece arrived late at its intended location, San Bernardino outside Urbino, and was subsequently removed from the church, whereby the support system for the wooden boards and a portion of the picture itself were lost.25 This painting has been in the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan since 1811. Reconstructions have been attempted and rejected, and, most importantly, it has not been explained whether a relationship existed between the
Composition | 147
124 Andrea Mantegna, The Altarpiece of San Zeno, 14569, wood. Church of San Zeno, Verona.
frame and the painted architecture. Piero grouped his saints with angels symmetrically alongside and behind the slightly elevated enthroned Virgin and Child, whose sleep alludes to the Passion. The donor, Federigo da Montefeltro, in full armour but with his helmet and gloves removed, kneels on the right-hand side immediately in front of his patron saint. The group of saints with angels and the Virgin is positioned at an intersection, that is, at the interpenetration of longitudinal and transverse spatial volumes. Adjoining this space is a sanctuary with a coffered barrel vault that terminates in a at apse, whose conch is formed by a large scallop shell. An ostrich egg hangs from the apex of the shell along the central axis of the image. In the vertical axis, this symbol of the Resurrection is seen directly above the Virgin and Child, although it is actually located far behind them at the springing point of the apse. Albeit in different ways, both Piero della Francescas Montefeltro altarpiece and Giovanni Bellinis Virgin and Child with SS Thomas Aquinas and Catherine relate to Masaccios revolutionary Trinity fresco (illus. 126) in the
Florentine church of Santa Maria Novella.26 In Bellinis case, the painted triumphal arch with its ctive spatial depth is brought into relationship with the sculpturally rendered arch. While Piero della Francesca expanded the setting for the group and shifted the vanishing point to the height of the Virgin, Bellini narrowed the space, retaining the eye-level viewpoint of Masaccios fresco and its novel orientation towards the beholder. As long as wood was used as a support, the technique for erecting a large-format frame for a unied altarpiece still had to be established. Up until 1470 supports were assembled from a series of vertically aligned wooden boards. Since these could be manufactured only in restricted lengths, the heights attainable by images were limited. The fabrication of larger, that is, principally taller wooden panels, of the kind still used for Titians Assumption of the Virgin in Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, was made possible only by the vertical assembly of horizontally positioned boards. This in turn presupposed a support system capable of meeting two different requirements simultaneously: rst, the wooden boards had to be prevented from tipping out of vertical alignment, and second, allowances had to be made for the natural shrinkage and expansion of the wood. For the Montefeltro altarpiece, Piero della Francesca invented a system that met both of these requirements. According
125 Piero della Francesca, Pala Montefeltro, c. 1472, wood. Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan. 126 Masaccio, Trinity, c. 1427, fresco. Church of S. Maria Novella, Florence.
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to Carlo Bertellis reconstruction, it consisted of three eyebolts that were set into the wooden boards at equal intervals, and three iron rods that were shunted into place vertically through the bolts.27 This system, which held a board assembly that reached a height of approximately 3 metres, was destroyed in 1811 when the painting was removed from San Bernardino. Whether Giovanni Bellini used the same or a similar system for his rst onepiece altarpiece in Venice can no longer be determined. Despite having been cut down, the extraordinarily large San Giobbe altarpiece (illus. 139) is in its present condition still 4.71 metres in height, and was originally approximately 5.255.30 metres tall. It is evident that this incredibly tall structure of layered boards must have been held in place by a robust support system. In Venice, the construction of such large panels was unknown prior to the activities of Giovanni Bellini and Antonello da Messina in the 1470s. For example, the large-format panel, measuring 2.28 x 1.77 metres, on which Michele Giambono painted his Coronation of the Virgin in Paradise in 1447 for the church of SantAgnese, consisted of four vertically set boards.28 Only with Giovanni Bellini and Antonello did it become customary in Venice to construct panels with horizontally layered boards, not only for such large-format works as Carpaccios Presentation of Jesus in the Temple of 1510, which measures 4.20 x 2.31 metres, but also for a relatively small-format work such as Cima da Coneglianos Madonna of the Orange Tree, which measures 2.11 x 1.39 metres, and for the same artists altarpiece in Santa Maria del Carmine.29 In Santi Giovanni e Paolo, as well as later in San Giobbe, or in Santa Corona in Vicenza, it also became necessary for painters and stonemasons to work together closely in order to create altarpieces.30
The Altarpiece for San Francesco in Pesaro

As for the technique used in Giovanni Bellinis rst Sacra conversazione, Lodovico Dolce observed in 1557 that it was executed in tempera; Charles Blanc in 1860 and Giovanni Battista Cavascaselle were convinced of this, based on their own examinations.31 As is well known, analyses of binding media are complicated and difcult to perform. But it seems certain that in his next monumental work, the large altarpiece (illus. 127) for the church of San Francesco in Pesaro, Bellini used desiccative oil to bind the pigments, just as he did in his portrait of Jrg Fugger (illus. 15) of 1474.32 This would mean that around 1470 Bellini had begun to change his technique, and that by the rst half of the 1470s he was feeling condent enough to undertake large panels in oil. Based on the payment made to the church of San Francesco in Pesaro for its high altar in 1476, which is documented in a will, we can conclude that Bellini completed his altarpiece at the latest that year.33 The altarpiece remained in the church, not on the high altar, but instead in a side aisle, while the cimasa with the Anointing of Christ (illus. 128) was separated from it and moved to the sacristy. In 1797 French troops seized the cimasa as a work of
Giovanni Bellini and transferred it to Paris. With the recuperation of Italian works of art by Antonio Canova and Antonio dEste in 1815, it entered the Vatican museums with an attribution to Andrea Mantegna. In the Pinacoteca Vaticana in 1871, the work was reattributed to Giovanni Bellini by Crowe and Cavalcaselle. During an exhibition in Pesaro in 1988, the large altarpiece was temporarily completed by the addition of the cimasa from the Vatican (illus. 129).34
127 Giovanni Bellini, The Coronation of the Virgin (Altarpiece for S. Francesco in Pesaro), 14714, wood. Museo Civico, Pesaro.
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Bellinis large altarpiece of the Coronation of the Virgin with Four Saints is novel in every respect, with the exception of its subject, which was found displayed in prominent positions throughout Italy, including Venice. There, Guarientos fresco of circa 1365 occupied the most prominent location in the main hall of the Doges Palace. Of Guarientos work, only remnants and Jacobello del Fiores reduced copy have survived (illus. 164). For the rst time, Bellini transferred this heavenly event to earth, where it is bathed in a warm, terrestrial light. The broad throne in coloured marbles rises at the centre of the picture, its rear wall taking the form of a tabernacle. The pilasters are ornamented, while a painted relief displaying battle scenes between nude mounted warriors and infantrymen can be seen on the frieze. The virtually square aperture in the back of the throne encloses the heads of Jesus and Mary, while offering a view onto a landscape whose central hill is occupied by a massive, fortied castle with many towers. Jesus sets the crown on his mothers head as she leans towards him, her hands crossed. The throne is surrounded by saints in meditative attitudes: on one side are Paul with his sword and Peter, on the other Francis and Jerome. Bellini has varied the meditative attitudes of his gures: with the exception of Paul, all have lowered gazes. Peter reads from an opened book; Jerome holds a book open in front of him, his closed eyes indicating introspection; Francis holds a book in one hand and a simple cross in the other. Above the back of the throne appears the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove, surrounded by a wreath of cherubs and by a luminous phenomena resembling the sun, which casts a reddish glow onto the clouds in the dark sky. At the sides of the throne, four rows of cherubs hover on bands of clouds. The predella displays scenes from the lives of the saints surrounding the throne, with the Nativity of Christ in the centre. The base of the frame contains a depiction of St George slaying the dragon, and a standing image of St Terence set on a plinth. The latter, a local patron saint from Pesaro, carries a model of a towered and fortied castle in his hand, creating a link between the castle on the hill seen through the opening in the throne of the Coronation of the Virgin.35 In the pilasters of the frame, eight gures of saints have been painted in ctive niches; the horizon lines of the gures take the beholders viewpoint into account: only in the two lowest niches those containing St John the Baptist and St Andrew has the ooring been depicted. Attempts have been made to identify the fortied castle appearing in the Coronation of the Virgin with the Rocca di Gradara of the Sforza family. The resemblance between Bellinis painted castle and the Sforza bastion is undeniable, yet the question remains whether Bellini intended to represent a specic structure, or instead simply a representative of the type. As Roger Fry has already pointed out, Bellini included a similar structure in his Votive Picture of Doge Agostino Barbarigo (illus. 79) of circa 1487. In that case, he cannot possibly have intended to depict the Sforza castle, since the Sforza family had nothing to do with the commission for the altar of San Francesco in Pesaro. On the other hand, they did commission the altarpiece painted by Marco Zoppo of Padua in 1471 for the church of San Giovanni Battista in
opposite: 128 Giovanni Bellini, The Anointing of Christ, 147075, wood. Pinacoteca Vaticana, Rome.
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130 A reconstruction of Marco Zoppos 1471 Pesaro altarpiece.
Pesaro (illus. 130), which was itself erected by either Giorgio da Sebenico or Luciano Laurana on a commission from Alessandro Sforza, and which was intended to contain the Sforza family mausoleum.36 It is safe to assume that in commissioning a work from Giovanni Bellini, the Franciscans, who were closely associated with the former ruling family, the Malatesta, were attempting to compete with Zoppos altarpiece in San Giovanni Battista. Humfrey relates Zoppos altarpiece for San Giovanni Battista in Pesaro directly to Bartolomeo Vivarinis altar panel of 1465 (illus. 121), and this despite an essential difference between the two works, since Vivarini depicted the
opposite: 129 A reconstruction of Giovanni Bellini, Coronation of the Virgin altarpiece.
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Virgin on a larger scale and elevated above the saints, while Zoppo lowered the level of the seated Virgins head in relation to the standing saints. In his Coronation of the Virgin, Giovanni Bellini proceeded in exactly the same way, thereby taking into account Florentine models of the Sacra conversazione, and not the Venetian types of the Coronation familiar to him. According to the reconstruction of Zoppos altarpiece, in fact, both its structure and that of Bellinis altarpiece for San Francesco in Pesaro followed a Florentine pattern of the kind exploited by Fra Angelico around 143740 for the altar of the convent of San Vincenzo dAnnalena, which had been donated by Annalena Malatesta. According to one reconstruction, this altarpiece consisted of an almost square altarpiece, a predella, a pair of framing pilasters into which depictions of saints were set, and a terminating architrave. During the same period, Fra Angelico repeated this pattern without the depictions of saints in the pilasters for the main altar of San Marco in Florence, whose original frame has not survived. In the Pesaro altarpiece, Bellini presented a deliberate deviation from a conventional model, following neither the Venetian precedent provided by Guariento nor the Florentine type exemplied, for instance, by Fra Angelicos Coronation of the Virgin of circa 1435, where the event is a grand ceremonial one, enveloped in a golden light and celebrated in the presence of heavenly hosts and countless saints.37 Bellini deviated from traditional representations of the Coronation of the Virgin in a second respect: in the altarpiece for San Francesco in Pesaro, the event is depicted as a mystery occurring in an atmosphere of silent meditation; the ceremonial strains of trombones and the joyful angelic music have been eliminated. In contrast to the representations of the subject by Guariento and his followers, and in contradistinction to Fra Angelicos version, Bellinis Coronation of the Virgin is soundless. As the poses and expressions of the saints indicate, this is an event that discloses itself to an inner, meditative vision. For this reason too, despite its resemblance to its purported model the fortied castle can hardly be intended to represent the actual preserve of a specic ruling family in the Italian Marches. Instead, the opening in the rear of the throne offers a view onto a celestial settlement, one that appears miraculously like a terrestrial fortication. As we know from a fourteenth-century hymn, the castrum muris institum the fortress enclosed by a wall is found among the countless attributes of the Virgin Mary.38 Bellinis picture offers a meditation on the possibility that the celestial and terrestrial realms could become one under the sign of Mary. For the gable, the cimasa, Bellini represented the Anointing of the Body of Christ, the preparation for his internment. Mary Magdalene takes the left hand of Christ in her own left hand and spreads balsam on the wound, while Joseph of Arimathea holds Christs upper body upright and Nicodemus holds a jar of ointment. All the protagonists have lowered their gazes, thereby resembling the deceased, whose eyelids are closed. Bellini took the intended position of the beholder into account for the scenes intended placement above the frame of the main panel, that is to say sotto in su, to be viewed from
below. In this work, Bellini invented a new and independent Passion scene, one that is inserted into the place of the traditional Piet as cimasa. Like the Piet with Four Angels (illus. 131) in Rimini, the legs of the dead Christ emerge from the sarcophagus and project into the viewers space. The dating of the Rimini panel, which was probably painted for Carlo Malatesta, grandson of Sigismondo, General Commander of the Venetian military, and a member of the Scuola Grande di San Marco, is problematic and also depends upon our understanding of the competition between Giovanni Bellini and Antonello da Messina.39 Another artistic relationship may also be of considerable importance for Bellinis large altarpiece in Pesaro. Never before had Bellini painted gures that were as powerful and fully three-dimensional as those of Paul (illus. 132) and Francis, which stand securely on both legs or suggest a readiness to take a step forward. Such gures were not found in either Venice or Mantua, but existed in the works of Piero della Francesca. A gure such as John the Evangelist from the dispersed St Augustine polyptych (illus. 133), now in the Frick Collection in New York, is a possible model for Bellinis St Paul in the Pesaro altarpiece, and the black undergarments of Piero della Francescas St Augustine seem to be repeated in St Franciss dark-grey robe with its vertical folds.40 When painting the Pesaro altarpiece, Bellini must have been acquainted with the grandiose majesty and utter tranquillity of Piero della
131 Giovanni Bellini, Piet with Four Angels, 147075, wood. Pinacoteca Comunale, Rimini.
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132 Detail (SS Peter and Paul) from Giovanni Bellini, Coronation of the Virgin (illus 127). 133 Piero della Francesca, St John the Evangelist, about 1468/69, wood. Frick Collection, New York.
Francescas gures, as well as with their lighting.41 Nonetheless, nothing is known about Bellinis acquaintance with Pieros gures. At this point, the demonstration of formal similarities is only a point of departure for future archival and biographical investigations. We simply do not know whether Giovanni Bellini actually saw the works of Piero della Francesca or was acquainted with him.
The Antonello Problem

Enumerated in Marin Sanudos Chronachetta among the most remarkable objects in Venice are two altarpieces and a cycle of paintings: Giovanni Bellinis San Giobbe altarpiece, Antonello da Messinas San Cassiano altarpiece and a St Ursula cycle by Vittore Carpaccio.42 For Venetian painting, and especially for Giovanni Bellini, Antonello da Messinas activities in Venice from 1475 to the spring of 1476 were of decisive importance, and represented a turning point that beginning in the sixteenth century and continuing all the way to the nineteenth was erroneously regarded in a one-sided fashion as representing the invention or introduction of oil painting.43 The time in Venice represented a turning point for Antonello as well: for the painter from Messina, who probably arrived in Venice in 1475 in the company of his son Jacobello, the encounter with Venetian painting proved a potent stimulus and led towards outstanding achievements. On a commission from the Venetian patrician Pietro Bon, Antonello painted the altarpiece for Bons sepulchre in the church of San Cassiano. Antonello required eight months in order to execute this commission. It has been assumed that he painted one or two versions of his Piet with Angels and several portraits while in Venice, yet Mauro Lucco has argued that both versions of the Piet with Angels (illus. 134), now in Venice and Madrid respectively, were produced only after his return to Messina.44 In 1529 Marcantonio Michiel mentioned the presence in the house of Antonio Pasqualino of the painting St Jerome in his Study with an attribution to Antonello, and in 1532, in the same house, two paintings by the same artist, apparently dated 1475.45 Until recently, it was believed that while still in Venice, Antonello had executed a polyptych for the church of San Giuliano. Sansovino writes of a statue of the plague saint Roch and two other panels, attributing the St Christopher to Antonello and the St Sebastian (illus. 112) to the artists son Jacobello.46 Since the patron of the altar in San Giuliano was the confraternity of San Rocco, which was founded and certied only in 1478, it is assumed that the commission was fullled in Messina.47 The panel of St Sebastian was exhibited in Vienna in 1873 with an attribution to Giovanni Bellini and purchased for the Gemldegalerie in Dresden, where Crowe and Cavalcaselle recognized it as a work by Antonello.48 In early 1476 Galeazzo Maria Sforza, duke of Milan, decided to take Antonello da Messina into his service, due to the death of his former court painter, Zanetto. In March 1476 Pietro Bon replied in writing to his request, explaining that Antonello had been working since August of the previous year on an altar-
134 Antonello da Messina, Piet with Angel, c. 1477/78, wood. Museo del Prado, Madrid.
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135 Antonello da Messina, S. Cassiano altarpiece (fragments), 1475/76, wood. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
piece, which was scheduled for completion in twenty days time, for which purpose he requested an extension for the painter. About this nearly completed work, the client wrote: His work, my illustrious lord, will number among the most outstanding works of painting in Italy and beyond its borders.49 In the sixteenth century, the San Cassiano altarpiece (illus. 135) was still found in its original location, for in his book Venezia, citt nobilissima of 1581, Francesco Sansovino noted of the church of San Cassiano: Antonello da Messina, the inventor of oil painting, painted an altarpiece here.50 In contrast to Sanudo, Sansovino placed little stress on Antonellos two altarpieces in Venice. As for Giovanni Bellinis altarpieces in Santi Giovanni e Paolo and in San Zaccaria, Sansovino expressed himself in a similarly disenchanted tone, noting simply: Remarkable among paintings is an altarpiece of the Madonna from the hand of Gian Bellino.51 Only rarely did Sansovino single out extraordinary achievements in a commensurate way. He lavished praise on Drers altarpiece for San Bartolomeo: An altarpiece of the Madonna from the hand of Albrecht Drer, of singular beauty with regard to drawing, the rendering of esh and colouration.52 His praise for Giovanni Bellinis San Giobbe altarpiece (illus. 139) regarded by Sansovino as being the rst oil painting executed by this painter could almost be termed effusive: And just as it was highly valued back then by the best masters, it is still held in high regard today for its singularity.53 Because of the reconstruction of the church of San Cassiano in the early seventeenth century, the altarpieces by Antonello da Messina were removed from their original locations between 1605 and 1607. It remains unexplained
why the patrician Bon family, whose descendants still live today, had lost interest in a work to which they probably still possessed rights of ownership. To begin with, Antonellos altarpiece came into the collection of Bartolomeo della Nave. Later, it entered the Hamilton collection through the mediation of Sir Basil Fielding, the English envoy. Its dismemberment occurred prior to its arrival in England, certainly before it was transported from Venice. The motivation for doing so is undocumented, but it may have been as petty as a desire to minimize transport costs and the difculties associated with moving the work. After 1650 ve gural fragments, now regarded as works of Giovanni Bellini, arrived in Brussels and entered the collection of the Austrian archduke Leopold Wilhelm, at which time they were reproduced in publications of the collection by David Teniers the Younger, the custodian of the collection (illus. 136), still under the name of Giovanni Bellini.54 Two of the ve fragments have vanished without trace. Still present in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna are three pieces and a small copy of the St Sebastian by Teniers.55 In 1917 Bernard Berenson made a start at identifying the fragments; the two sections to the sides of the Virgin were added afterwards.56 The rst reconstruction of the San Cassiano altarpiece was presented by Johannes Wilde in 1929, who relied upon the fragments and on Teniers reproductions in order to supplement the gural groups. For his reconstruction of the architecture, Wilde referred to more recent works, such as Alvise Vivarinis Belluno altarpiece of circa 1485. While the reconstruction of the gural group is still regarded as denitive, the addition of monumental architecture to form a painting approximately 3.6 metres in height is today regarded as implausible.57 Wildes reconstruction provokes questions concerning the invention of the Venetian Sacra conversazione. The preconditions for an adequate treatment of this problem are extremely unfavourable, and such efforts are hobbled by the loss and insecure dating of Bellinis altarpieces from the 1470s, the mangling of panels by Antonello da Messina, the total loss of the old church of San Cassiano and the absence of preparatory drawings for the San Cassiano altarpiece, as well as subsequent drawings documenting the work and copies. A varied repetition of Antonellos gural composition may have been found in Alvise Vivarinis Belluno altarpiece, which was destroyed by re in Berlin in 1945.58 Moreover, while Antonello da Messina became an artist of legendary proportions during the nineteenth century, Giovanni
136 I. Popels, Two Saints, Fragment of Antonello da Messinas S. Cassiano Altarpiece, engraving in David Teniers the Younger, Theatrum Pictorium (Brussels, 1660).
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Bellinis reputation recovered only slowly from Giorgio Vasaris unfavourable verdict. To the degree that they have survived and have been identied, however, the works of Antonello da Messina executed prior to his stay in Venice in 14756 in no way anticipate the development of such a decisive invention as the Venetian Sacra conversazione.59 No evident path leads from his last large-scale work, the polyptych of 1473 for the church of San Gregorio in Messina, to the San Cassiano altarpiece.60 And while Giovanni Bellinis works of the 1460s do point towards the multi-panelled altarpiece of St Vincent Ferrer, they can hardly be said to anticipate the rst Sacra conversazione or the Pesaro altarpiece. For both Antonello and Giovanni, Venetian altarpieces such as those by Bartolomeo Vivarini constitute possible precedents, while Piero della Francescas monumental Montefeltro altarpiece for Urbino counts as a secure and immediate predecessor for the designs of their Sacre conversazioni. Correspondences are detectable between Bellinis Virgin and Child with SS Thomas Aquinas and Catherine and Antonellos San Cassiano altarpiece. In both paintings, the enthroned Virgin is set at the same height between the saints, and is rendered in the same perspectival foreshortening, that is to say, is seen by the beholder from the same point of view. The lateral walls of Marys throne terminate in a similar fashion and support balls that are recognizably of gold, seen in Antonellos painting, like those carried on the book held by St Nicholas of Bari. These concordances are unusual.
137 A reconstruction of Antonello da Messinas, S. Cassiano altarpiece.
Moreover, both Bellini and Antonello painted a curtain behind Mary, and Antonello spread out an additional curtain, which reaches all the way to the rst four saints. The most conspicuous differences are seen in the grouping of the saints at the sides of the throne. Bellini congures them into compressed groups. Catherine and Thomas Aquinas stand to the side in front of the throne, with space for an additional gure next to each of them. Compressed into the interspaces between the gures and the edge of the picture are the heads of three saints on both sides. Antonello, however, chose a broader format, setting only four saints in pairs on either side of the throne, and by means of the outermost gures, George and Sebastian, positioned towards the front, opened up the space for the gures. Set back spatially, they are followed by St Nicholas of Bari on one side and St Dominic on the other. The female saints are arranged in the interspaces: Rosalie and Lucy on the left, Ursula and Helena on the right. On the whole, by arranging almost the same number of saints one behind the other in two spatially staggered rows, Antonello hit upon a much more satisfactory solution than the one adopted by Giovanni Bellini for the St Catherine altarpiece. It would be grotesque to assume that Bellini would still have been incapable of devising a better composition for the Sacra conversazione in Santi Giovanni e Paolo if he had been preceded by Antonellos San Cassiano altarpiece. The awkward composition of the gures in Bellinis altarpiece in Santi Giovanni e Paolo constitutes a conclusive argument for its production prior to the San Cassiano altarpiece, and for acknowledging Bellini as the inventor of the Venetian Sacra conversazione. Already in the Pesaro altarpiece, Bellini had decisively improved the gural composition by means of a reduction from ve to two saints on each side of the throne and a less crowded staggered arrangement within a relatively attened perspective. In the San Cassiano altarpiece, Antonello had arranged the staggering of the saints more broadly than had Bellini in his Pesaro altarpiece. It is questionable whether an architectural background laid out with a steep perspective could have followed from this more spacious disposition of the gures, as in Wildes reconstruction. Rather, one would have to consider a composition like the one devised by Alvise Vivarini in his Virgin and Child with Saints of 1480 (illus. 138) for a side altar of the church of San Francesco in Treviso.61 For this altarpiece, Alvise may have modelled himself on Antonellos San Cassiano altarpiece, completed in 1476, which had already enjoyed considerable attention, in particular from Florentine artists around 1480.62 In any event, it is clear that Alvise Vivarini painted a splendid brocade dress for his Virgin, which competed with the painted material of Antonellos gure, itself based on Netherlandish models. It lies within the realm of possibility that Antonello painted a Sacra conversazione in Venice with a horizontal Florentine format, just as Alvise Vivarini did several years later for San Francesco in Treviso.63 A competitive relationship between Antonello da Messina and Giovanni Bellini can be assumed. Antonello surpassed the gural composition of Bellinis rst Sacra conversazione, but Bellini took up this challenge for
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138 Alvise Vivarini, Virgin and Child with Saints (Treviso altarpiece), 1480, wood. Galleria dellAccademia, Venice.
his masterpieces, the San Giobbe altarpiece of circa 148085 and the San Zaccaria altarpiece of 1505 (illus. 160).
Pala or Triptych
It is assumed that the contract for the extraordinary San Giobbe altarpiece (illus. 139) was issued after the terrible plague epidemic of 1478, and that Bellini completed the painting before 1485. Between 1470 and 1485, at the instigation of Doge Cristoforo Moro, the church was remodelled in the style of the Florentine Renaissance by the architect Pietro Lombardo.64 The prominent representation of two of the three plague saints suggests a connection to an epidemic: Job, also the title saint of the church, and Sebastian. The votive image was probably commissioned by the Scuola di San Giobbe with the participation of Marco Cavallo, whose coat of arms are displayed on the column bases.65 The painting stood on the second altar on the right-hand side of the church in a stone frame resembling a triumphal arch.66 Beginning in 1510, Bellinis altarpiece was anked by Marco Basaitis altarpiece of Christ in the Garden at Gethsemane, which stood on the rst altar next to the entrance, and Carpaccios Presentation of Christ, a variation of Bellinis altarpiece, on the third altar. In 1815 all three paintings were removed from their original locations for reasons related to conservation and brought to the Accademia. They now hang in the second room of the gallery in the positions that they originally
139 Giovanni Bellini, S. Giobbe altarpiece, c. 148085, wood. Galleria dellAccademia, Venice.
140 The altarpieces from the church of S. Giobbe by Marco Basaiti, Giovanni Bellini and Vittore Carpaccio. Galleria dellAccademia, Venice.
occupied in the church (illus. 140). Bellinis enormous panel was heavily damaged when it was removed from its frame: a piece of the semicircular top was lost, as was also the case for the San Zaccaria altarpiece, which was carried off in 1797 to Paris as booty, losing both its arched terminus and lowermost board in the process. The assertion, made in 1987, that the San Giobbe altarpiece was also missing its lowermost board remains unveried.67 In the church of San Giobbe the stone frame, a triumphal arch constructed for Bellinis large panel, has survived in situ. A restoration of 19978 once again rendered visible the Istrian marble with its blue paint and gilding.68 The photographic reconstruction (illus. 141) restores the relationship between the framing triumphal arch and the painted architecture. The Virgin and Child and the saints are found in a tall enclosure, a ciborium with apse, golden apse conch and coffered barrel vault. The light is depicted entering from the right and illuminates the group and the architecture, thereby showing the open interspaces between the columns at the front and the recessed painted pilasters. In this way, an apparently totally symmetrical composition of architecture and gures is enlivened by the asymmetrical incidence of light. The arrangement of the gures at the sides of the throne occupies the space, and differs on the two sides: on the left are Francis and Job towards the front with John the Baptist behind, while on the right only Sebastian stands forward, with Dominic and Louis of Toulouse standing behind him. Not only in relation to the crowded conguration of the saints in the Virgin and Child with SS Thomas Aquinas and Catherine and the arrays of gures in the Pesaro altarpiece, but also in relation to the doubled rows in the San Cassiano altarpiece, the San Giobbe altarpiece has attained a new freedom in the disposition of gures within a symmetrical framework. Precisely these two elements are played artfully against each other: the strict geometrical symmetry of the framing triumphal arch and the painted architecture with its emphatic central axis, within which the pyramidal group consisting of the angels, the throne with the Virgin, seated upright, and the baldachin with its laurel wreath, actually an ombrello, are arranged.
141 A virtual reconstruction of the San Giobbe altarpiece in its frame in the Church of S. Giobbe.
In the San Giobbe altarpiece, the enlivening of the symmetry is effected primarily by light and less by colouristic means. In contrast to the black of Dominic, the nude gure of Sebastian, exposed to the light on the right-hand side, takes on a luminous quality as though transgured, while on the other side the aged Job and the pale blue angel seated in front of him catch the light that falls from the right. Subtle displacements enliven the composition: the Virgin, aligned with the central axis, turns her head slightly towards the entrance and raises her left hand in a majestic gesture that should be understood as one of greeting or welcome.69 The child sits upright on her right knee, his luminous white incarnadine echoing Sebastians transgured form. The believer or beholder approaches Bellinis altarpiece from the direction of the incidence of light, and is greeted by the Virgin. As he stands before the altar, the sanctuary with the company of saints opens itself to him at eye level. When he raises his gaze to the celestial apse conch, he sees the ve seraphs in a golden mosaic with the ave gratia plena (sic), and above it the greeting, addressed by the golden heavens to Mary: +ave virginei os intemerate pudoris (Greetings to you, unstained ower of virginal honour). The origin of this line cannot be determined with certainty, although individual expressions appear in an acrostic and in a psaltery from the fourteenth and fteenth centuries, and its relation alludes rather to the doctrine of the perpetual virginity of the mother of Jesus than to the doctrine of the immaculate conception (i.e., conceived free of original sin) of Mary herself.70 With Giovanni Bellini and Antonello da Messina, the pala, or unied altarpiece, became the principal eld of innovation in Venice. Appearing now in the context of a prescribed hieratic symmetry is a subtle dynamization of the gural composition by means of the varied positioning of colour and light. The proportions of gural groups and architecture are harmonized with one another. It should not be forgotten, however, that multi-panel altarpieces continued to be produced. Still, it would be a mistake to draw a distinction between a progressive and an old-fashioned type. In Venice even as late as the second or third decade of the sixteenth century, the choice in Venice between a unied altarpiece, or pala, and a multi-panel one was determined primarily by the works intended location. As the examples by Bellini demonstrate, the unied vertical pala was developed for the side wall of a church, while the polyptych remained the rule for the altars in the main and side choirs, and presumably retained greater prestige. It is not primarily a question of the progressive or conservative tastes of clients or artists, but instead a problem of installation, and in the case of export works, of transport as well. In 1993 Peter Humfrey focused on the fundamental matters of mounting and transport, which had hitherto received inadequate attention.71 In Venice, the convention described above no longer applied after Titians painting of the Assumption, executed in the years 151618 for the Pesaro family for the church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari.72 An earlier exception was the St Ambrose altarpiece of circa 150010, executed by Alvise Vivarini and Marco Basaiti for one of the choir chapels of this church.73 A later example again sheds light on the connection between structure and intended location: in 1522 Titian produced a
multi-panel altarpiece for the high altar of the church of Santi Nazaro e Celso in Brescia.74 Since the relatively small format of 2.78 x 1.22 metres could easily have corresponded to a one-piece altarpiece, we can only assume that the polyptych form continued to enjoy greater prestige. After the development of the pala, Giovanni Bellini delivered three or four multi-panel altarpieces. In the spring of 1489, the triptych (illus. 142) for the Pesaro family was completed and set up in the choir of the sacristy of the Frari. During the second half of the 1480s, Bellini also worked on a triptych for the church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli, built by Pietro Lombardo. This work, whose central panel showed St Jerome in the desert, is lost.75 After 1500 Bellini and his workshop painted a triptych for Pietro Priuli, which was intended for the altar of the chapel of San Michele in Isola.76 Giovanni Bellini may have received the commissions for the San Giobbe altarpiece and the Frari triptych around the same time, circa 1478. The clients for the Frari triptych were Nicol, Benedetto and Marco Pesaro, the sons of Pietro Pesaro. The occasion was the internment of their mother Franceschina in a sepulchre in the sacristy that was intended for the family, and which was consecrated, like the church itself, to the Virgin.77 The frame for the triptych was the work of Jacopo da Faenza, who signed it on the reverse, entering the date of 15 February 1488 according to Venetian reckoning (more veneto), or 1489 according to our calendar. Bellini signed and dated the work on the base of the throne. A collaboration between painter and framemaker is certain. Bellini adopted a similar formula to Mantegnas San Zeno altarpiece, with three parts contained by a unifying frame. The saints occupying the lateral panels are shown staggered in narrow, shallow cabinets, while the Virgin and Child are set on a raised throne in the central panel, its rounded arch rising above the side panels. The frame is constructed of four pillars set on a plinth, connected by two architraves and the arch: this form was later known in architectural history as a Serliana (or Palladio motif), but it would be more apt to refer to it as a Belliniana. The funereal context is emphasized by the sculptural decoration above the frame: candelabra with burning ames supported by dolphins and winged sea creatures, and an urn or vase at the apex of the arch, from which a candelabrum rises. In the panels themselves, the pillars of the framing faade are repeated without ornamentation on the side of St Nicholas of Bari and St Benedict and in the throne-room of the middle panel. The Virgin is enthroned atop a tall base at whose feet two angels play music, and she holds the standing Child on her knee. The throne itself is not visible, because here Mary herself is the throne, or sedes sapientiae. In the golden conch of the apse in the central panel, an inscription refers to the Virgin as the Gate of Heaven: ianua certa poli duc mentem dirige vitam // quae peragam commissa tuae sint omnia curae (secure gates of heaven, lead my spirit, direct my life, all my actions are commended to your solicitude). Rona Goffen has established the origin of this citation in Leonardo Nogaroliss Liturgy of the Immaculate Conception, published for the rst time in Venice in 1478. Based on a number of indications (the form of the tabernacle frame, the prayer and the apse conch, and Benedicts book,
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142 Giovanni Bellini, the Frari triptych, 1489, wood. Church of S. Maria Gloriosa del Frari, Venice.
which is open to Ecclesiasticus), Goffen concludes that the theme is the hope of salvation through the intercession of the sinless Mother of God.78 The form of the frame, however, is related to another context (illus. 143). It is not a tabernacle, but instead a genuine temple front, depicted more explicitly than in Mantegnas San Zeno altarpiece, for which a Byzantine model had been drawn on. In the Museum of Nicosia on Cyprus and in the Metropolitan Museum in New York there are four Byzantine silver bowls from the seventh century ad, each of which displays four pillars, segments of architraves and a raised arch at the centre, that is to say, the Serliana form of Bellinis Frari triptych. Various scenes are set in front of this architecture: the anointing of David by Samuel, David before Saul (illus. 144), the Emperor Theodosius with courtiers and guards. In the biblical scenes containing David, the architecture with its spiral columns refers to the Temple in Jerusalem. Bellini adopts this for his Frari triptych in order to display the attribute Templum Salomonis for Mary and to add it to the other predicates.79
143 The sacristy of S. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari with the Frari triptych.
Symmetry and Asymmetry

The Baptism of Christ (illus. 145) was painted by Giovanni Bellini on a commission from Battista Graziani for the church of Santa Corona in Vicenza, where the altar was erected between 1500 and 1502. Graziani had made a vow to endow an altar in order to ensure his safe return from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. With two inscribed stone panels set on the pillars in front of the altar structure between the nave and the aisle, the donor maintains his memory and that of the date 1500.80 Bellinis painting is found on the wall of the left-hand aisle immediately in front of the transept, in a grandiose altar structure by Rocco da Vicenza. For the lighting of the picture, he took account of the windows on the side of the choir. The support is wood, the boards arranged horizontally. With its dimensions of 4.0 metres in height and 2.63 metres in width, the image is extraordinarily large, but nonetheless approximately one metre shorter than the large altarpieces of San Giobbe and San Zaccaria. For his Baptism of Christ in Vicenza, Bellini took up the composition used by Cima da Conegliano for the same theme circa 14924 for San Giovanni Battista in Bragora in Venice (illus. 146).81 Like Cima, Bellini set his gural group in the foreground, positioning John the Baptist and the angels on the bank across the water and lowering the level on which Christ stands in the centre.82 In both paintings, John holds a bowl above Jesuss head, above which a white dove hovers at the central axis, and from which a ray of light falls directly downwards. Behind the group of gures, a broad landscape containing the River Jordan opens toward mountains that rise up in a staggered formation all the way to the blue horizon beneath the bright streaks of the sky. The marvellous composition devised by Cima, who was born roughly between 1459 and 1469, and who arrived in Venice perhaps only in the rst half of the 1480s, where he was employed in the workshop of Alvise Vivarini, must have made an extraordinary impression on Giovanni Bellini. For the rst time, Bellini adopts here a composition by a younger colleague for one of his own works. The changes made by Bellini to Cimas composition were precisely planned enhancements. Bellini emptied the picture, shifting the tree next to Christ behind the angels along the left edge of the picture, eliminating the gures in the central area, lowering the fortied hill, and juxtaposing a curtainwalled castle, a church and a hermits dwelling under a palm tree at middle height. In Cimas painting, a cloud oats above the dove, surrounded by a ring of cherubs. The Gospels of Matthew (3: 17), Mark (1: 11) and Luke (3: 22) are unanimous in reporting that during the Baptism the skies parted and a dove glided downwards, while a voice intoned, identifying Jesus to the people, as my son. Above the cloud, in extreme foreshortening, Bellini shows God the Father with outspread arms surrounded by cherubs and seraphs in
144 David before Saul, Byzantine silver plate, beginning of the 7th century. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
145 Giovanni Bellini, Baptism of Christ, 150002, canvas. Church of S. Corona, Vicenza.
a way that resembles Vittore Carpaccios painting of 1491, St Ursula in Glory for the Ursula cycle. In doing so, Bellini makes the Trinity visible along the vertical central axis, just as his father did in one of his drawings of the Baptism of Christ, namely the one now in London.83 In both drawings by Jacopo, Christ and John are surrounded by a large group of music-making angels as an indication of the supernatural event. Giovanni Bellini, in contrast, worked with iconographic concentration and with light and colour in
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146 Cima da Conegliano, Baptism of Christ, 14924, wood. Church of S. Giovanni in Bragora, Venice.
order to reveal the event of Christs baptism as a revelation of his dual nature. Christ belongs simultaneously to the vertical axis of the Trinity and to the event of the Baptism occurring along the horizontal axis, and the waters of the River Jordan reach up to his shoulders (that is to say, on the two-dimensional plane of the picture). Christ is depicted frontally and enlivened by a gentle contraposto, while Cima favoured asymmetry, rotating the gure of Christ slightly towards John. The luminous body of Christ takes up the incarnadine of the Transguration, conrmed by the frontally depicted head, as compared with a fragment of the contemporary Transguration of Christ (illus. 106) in the Accademia. In addition, the half-gure in the Resurrection of Christ (illus. 147) in the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth is closely related to the Christ in the Baptism in Vicenza. The head of the frontally depicted body of the resurrected Christ is ringed with golden beams of light in a way similar to the Baptism in Vicenza. The relationship to the act of
147 Giovanni Bellini, Resurrection of Christ, c. 150010, wood. Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas.
Redemption, nally, claries the position of the arms of the baptized Christ, which echoes the crossed arms of the deceased Christ in images of the Passion (illus. 58) from the 1460s. On the basis of Cimas composition, Bellini was able to develop an extraordinary allegory of the history of Salvation: in his Baptism of Christ, the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Baptism, the Passion and the Redemption become one. He also included the earthly consequences of these events: the castle, the church and the hermits cave. And he incorporated the three angels, two of which bear Christs red and blue robes: red and blue are the colours of God the Father and the Virgin Mary. Set in opposition to the luminous colours of the angels and to Christs radiant incarnadine are the grey and green seen to one side of the Baptist and his brownish esh tint. On his side, however, we nd the obligatory severed tree-trunk from which a new sapling shoots upwards. Bellini also makes reference to himself, placing the cartellino bearing his
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signature beneath the feet of John the Baptist. Between the cartellino and Christ, he painted a red-and-green bird perched on a branch. This is apparently a redgreen type of parrot, the so-called Purple-naped Lory, which was captured on the Moluccas and arrived in Europe via the Arabian import trade.84 Since the parrot was regarded as the herald of Caesar, its presence might be interpreted as an allusion to the donors journey to the Holy Land, or as promulgating the arrival of Gods Son or alluding to his earthly status. Battista Graziani was ennobled as a minister to Emperor Frederick iii and named a count palatine.85 In an engraving of the Baptism of Christ (illus. 148), executed after 1507, Girolamo Mocetto combined the paintings of Cima da Conegliano and Giovanni Bellini and altered much without understanding. Although the Trinity appears, it has been displaced from the central axis. Bellinis wellcomposed group of angels has been replaced by a row, and Christ stands with dry feet upon a stone slab in the Jordan, his hands folded together in prayer, as in the Cima. Piero della Francescas Baptism of Christ (illus. 149), produced after 1451, served as the central panel of a polyptych, the remaining parts of which were supplied by Matteo di Giovanni up to circa 1465.86 Placed above the panel was God the Father seen in foreshortening, establishing the Trinitarian context. In his painting, Piero della Francesca re-established the archaic frontality of the gure of the baptized Christ, from which narrative painting since Giotto had deviated. In the Baptism, Piero displays the lightlled body of Christ, although this effect has been obscured by early and incompetent cleaning.87 There is a connection between Bellinis baptized Christ in Vicenza and Pieros, but not between Pieros and Cimas luminous Christ. Yet Bellini worked with a thoroughly metrical composition, while Piero della Francesca, although positioning his frontal Christ along the central axis, ultimately cancelled the bilateral symmetry of the composition through the lateral positioning of the two trees and additional subsidiary gures. For Bellini, the symmetrical character of the altarpiece remained decisive, and he introduced only deviations and enlivenments, while Cima da Conegliano, and later Sebastiano del Piombo and Titian, worked toward dynamizing their compositions. In the Virgin in Glory with Eight Saints (illus. 150), Bellini assembles his gures on a terrace and has them gaze at a hovering Virgin surrounded by cherubs and seraphs.88 Of interest is the arrangement of the saints in a half-circle, since it was impossible to t an ensemble of eight gures into the central area. Louis of Toulouse appears in a frontal pose below the Virgin, but not on the central axis. The fortresses again, predicates of Mary and the landscape have not been subjected to a strict bilateral symmetry.89 Around the same time, Bellini executed the symmetrical San Zaccaria altarpiece (illus. 160). Only in 1513 did Bellini venture to introduce a restrained dynamism in the altarpiece with SS Jerome, Christopher and Louis of Toulouse (illus. 151) for the church of San Giovanni Crisostomo. The painting displays the year in the painters signature on a cartellino: mdxiii // ioannes // bellinvs.p [inxit]. The
client was the tradesman Giorgio Diletti, whose last will and testament of 1494 provided for the erection of a tomb chapel in the church, which had fallen victim to re in 1475 and was to be refurbished. Mauro Codussi began work in 1497, and his son Domenico completed construction in 1504. Giorgio Diletti died in 1503, when he ceded all rights to the chapel to the Scuola Grande di San Marco in exchange for the total remission of his sins. In 1511, after conrmation from the widow, the Scuola transferred the contract to Giovanni Bellini, who was a member.90 For the Diletti chapel in San Giovanni Crisostomo, Bellini elaborated a new solution for the altar painting, which involved three gures. Standing in a narrow zone in the foreground, which is delimited laterally by pillars and closed above by a short barrel vault, are Christopher and Louis. Passing behind them and terminating at hip height is a white parapet with dark inserts, and above is a layered block of live rock dotted with plants that serves St Jerome as both seat and throne. A g tree to the left with a fortuitous bend serves the saint as a reading lectern. Jerome, dressed in white robes and a red cape, towers above the mountain chain into the sky. Although he now nds himself in the desert, the saint is shown in prole reading, as though he were comfortably ensconced in his studiolo. In his high altarpiece for San Giovanni Crisostomo of 151011, Sebastiano del Piombo presented the titular saint in prole facing right and
148 Girolamo Mocetto, Baptism of Christ, after 1507, engraving. Bibliothque Nationale de France, Paris. 149 Piero della Francesca, Baptism of Christ, about 1445. National Gallery, London.
overleaf: 150 Giovanni Bellini and workshop, Virgin in Glory with Eight Saints, c. 150005, wood. Church of S. Pietro Martire, isle of Murano, Venice. 151 Giovanni Bellini, S. Giovanni Crisostomo altarpiece, 1513, wood. Church of S. Giovanni Crisostomo, Venice.
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152 Titian, St Mark Enthroned, c. 1511, wood. Church of S. Maria della Salute, Venice.
six additional saints in a wholly asymmetrical composition in front of a row of columns that lead diagonally into the depths of the picture.91 For Venice, this bold disruption of symmetry was a novelty, for hitherto only Cima da Conegliano had ventured to depict an architectural setting in steep recession in this way. Sansovino was still aware that Giorgione had begun the high altarpiece, and that Sebastiano del Piombo completed it.92 Bellini justied his depiction of St Jerome in prole by his absorption in his book. His challenger
was less Sebastiano del Piombo than the young Titian, who propelled himself into the foreground with boldness and vigour after Giorgiones death. With the altarpiece for the church of Santo Spirito in Isola (illus. 152), executed circa 1510, Titian produced a novel type of altar painting: St Mark is set on a tall base and raised up against the sky, through which white clouds drift.93 Unprecedented is the shadow falling across the head of the patron saint of Venice and across his chest onto the right side. Mark balances a large book on his right knee, his right arm outstretched, and his angled stance is emphasized by the blue cloth falling from one side, by the green cloth falling downward from the base, and by his line of vision. The saints, Cosmas and Damian, Roch and Sebastian, are arranged in pairs at the sides of the throne, and the paving of the oor suggests a customary symmetrical arrangement. Rising all the way to a terminating arch between Roch and Sebastian, however, is a dark grey pillar with recessed columns, disturbing the symmetry of the scheme. David Rosand has proposed an explanation for the shadow that falls across St Mark, perceiving it as an allusion to the outbreaks of plague that frequently threatened Venice.94 There is no explanation for the revolutionary act of abandoning bilateral symmetry. With the Pesaro Virgin and Child for the church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Titian would radically dynamize the altar painting and the Sacra conversazione. In the Diletti altarpiece, Belini alludes to Titian, albeit without entirely embracing the boldness of his asymmetry: in both paintings, the principal saints are positioned well above the heads of the others and set against cloudlled skies in an untypical fashion. Bellinis g tree marks the left-hand side just as Titians architecture does the right-hand side, and, moreover, the leg positions of Christopher and Sebastian are borrowed from Titian.
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vi
Harmony
Musical Painters
At the Congress of Vienna of 181415, Venice became a province of Austria. In 1866 Emperor Franz Joseph i was forced to cede Venice to Napoleon iii, who arranged a plebiscite for Italian unication. As a result an overwhelming majority voted for Venice to become a part of the Kingdom of Italy. In 1848 the Venetians had attempted to shake off Austrian domination by rebelling and proclaiming the Repubblica di San Marco. Austria responded with forceful repression. In 1855 Franz Joseph i visited the defeated city with his wife Elisabeth, awarding a commission to the Friulian painter Jacopo DAndrea for a painting that was to depict Albrecht Drer being cordially welcomed to Venice, and intended for the gallery of modern art in the Belvedere in Vienna.1 In 1856 the painting was exhibited in Venice, where it remained for a time in the company of an additional representation of an artistic encounter, namely Antonio Zonas painting of the aging Titian with the young Paolo Veronese. In 1858 Jacopo DAndreas painting was circulated through its publication in the journal Gemme darti italiane in the form of a steel-plate engraving by Domenico Gandini (illus. 153), accompanied by a commentary by Pietro Selvatico.2 The idea for the painting was supplied by a letter written by Drer during his stay in Venice some time between late 1505 and mid-1507 and addressed to Willibald Pirckheimer in Nuremberg. The letter was published for the rst time in 1781 in the Journal zur Kunstgeschichte und zur allgemeinen Literatur, and appeared in a French translation in 1842.3 Jacopo DAndrea invented a festive greeting of the German artist by his Venetian colleagues, setting it in a barque in the Bacina. In Giovanni Bellini and Venetian Artists Welcome Albrecht Drer, we see a large company of men and women grouped in the large barque: at the stern and beneath a canopy, Bellini speaks to Drer, who listens attentively, while the gondolier pauses from his labours in order to eavesdrop on their conversation. Three individuals follow Bellinis speech with interest: one of these, seen in prole, is recognizable as Titian; the other two have been identied as Pellegrino da San Daniele and Palma il Vecchio. At the centre of the barque, Giorgione plays a large lute, while the rest of the company, consisting of lovely young women
153 Domenico Gandini, engraving of Jacopo dAndreas 1856 Giovanni Bellini and Venetian Artists Welcome Albrecht Drer, from Gemme darti italiane 11 (1858).
183
and men, amuse themselves by making music and singing. Visible are several musical instruments: a harp, two or three lutes and a viola da gamba.4 Jacopo DAndreas painting yokes together nineteenth-century notions of a carefree artistic life with the attitude that the Austrians would have liked to see expressed by the Venetians, and projects these back onto the early sixteenth century. The artistic-political message could be summarized as follows: the Venetian artists honour their German colleague, Drer; Giovanni Bellini acts as a mentor to the greatest German artist of the Renaissance, as well as to young geniuses from the Veneto, such as Giorgione and Titian. The cosmopolitan Venetian artists, who take pleasure in music, song and female companionship, celebrate the arrival of the famous German artist in Venice. The fact that Drer himself described his encounter with his artistic colleagues in Venice somewhat differently was evidently of no importance. On 7 February 1506 Drer wrote to Pirckheimer in Nuremberg that he had become acquainted with a number of friendly, sensible and learned men in Venice, good lute players and pipers, judges of painting, men of such noble sentiment and honest virtue. The counsel to avoid dining together with painters incited Drers fears of being poisoned by jealous colleagues. They would, he complains, both copy his works and disparage them because they were not done in the classical style. Drer extended his trust only to Giovanni Bellini, who praised him to the nobility and visited him in order make a purchase.5 This did not, however, actually happen. Drer became aware of the contrasting social statuses of artists in Nuremberg and Venice. In Venice, he wrote on 18 August 1506, he had become a gentiluomo, writing in anticipation of his return to Nuremberg: Here I am a gentleman, at home only a parasite.6 As early as 1498, a splendid self-portrait (illus. 154) testies through its condent pose and expensive clothing and gloves to Drers self-image as a gentiluomo, and supresses all references to manual labour.7 Giorgione, who was positioned together with his lute at the centre of DAndreas painting, was the rst painter in Venice (illus. 155) whose talents as a musician and a connoisseur of music were explicitly praised by Vasari. He took pleasure in singing love songs while accompanying himself on the lute, and he sang and played in such a divine manner that he was often engaged by the nobility for their festivals and concerts.8 Mastery of a musical instrument and of musical improvisation were hallmarks of a cultivated lifestyle long before Baldassare Castiglione demanded in his Cortegiano of 1528 that courtiers learn to sing from musical texts and to play several instruments.9 In his autobiography, Leon Battista Alberti claims to have mastered music without lessons, in particular organ playing, to such an extent that even knowledgeable musicians could learn from him.10 Leonardo da Vinci told Vasari that Ludovico Maria Sforza, who took great pleasure in lute playing, had summoned the artist from Florence to Milan for this reason. Leonardo arrived in Milan with a lyre made of silver in the novel and bizarre form of a horses head, an instrument that enabled him to endow his harmonies with especially powerful and beautiful sonorities.11 Leonardo, moreover, was the best
improviser of verses and rhymes. Similar accomplishments were reported for Bramante. The painters strove for professional advancement, improving their social standing through their activities as musicians. Writing in 1949, Rudolf Wittkower claimed: A familiarity with musical theory became a sine qua non of artistic education.12 The court in Milan was celebrated for its musical culture, while the Serenissima Repubblica under Doges Marco and Agostino Barbarigo competed with the papal chapel in Rome; in 1491 the rst ofcial state musician was appointed maestro di cappella, namely the French or Netherlandish master Pietro Fossa.13 Among the princedoms of northern Italy, it was the dukedom of Ferrara in particular that, alongside Milan, placed special emphasis on music. In order to recuperate from military expeditions and war games, Alfonso i dEste occupied himself by making musical instruments and playing music.14 With his Marriage Feast at Cana (illus. 156), executed in 15612 for the refectory of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, Paolo Veronese provided a grandiose depiction of musical painters performing together at an imposing banquet: Titian with a viola da gamba, Tintoretto and Veronese with viols, Veroneses brother with a lira da braccio and perhaps Jacopo Bassano with a ute. This performance of real-time music is no anecdotal accessory, but instead a metaphor for the emotional effect and the contest between the harmony of colours and the harmony of tones. Concerning Leonardos appearance at the court in Milan with the horses head lyre he had invented, Vasari writes: Leonardos performance
154 Albrecht Drer, Self-portrait, 1498, wood. Museo del Prado, Madrid. 155 Jacob Picinus, Portrait of Giorgione, engraving from Carlo Ridol, Le Meraviglie dellArte (Venice, 1648).
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156 Detail from Paolo Veronese, The Marriage Feast at Cana, 1563, oil on canvas, (painters as musicians: Titian, Paolo Veronese and his brother, Tintoretto and another, probably Jacopo Bassano). Muse du Louvre, Paris.
was therefore superior to that of all the other musicians who had come to Ludovicos court. At stake here was the wide-ranging courtly competition, or paragone, concerning the capacities and relative rankings of the arts and of the social status of painters, musicians and poets. At the court in Milan, Leonardo was especially relentless and rigorous in his attempts to acquire the most elevated status for the art of painting. The dispute is contained in the Libro di Pittura, which was assembled in the mid-sixteenth century. The original manuscript of the paragone was presumably contained in the lost Codex Sforza, produced at the urging of Lodovico Sforza.15 Leonardos arguments in favour of painting and against poetry and music are as follows: painting is a science constructed on mathematical principles; it is addressed to the eye, while music stimulates a less noble organ of sense. The imitations of painting encompass all phenomena; they show us bodies in lively motion, in contrast to which the letters on the page are dead. Leonardo conceded the existence of an afnity between painting and music on the condition that the latter was regarded as a late-born sister art. The Conclusione on poets and painters is a marvellous panegyric to the eye as the sovereign among the sense organs and an instrument of mathematics, astronomy, cosmography and the other sciences of measurement, including architecture, perspective and painting. The musician who advocates assigning the same rank to his own art as to painting is countered by Leonardo, who asserts that the harmony of tones is transitory, while in painting, the harmony of well-proportioned bodies is permanent and preserves the beauty that perishes in its natural models. Unfortunate music sventurata musica is Leonardos appellation for the little sister of painting, because its harmonies fade away immediately upon sounding forth. A comparison between the art of words, dismembered by succession, and the simultaneous depiction of bodies yields the nal argument in favour of painting and against poetry. Moreover, because poetry is incapable of polyphony, it ranks even lower than music. In order to make explicit the disadvantage of the successive character of words, Leonardo compares poetry to a piece of music whose different voices are performed successively instead of simultaneously: rst the soprano, then the tenor, than the countertenor and nally the bass. A poet cannot describe the harmonies of music, but painting can depict the harmonies of the proportions simultaneously: According to this, the poet remains as far behind the painter in the guration of corporeal things as he remains behind the musician in the guration of invisible things.16 The ranking adopted by Leonardo is not consistent with the actual state of affairs. Together with arithmetic, geometry and astronomy, music belonged to the educational program of the Quadrivium, and hence numbered among the liberal arts, the artes liberales, while the painter had to defend himself
constantly against the classication of painting among the mechanical arts. Four important works concerning the paragone of the visual arts with music and poetry appeared between 1499 and 1509.17 The texts of Francesco Lancilotti, Francesco Colonna, Pomponius Gauricus and Luca Pacioli are all concerned with the idea of setting the visual arts on a par with music and poetry, and they document a protracted debate centring in Milan and Venice around 1500.18 Particularly illuminating is the argument presented by Luca Pacioli in his Divina proportione of 1509. The extended title commends the book, which deals with the golden section and with regular bodies, as absolutely necessary for anyone who is determined to study philosophy, perspective, painting, sculpture, architecture, music or the other mathematical disciplines with an alert and penetrating spirit. They are promised an admirable and enjoyable lesson, and one that also deals with the problems of the most esoteric sciences.19 In his dedication Pacioli addresses Pedro Soderino in Florence and the Venetian patrician Andrea Mocenigo. The text begins with an epistola addressed to Prince Ludovico Maria Sforza of Milan and dated 9 February 1498 (illus. 157). Based on a distinction between the fundamental and the derivative mathematical disciplines, Pacioli turns toward the demand either that music be removed from the Quadrivium, or else that the subject of prospettiva should be ranged alongside arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music on equal terms. For Pacioli, as for Alberti, Piero della Francesca, Leonardo and Drer, prospettiva meant something far more comprehensive than a method for representing space, and encompassed the mathematical bases of painting, optics, the projection of shadows and the depiction of light and shadow, as well as colouration. In opposition to those who support their arguments by citing Plato, Aristotle and Isidore of Seville, Pacioli states his argument directly: music satises the ear, while perspective satises the eye, the highest sense organ of the intellect: If music recreates the soul by its harmony so too does perspective delight it by the measurement of distance and the variation of colours. If the one art exploits harmonic proportions, the other exploits arithmetical and geometrical ones.20
157 The opening of Luca Paciolis 1498 De Divina proportione. Bibliothque Publique et Universitaire, Genf.
The Music of Angels

In 1505 Giovanni Bellini painted his last great Sacra conversazione for the church of San Zaccaria, where it was joined together with the splendid altar architecture (illus. 158), probably the work of Pietro Lombardo.21 The San
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158 The St Jerome Altar (attributed to Pietro Lombardo) in the church of S. Zaccaria, Venice, with Giovanni Bellinis altarpiece in situ. Church of S. Zaccaria, Venice. 159 L. Normand, engraving of Giovanni Bellinis Pala di S. Zaccaria.
Zaccaria altarpiece and the framing architecture are coordinated with one another. In 1816 Bellinis painting (illus. 160) was brought from Paris back to its original location, albeit with far-reaching alterations. In 1797 it had numbered among the numerous items of war booty that were seized by the French army and transported to Paris for exhibition at the Muse Central des Arts, the future Muse Napolon.22 During its capture, the painting lost an arched segment above and one board below, the latter bearing a segment of painted ooring. Like many other paintings, Bellinis San Zaccaria altarpiece suffered mistreatment at the hands of restorers in Paris, when it was subject to a procedure commonly practised after 1750: the separation of the paint layer from its wooden support and its transfer to canvas. The records concerning its restoration have been preserved in the Archives du Louvre, and the paintings sojourn in Paris is also documented in Charles Landons Annales du muse of 1807 (illus. 159). The San Zaccaria altarpiece became well known through John Ruskin. In his Lectures on Sculpture, delivered at Oxford University in 187071, Ruskin analyses the opposition between Florentine and Venetian art, praising Giovanni Bellini as the most important Venetian artist for the transition from Michelangelo to Tintoretto. The enthusiastic Ruskin named the Frari triptych and the San Zaccaria altarpiece
as the most eminent paintings in existence: These two, having every quality in balance, are as far as my present knowledge extends, and as far as I can trust my judgment, the two best pictures in the world.23 In his last Sacra conversazione, as in the San Giobbe altarpiece, Bellini designed a ciborium with apse and conch with a gold mosaic, but in contrast to the earlier composition, the ciborium in the San Zaccaria altarpiece opens laterally towards the landscape and the blue sky above, and the painted architecture is dominated by a solemn colour chord consisting of white and gold. Like the architecture, the gural composition is strictly symmetrical: the male saints, Peter and Jerome, stand frontally in front of the pillars; the female saints, Catherine of Alexandria and Lucy of Syracuse, are turned towards the centre; and the Virgin and Child are set on a white marble throne inset with central reddish-gold panels. On the right-hand side is Lucy, the saint of light who was prominent in Venice. As in Antonellos San Cassiano altarpiece, she holds a transparent glass in her hand. At the feet of the Virgin, an angel plays a lira da braccio.24
160 Giovanni Bellini, Pala di S. Zaccaria, lower part, 1505, canvas transferred from wood. Church of S. Zaccaria, Venice.
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161 Detail (an angel playing a lira da braccio) from Giovanni Bellini, Pala di S. Zaccaria (see illus. 160).
opposite: 162 The contest between Pan and Apollo, woodcut from Ovid, Metamorphoseos vulgare (Venice: G. Rosso, 1497). 163 Detail (the angel concert) from Giovanni Bellini, Pala di San Giobbe (see illus. 139).
The colour composition is one of rened simplicity: for the male saints, the contrast is between broad areas of yellow and small areas of blue for Peter, and broad areas of red with small areas of white for Jerome. Visible along the axis is the full range of colour and brightdark contrasts: pale red-gold with green for the angel, and blue, green, red and white at the centre for the Virgin and Child, set in front of the white rear wall of the throne with its inlaid Veronese marble. The two female saints play a mediating role with their restrained colours and raise the level of chromatic diversity through their exposure in shadow and light. Among the symbolic objects are Lucys lamp, her attribute as the saint of light, the glass lamp above the Virgin nostra lux vera (our true light) according to the Venetian litany with the ostrich egg symbolizing the Resurrection, and the acacia and g tree as signs of the Passion and Redemption. Assigned to the gold mosaic of the apse conch are the rock or great partridges and the lamp as a symbol of the knowledge of Christ.25 Appearing above the Virgins throne is a leaf mask of the face of Solomon (not David), as an expression of her identity as sedes sapientiae (throne of wisdom), and because Solomon received divine illumination via celestial harmonies instructing him to erect a temple. These harmonies are represented in the painting by the angel with the lira da braccio (illus. 161). Once again, Bellini elaborates acoustic phenomena in visual terms. An angel plays, and all of those present are depicted as listeners with lowered or inclined heads, with the exception of Jerome, who is shown absorbed in his book, and thereby emblematizes the opposition between reading and listening. The strings of the angels instrument, the lira da braccio, which was in common use and which is frequently depicted, could be either plucked or stroked. Also known as a viola or lira, this was the preferred instrument of both virtuosi and dilettantes for improvising together with voice.26 In the late fteenth century the lira da braccio became the mythic instrument of Apollo and Orpheus. In the illustrated edition of Ovids Metamorphoses that appeared in Venice in Italian in 1497, Apollo plays a lira da braccio with seven strings during his contest with Pan, which was witnessed by Midas, while his opponent blows on pan pipes with seven pipes (illus. 162). The same edition contains an illustration of Orpheus, who sings to the animals and trees of the forest, accompanying himself on a lira da braccio, and thus creating a new paradise with his pastorale.27 The lira da braccio with seven strings, as depicted by Bellini in the San Zaccaria altarpiece, can be related to the seven planets, while other instruments with nine strings including the one played by Apollo in Raphaels Parnassus in the Vatican are associated with the nine Muses. The lira da braccio often has two additional outer bass strings that can
be plucked together with the other strings, which are tuned in fths. This instrument is suitable for performing both melodies and simple harmonies. In the San Giobbe altarpiece, Bellini sets three music-making angels (illus. 163) on the steps of the throne at the Virgins feet, and gives them a more prominent place than the crowded putti in the Virgin and Child with SS Thomas Aquinas and Catherine (illus. 119). The angels in the San Giobbe altarpiece, shown seated on the steps of the throne, are combined in a pyramidal arrangement. All three are supplied with instruments, the rst with a rebec whose ngerboard terminates in a lions head, the other two with large lutes. The angel seated directly below the Virgin holds this instrument in such a way that the pale sounding side is almost parallel to the picture plane, and covering the lower part of its face. The dark, circular sound hole within the surface corresponds to the row of ve seraphim in the gold mosaic of the apse conch, each of whom carries a round shield. The musical angels on the throne steps wear blue, green and yellow. The blue contrasts with a salmon-red and has been given white highlights, so that this angel presents a variation on the Virgins colours, which are blue, red and white. The green of the middle angel, whose gaze is directed upwards, is taken up by the robe of John the Baptist, of which only a narrow strip is visible, and in particular by the marble of the rst throne step and by the baldachin with its laurel wreath, which hangs vertically above the Virgin. The angel in yellow, nally, who also displays a shadowed blue sleeve, echoes the gold of the apse conch and the blue of the seraphim. Singing and music-making angels began appearing in paintings in the twelfth century in the highest celestial spheres. Painters could depict angels with musical instruments, but their music was inaudible, just as the songs and the music of celestial angels remained imperceptible to mortals. Giotto included music-making angels in his Coronation of the Virgin in the Baroncelli polyptych, and around 1350 Paolo Veneziano included a large number of angels with various musical instruments above the throne in the central panel of the large polyptych of the Coronation of the Virgin for the church of Santa Chiara in Venice, and placed two kneeling angels with portable organs at the feet of the enthroned pair. These angels open their
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164 Jacobello del Fiore and workshop, Coronation of the Virgin, 1438, wood. Galleria dellAccademia, Venice
mouths in song. Between them, at the feet of Christ and Mary, are found the discs of the sun and moon.28 In his enormous fresco of the Coronation of the Virgin in the Doges Palace, Guariento assembled music-making angels around the celestial throne. In Jacopello da Fiores reduced copy of 1438, today in the Accademia in Venice, the lower steps of the cone-shaped centre of paradise are occupied by angels with all the known musical instruments, arranged in double rows (illus. 164). Since Giotto, hardly any Italian depiction of the Coronation of the Virgin had failed to include musical angels, with the exception of Giovanni Bellini in his altarpiece for San Francesco in Pesaro (illus. 129). In the central panel of his Valle Romita polyptych (illus. 165), executed in Venice, Gentile da Fabriano, who was Jacopo Bellinis teacher, depicts the Coronation of the Virgin with God the Father and cherubs hovering above the throne.29 Along the lower edge of the picture a section of the continuous gold ground has been reserved for the rmament, with sun, moon and stars, into which the artists signature has been inscribed. The eight angels with their instruments have been positioned above the last sphere; they belong to heaven, the setting of the coronation scene. For human beings, their angelic music remains as inaudible as the music of the spheres made by the sun and the planets, although some individuals believed that they could hear the voices of angels, and derived plainchant from them. The sweet melodies played by an angel on a lute brought St Francis such celestial joy that, as his biographer reported, he felt as though he were already in the next world.30
165 Detail (central panel, the Coronation of the Virgin) from Gentile da Fabriano, Valle Romita polyptych, c. 1410, wood. Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan.
The Involvement of the Beholder

In fteenth-century Italy it was primarily Marian iconography that was enriched by the musical angel.31 They arrived in the Sacra conversazione from polyptychs with the enthroned Virgin, as seen in the central panel of Masaccios Pisa polyptych. An important source for the musical angel at the throne of Mary in the Venetian Sacre conversazioni was Andrea Mantegna with his San Zeno altarpiece of 1459 (illus. 166). With Bellini, music-making angels accompany the Venetian Sacre conversazioni, which represent the communion of saints. In his writings on the effects of music, the Netherlandish musician Johannes Tinctoris, who served as chaplain at the Aragonese court in Naples between 1471 and 1475, offers a revealing interpretation of the painted musical angel: When the painter wants to depict the bliss of the saved, he paints angels which make various instruments ring out.32 It was and remains uncertain just what viewers were expected to make of these delightful yet mute accessory gures. A synaesthetic sensibility is documented for the rst time by Carlo Ridol and Marco Boschini. Concerning the saints and musical angels in Bellinis San Giobbe altarpiece, Ridol wrote in 1648: In truth, he sees natural gures which Giovanni strove to endow with the reverential sense of compassion expected of images of saints: by avoiding those foreshortenings or [elaborate] positions practiced so often in later painting, he fully exposes the gracefulness and beauty of the three little angels sitting at the Virgins feet, one of which plays a viola, another a lute, and a third of violin; but their friendly faces and cheerful movements, they touch the soul; such gures awaken the greatest veneration in the spirits of the faithful, so that one has good reason to concur with the words: They lack only words to seem fully alive // You could almost believe they speak if you trust your eyes.33 The quoted verse is from Canto xvi of Torquato Tassos Gerusalemme liberata. From the poet Ridol borrows the extraordinary challenge to believe ones eyes, thereby encouraging the beholder to use both senses: vision and hearing. In his Carta del navegar pitoresco (sic) (Nautical Chart of Painting) of 1660, Marco Boschini takes up this challenge. By way of the Virgin and Child, Boschinis meditations go on to the saints, which seemed to him alive, passing over to the correspondence between real and painted architecture, and nally to the angels, which elicit the remark that it seemed to him as though he could actually hear their harmonic music.34 In his Cicerone of 1855, Jacob Burckhardt wrote two remarkable sentences about Giovanni Bellinis depictions of companies of saints gathered around the throne of the Virgin and Child: The assemblies of saintly gures, without affect, even without any denite devotion, nonetheless makes a superhuman impression
through the sounding together and the beatic existence of so many free and beautiful characters. The marvellous angels on the steps of the throne, which sing and play lutes and violins, are only an external symbol for this authentically musical general content.35 Burckhardt did not explore this idea further, leaving the question of how, going beyond metaphors, the musical general content could be more precisely dened for Bellini and Venice. An example drawn from the works of another celebrated art historian exemplies again how comparisons between Giovanni Bellinis colour schemes and musical harmony have suggested themselves at rst, but only to remain undeveloped beyond sudden ashes of insight. In his early work The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance, rst published in 1894, Bernard Berenson compares the effects of Venetian colour with those of music. Of the Venetian painters and their colour schemes, he writes: Their mastery over colour is the rst thing that attracts most people to the painters of Venice. Their colouring not only gives direct pleasure to the eye, but acts like music upon the moods, stimulating thought and memory in much the way as a work by a great composer.36 On the other hand, even a writer such as Richard Wagner perceived no transition leading from painting to music, whether in front of the San Zaccaria altarpiece or the Frari triptych, which fascinated him, and which he referred to as the perfection of painting.37 It was art historians who employed metaphors in order to keep alive the old aspiration to see paintings acquire voices and sounds, whether through deception or through the imagination of the beholder. In 1490, in his epitaph for Filippo Lippi in Spoleto Cathedral, Angelo Poliziano offers the formula according to which the hand of the painter has enlivened the colours so effectively that their voices are audible to the deceived ears of the living.38 Painters were experts at deception and at eliciting the collaboration of the beholder. Around 1490 the Ferrarese-born painter Lorenzo Costa, who was active in Bologna from 1486, produced an astonishing painting of musicians (illus. 167).39 Positioned as half-gures behind a wide marble parapet are a female singer, a singing lute player and a male singer. Lying on the left-hand side of the parapet is a stringed instrument, a rebec, across which lies a bow and a recorder, or auto dolce. The rebec overlaps the edge of the picture, thereby emphasizing that the instruments are being offered to the beholder. On the right-hand side of the parapet lie an opened musical manuscript and a closed book. The lute player at the centre, who is also singing, looks down at the open manuscript, and is evidently reading the notes. The painting sug-
166 Detail (putto with lute) of Andrea Mantegna, altarpiece of S. Zeno, (illus. 124)
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167 Lorenzo Costa, A Concert, about 1490, wood. National Gallery, London.
gests a participation of the beholder in the way that he takes up an instrument whether recorder or rebec and adds to the music made visible here by the three singing gures and the lute. This challenge is emphasized by the singers at the sides, both of whom point towards the instruments and the musical manuscript. The painter himself invites the beholders anticipation, for the singer with the lute is a self-portrait. Lorenzo Costa belonged to a family of painters, and had not previously attracted notice with depictions of musicians or musical angels or through exceptional inventions. He was familiar with the practice of including musical angels in pictures of the Virgin, as shown by his painting for the abbey of Santa Maria Assunta near Bologna.40 Slightly later, in 1493, Costa painted a group of ten male and female singers. Their names they are members of the Bentivogli family alongside priests and the name Lorenzo Costa pittore are registered on the painting itself, and a sheet of music paper is shown upside down so that the beholder is invited to read it.41 An important work for the theme of seeing and hearing is Carpaccios Vision of St Augustine (illus. 168) in the Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni in Venice. Legend has it that Augustine composed a treatise on the joys of the blessed, and wanted Jeromes counsel. While Augustine was formulating his letter, he experienced a luminous vision and heard the voice of Jerome, who had just died, and who reproached him for the idleness of his strivings for knowledge of the hereafter. Carpaccio has the supernatural light fall visibly from the right
168 Vittore Carpaccio, The Vision of St Augustine, c. 1505, canvas. Scuola di S. Giorgio degli Schiavoni, Venice.
169 Titian, The Andrians (Bacchanal), c. 15235, canvas. Museo del Prado, Madrid.
through a window parallel to the picture plane, traversing the studiolo. Augustine and his dog look in the direction of the light source, but are not blinded, and the Church Father at least displays no reex action. Carpaccio uses an optical phenomenon to suggest an acoustic one. Augustine seems to need his eyes less than his ears. The acoustic dimension is illustrated by Carpaccio through the presentation of legible musical manuscripts, one secular and one religious, both of which have been identied.42 In Venice, Augustine was not only familiar as a Church Father, but also as the author of the treatise De musica, which was published in Venice for the rst time in 1491.43 In one of his paintings for the studiolo of Duke Alfonso i dEste in Ferrara, Titian proffers a similar invitation to the beholder. The painting The Andrians (Bacchanal) (illus. 169), executed around 15235, follows the ekphrasis of Philostratus in showing the residents of the island of Andros made drunk by Bacchus stream of wine, drinking, dancing or singing. With the bewitching female nude in the right-hand corner, Titian answers Giorgiones Venus and the half-naked Lotis in Bellinis Feast of the Gods (illus. 178) of 1514. Just at the feet of this artful nude, and in front of two reclining young women with recorders, lies a sheet of music paper that bears the title Canon, and which has been identied by Edward Lowinsky as the canon per tonos by the Netherlandish composer Adrian Willaert.44 Willaert was a musician at the dEste court in Ferrara, and rose in 1527 to become maestro di cappella of the doges in Venice.
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The challenge of transgressing the boundaries between the visual and the acoustic indicates the kinds of activities that were suggested to beholders in the late fteenth century. This involved reinterpreting a demand issued by Alberti, who explicitly called on the painter to depict objects that would be capable of inciting viewers to engage in intellectual activity he uses the Italian word pensare, meaning to think, whose Latin equivalent is excogitare, meaning to discover, to conceive: All these things, then, must be sought with the greatest diligence from Nature and always directly imitated, preferring those in painting which leave more for the mind to discover than is actually apparent to the eye.45 Here, Alberti confronts the beholder and the artis studiosus with the challenge of engaging in conceptual activity, in active excogitare, just like the artist, whose principal intellectual activity consists of invention. A collaboration on the part of the beholder, one that extends from perception to excogitare, transcends mere delectation in, and emotional engagement with, the work of art. Lorenzo Costa, Vittore Carpaccio and Titian also proffered invitations for simulating an auditory response, regarded as an intellectual activity. Was the beholder, then, expected to listen inwardly to harmonies or melodies when viewing an open-mouthed painted gure with a musical instrument? When confronted by hosts of musical angels, was he expected to imagine celestial music? In his Dialogo della pittura of 1557, Lodovico Dolce, a learned historiographer in Venice and an admirer of Titian, has his interlocutors discuss the imaginative faculties of the beholder with the writer Pietro Aretino and the Florentine Fabrini. Following an exchange on a series of oft-repeated reections on poetry and painting (such as mute poetry and eloquent painting), Fabrini comes to the assertion that although his gures are silent, the painter nonetheless causes them to seem to cry out, to weep or to laugh. To this, Aretino objects that this illusion corresponds to nothing real. Fabrini invokes the example of a musician named Silvestro, who painted so excellently that beholders were convinced that his gures could speak almost like living people. Fabrini attributes this familiar aesthetic conceit to a painting musician, at which point Aretino disputes the view that is a question of the capacities of the painting itself. He leads these observations back to the imagination of beholder, who is stimulated by the actions presented: This idea is plain imagination on the spectators part, prompted by different attitudes which serve that end. It is not an effect or a property of painting.46 With the collaboration of the beholder, painters redeem a challenge presented to them by Pliny with the story of Apelles, the most celebrated painter of antiquity. It is a question of the unpaintable, of the boundary that only Apelles was able to surpass: He even painted things that cannot be represented in pictures thunder, lightning and thunderbolts.47 The painting of the unpaintable, the surmounting of the boundaries of the medium, was pursued by Leonardo in Milan in his depiction of a thunderstorm, and by Giorgione in Venice in his Tempest. Erasmus of Rotterdam praised Drer for successfully meeting the challenge laid down by Apelles by representing the non-representable.48 The numerous depictions of acoustic phenomena
observable in the works of Giovanni Bellini document the objective of surmounting the boundaries of painting, just as the legendary Apelles had done. The singing and music-making angels included by Bellini in his rst Sacra conversazione during the 1470s, and the ones he added to later works for San Giobbe, Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari and San Zaccaria, and to the votive picture commissioned by Doge Agostino Barbarigo, are undramatized attempts to meet Plinys challenge by activating the beholders imagination.
Musica pittoresca
At the start of his career, Giovanni Bellinis painting was oriented towards invention and poetry, but with the cultivation of colour harmonies, it began tending towards a paragone with music. Literary references remain isolated. In the inscription of the Piet (illus. 83) in Milan, it has been possible to enumerate them. For the Madonna of the Meadow (illus. 170) in London, Belting called attention to the fact that the spring landscape contained literarily preformed motifs drawn from Virgils Georgics, hence poetic in character.49 In
170 Giovanni Bellini, Madonna of the Meadow, 15005, canvas transferred from wood. National Gallery, London.
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the liturgical calendar, spring is associated with Good Friday and Easter, the time of the Passion and the Resurrection. The sleeping child in the Virgins lap is a metaphor for the Passion and Resurrection. Consequently, the humanistically educated beholder was able to follow the correspondences between the Christian mystery and the cycle of nature, as well as the competition between painting and poetry that was conveyed by a concealed literary motif. In his Feast of the Gods of 1514, Bellini again had recourse to a literary text. By means of the development of chromatic harmony and through expression through colouristic unity, he gradually approached the paragone of painting and music. The problems of such theses are readily apparent: the perception of analogies between the two arts developed slowly and found expression in reciprocal metaphors and comparisons. Musica pittoresca is one such metaphor, introduced by Vincenzio Borghini in Florence during the second half of the sixteenth century to refer to compositional unity, which he regarded as the most important element requirement of a good painting. The painter, Borghini believed, should not proceed like a farmer, sowing his grain across the eld, but instead must dispose over the different parts of the painting with discernment, according to rule, and with grace: And the result as a whole of this procedure is a harmony and a painterly music, as I refer to it.50 Musica pittoresca appears to be the reversal of a metaphor invented by a poet, Petrarch, when naming his own activity with the expression pinger cantando (to paint while singing), in a sonnet in which he laments the incapacity of language to represent the beauty of the dead Laura for posterity.51 In the Piet (illus. 171) in the Accademia in Venice, which may well have been executed around the same time as the Madonna of the Meadow, Bellini elaborated the expression of sorrow through colouration.52 He juxtaposed muted blue, brown and violet, deprived the red and white of their intensity, and used esh tones for the aged Virgin and the dead Christ to approximate the grey-brown of the cliffs and the eld. The monuments citations from Vicenza, Cividale and Ravenna stand beneath a gloomy sky, and the distance appears not blue, but grey. The symbol of hope the severed tree-trunk that sprouts with new life is integrated into this sorrowful atmosphere. Bellini strove for a similar colouristic expressiveness in the painting of the Crucixion (illus. 172), which may have been executed just after 1500.53 Despite the somewhat problematical condition of the Madonna of the Meadow, the original state of the colour and light quality can be determined. Here, they move in the direction of cheerfulness, but not jollity, forming a counterpart to the expression of sorrow in the Piet and the Crucixion in Prato. The Virgin and Child with St John the Baptist and a Female Saint (Sacra conversazione Giovanelli) (illus. 173) of circa 150005 offers a heightened complexity of compositional effects involving colour, light and shadow. At the centre is the Virgin in white, bright red and blue, which combine with the bright incarnadine of the Christ Child. The head and hands of the unidentied saint next to the Virgin are shown in bright light, while the
dress and cloak, mostly in shadow, form a contrast between the dark greenish-blue and dark red and gold. John the Baptist, who stands in shadow on the left-hand side, wears dark brown, grey and green; light falls on him only from the left. Between John and the Virgin, the shadowed brown is carried over from one gure to the next. Light and shadow combine to create drama in a way similar to the Berlin Piet with the Virgin and St John (illus. 174) from the second half of the 1490s.54 The dramatic conception of the gures in the Sacra conversazione Giovanelli is toned down by their physiognomic expressions and contrasts with the pale building, the landscape and the bright light above the horizon. Comparison with the Berlin Lamentation and the San Zaccaria altarpiece shows that Bellini exploited colour, light and shadow in the Sacra conversazione Giovanelli to generate a mixed form of expression. This mixed mode is repeated in the Virgin and Child (illus. 175) of 1510 in the Brera in Milan.55 The Virgin with the standing Child on her knee sits enthroned as the powerful draped gure before a landscape, from which she is separated by a green curtain with a red border. The Child is rendered in radiant incarnadine; the face of the Virgin is in shadow; and the evening landscape has been deprived of light. Above the horizon line shines the fading light of the setting sun, and above the clouds the sky turns dark.
171 Giovanni Bellini, Piet, 15005, wood. Galleria dellAccademia, Venice.
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The melancholy of this evening atmosphere is opposed solely by the standing Child with his radiant esh tint and gesture of greeting. Manifested in this work from the rst decade of the sixteenth century is a new colouristic variety, a new harmonic diversity and an expression of wholeness that is capable of generating either simplicity or complexity. Evidently, Bellini was testing out new possibilities for achieving chromatic unity and a corresponding form of expression through new correspondences and contrasts. Equivalent reections on painting manifested themselves only in the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. There were few precedents for Bellini. In Book xxxv of his Natural History, Pliny the Elder introduced the terms tension and harmony for the relationships of shadow and light and the reciprocal effects of colour in painting: Later, art became further differentiated, discovering light and shadow, and the reciprocal effects of various colours on one another. Added later to these effects was lustre [Latin: splendor], which is somewhat different from light. What lies between the two [that is, light and lustre] is called tnos [tension], while mixtures of colours and the transitions between them are referred to as harmog [consonants, harmony].56
173 Giovanni Bellini, Virgin and Child with St John the Baptist and a Female Saint (Sacra Conversazione Giovanelli), c. 15005, wood. Galleria dell Accademia, Venice.
opposite: 172 Giovanni Bellini, Crucixion, c. 15012, wood. Galleria di Palazzo degli Alberti detta Cariprato, Prato (Collection Cariprato).
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174 Giovanni Bellini, Piet with the Virgin and St John, c. 14951500, wood. Gemldegalerie, Berlin.
This Natural History by the Roman encyclopaedist, who lived during the rst century , was known during the Middle Ages, and was published by a German printer in Venice as early as 1469. In the treatise on the art of painting that Alberti composed in 14356 in an Italian version addressed to artists, and a Latin version addressed to savants and patrons, the compositional unity of the image and the harmonic interrelationships between the colours were elaborated in a theoretical framework for the rst time. The unity of the painting was to be attained in such a way that all of its parts contribute to the theme, and the painter had to examine his compositional design to ensure that ordo and modus were observed. The rhetorical concept ordo corresponds to the disposition of the gures in the larger narrative or action, and modus may be regarded as analogous to the genera dicendi, the type of style or expression involved. Alberti devoted only a few sections to the illumination of painted surfaces and the harmonization of the colours. The origins of the pigments, the theme of optics, are avoided, since a working knowledge of the types and varieties of pigments and their uses is deemed sufcient for the painter. Alberti rejects the Aristotelian notion that there are seven colours, and against their linear
arrangement in a scale between white and black, intended to present the origins of the colours as admixtures of light and dark.57 Instead, he posits four colour genera (genera colorum) that correspond to the four elements: re = red; air = sky blue; water = green; earth = ash colour. The other colours are said to result from mixtures of these four. White and black alter the colour genera by lightening or darkening them to form innitely various types of colours (species colorum). This schema of four colour genera corresponding to the four elements brings painting into correspondence with the harmonic proportions of the four elements according to Plato, and with the four colours used by Greek painters, which were, alongside black (according to Pliny), the earth colours, white, ochre and red.58 It remains a riddle why Alberti numbered grey (color cinereus) among the basic colours. John Gage has demonstrated that grey, a mixture of white and black, was thought capable of ensuring the coherence of colour and of relief, and hence the unity of the image.59 The uninterrupted coherence of colours and relief is served by the avoidance of gold, pure white and pure black. Alberti has no objections to the use of gold and silver for frames, but excludes them entirely from picture surfaces, since the lustre or darkness of metallic areas fall outside the given colouristic scheme. In the same way, he holds that pure white or black can
175 Giovanni Bellini, Virgin and Child, 1510, canvas transferred from wood. Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan.
Harmony | 205
only interfere with colouristic unity. Alberti introduces a new term for the mutual enhancement of juxtaposed colours, referring to the friendship (amicitia) between the colours: There is a kind of sympathy among colours, whereby their grace and beauty is increased when they are placed side by side.60 As an example of the harmony of the colours, Alberti refers to a depiction of Diana with her entourage. For the costumes of the gures, he recommends green alongside white, followed by purple and saffron yellow, with the remaining gures attired alternately in dark and bright colours. The colour combinations are to be based on contrasts between bright and dark values and between chromatic values.61 Alberti also comments briey on the expressive capacities of colours: in combination with almost all other colours, white conveys cheerfulness, while darker colours set among bright ones convey dignity. In this way, he presents the rudiments of reections on the harmonies and expressive capacities of colour in painting. Attempts to establish correspondences between musical tones and colours, or between musical scales and the colour spectrum (attempts undertaken repeatedly since Aristotle and continued well into the twentieth century), have never produced satisfactory results.62 In the case of a music theoretician and composer such as Franchino Gaffurio, who was a friend of Leonardo, the colours are not incorporated into the larger system of world harmony discovered by Pythagoras and still maintained by Johannes Kepler. For his work Practica musicae, Gaffurio had an artist design an illustration of the harmony of the spheres, and he reused this woodcut in his De harmonia musicorum of 1518. This grand harmony encompassed the Muses, the modes, the planets and intervals, and connected elements of the earth with the throne of Apollo by means of the great, threeheaded serpent of time, the monster Serapis.63 Missing, however, from this grandiose harmony are the colours. Standing open alongside attempts to establish direct correspondences between colours and tones were only two postulates capable of orienting painting towards music. The rst was the analogy between musical harmony and tones and colours, the other the analogy between expressive capacities of the modi and those of colours. Vasari deals with colour in the context of his discussions of technique under the category of colour unity, unire i colori. Already in the rst edition of 1550, he offered the following denition: Unity in painting is produced when a variety of different colours are harmonized together, these colours in all the diversity of many designs show the parts of the gures distinct from one another, as the esh from the hair, and one garment different in colour from another.64 Vasari then employs a circumlocution familiar from Gaffurio: Harmonia est discordia concors (harmony is concord out of discord). In his book Light and Color, Moshe Barasch shows how Venetian theories, especially those of Pino and Dolce, attempted concurrently to analyse the colouristic unity that had already been achieved by painting.65
Finale
In 1514 Bellini dated his Feast of the Gods that he had painted on a commission from Alfonso i dEste for his Camerino di Albastro in Ferrara.66 In conjunction with paintings by Titian and Dosso Dossi, the Feast of the Gods (illus. 176) formed one of the most celebrated cycles of painting produced during the Renaissance. In 1598, in the wake of disputes over inheritance initiated by Ippolito Aldobrandini (Pope Clement viii), Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini transported the cycle to Rome illegally.67 Vasari regarded the Feast of the Gods as one of Bellinis most beautiful works: The duke also wanted to have there some pictures by Giovanni Bellini, who painted on another wall a vat of red wine with some Bacchanals
176 Giovanni Bellini, Feast of the Gods, 1514, canvas. National Gallery of Art, Washington, dc.
Harmony | 207
around it, together with musicians and satyrs and other drunken gures, both male and female, and near them a nude and very beautiful Silenus riding on his ass in the middle of various gures with their hands full of grapes and other fruits. This work was coloured and nished so diligently that it is one of the nest pictures Giovanni Bellini ever painted, though there is a certain sharpness in the style of the draperies which suggests the German manner. This is not surprising, for he imitated a picture by the Fleming Albrecht Drer which about this time had been brought to Venice and lodged in the church of San Bartolomeo; it is a rare work of art, alive with beautiful gures painted in oils.68 Around the middle of the sixteenth century, Bellinis reputation suffered. In the Vita of Titian, Vasari proposed a decisive devaluation on the grounds that Giovanni Bellini had done without study of classical antiquity, and that he consequently drew everything from life, that is to say, without judgement and without the ideal, and moreover in a dry, hard and stiff manner. Vasaris negative judgement was momentous. Only in the nineteenth century would art historians revise this verdict of Giovanni Bellinis historical ranking, in particular through Jacob Burckhardt, Charles Blanc, John Ruskin and the British-Italian research team Crowe and Cavalcaselle. This revaluation of Bellinis work was ushered in by Jacob Burckhardt in 1855 in his Cicerone. The young art historian ranked Giovanni Bellini above all of his contemporaries, regarding him as the model for all other painters, even their liberator. The reason given is that Bellini could be burlesque in his depictions of the classical world of the gods; his inestimable so-called Bacchanal in the Camuccini collection parodies the banquets of the gods, bringing them down to the level of a festa of Italian peasants.69 Burckhardt assessed the extraordinary breadth of Bellinis artistic achievements on the basis of the polarity formed by his Feast of the Gods and his Sacre conversazioni. In 1948 Edgar Wind uncovered the literary references of Bellinis Feast of the Gods in Ovids Fasti, referring in particular to the possible collaboration of Pietro Bembo in determining the theme of Priapus and Lotis.70 Bembo was an ardent admirer of Lucrezia Borgia, who had married Alfonso i dEste in 1502. Bembo himself had composed an elegy on Priapus in the style of Virgil, and belonged to the Venetian circle around Aldus Manutius, who brought out a critical edition of classical Priapea in 1514.71 According to Wind, Bellini depicts Priapus attempt to molest the sleeping nymph Lotis, an act that would be prevented by a donkeys cry.72 The edition of Ovids Metamorphoses published in Venice in 1497 illustrates the pursuit of Lotis by the aroused Priapus, and her escape and transformation into a lotus tree (illus. 177). Jacob Burckhardt seems to have perceived things correctly: the Feast of the Gods is not a representation of a mythological scene, but instead a scene in antique
177 Lotis and Priapus, woodcut from Ovid, Metamorphoseos vulgare (Venice: G. Rosso, 1497).
style being played out as a pastorale by costumed contemporaries. The painting depicts a theatrical presentation, a staging featuring ludicrous, inebriated, erotic and comic gures. All that is needed to detect the facetious character of Bellinis painting is to look at Mercury, seated on a pile of rocks in the foreground wearing a barbers bowl for a helmet, which resembles the one Cervantes would stick on Don Quixotes head a century later, or the Apollo next to Priapus, wearing a laurel wreath and raising a bowl of wine to his lips. Unexpectedly, Bellini allows himself a double joke: the disguise of the contemporaries playing a pastorale, and the satire on the gods, represented here by actors. In Vasaris opinion, Bellinis advanced age had prevented him from completing the Feast of the Gods, which had been nished by Titian. But ever since the publication of John Walkers x-ray photographs in 1956, it has been a well-
178 An x-ray of Giovanni Bellini, Feast of the Gods (illus 176).
Harmony | 209
179 Giovanni Bellini, The Assassination of St Peter Martyr, c. 150510, wood. National Gallery, London.
180 Giovanni Bellini, Infant Bacchus, c. 151015, wood. National Gallery of Art, Washington, dc.
known fact that Titian had been confronted by a completed work, and nonetheless painted over the left-hand side of the landscape with steep cliffs topped with a castle, as well as the sky (illus. 178).73 Titians presumed objective was to adapt Bellinis painting to his own works for the camerino. Bellini had set his gural group against a piece of forest that he subdivided rhythmically by means of the vertical tree-trunks in a way similar to the painting of the Assassination of St Peter Martyr (illus. 179) of circa 150510 in the National Gallery in London. Eliminated by Titians intervention was the contrast between the gural group, so markedly animated by means of colour, and the regular repetition of treetrunks and the uniform dark green of the leaf canopy. Bellinis gural group is rhythmically accented by white, which is steadily augmented from left to right. On the left, white is introduced in small quantities in the arm of the infant Bacchus, repeated in larger areas leading from Mercury to Jupiter to the standing nymph before receding entirely in the group of Cybele and Neptune, only to return at full strength in the two standing nymphs, the kneeling Ceres and the seated Apollo. The closing is formed by Priapus in a white shirt and Lotis in her radiant white garb, with the nal period and close supplied by Bellinis white cartellino, afxed to a tub. In between, the other colours dance to and fro from left to right: brown is heightened to red, subsiding to blue with the grey of the donkey, while salmon pink effects a transition to Mercurys steel grey, green and white, and his shot-coloured robe, with its changeant blue and pink. The central group follows with cinnabar and white, blue and white, pink, green and red, followed by the highly festive conclusion with
181 Giovanni Bellini, Woman with a Mirror, 1515, wood. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
182 I. Popels, etching of Giovanni Bellinis 1515 Woman with a Mirror, in David Teniers the Younger, Theatrum Pictorium (Brussels, 1660).
183 Giovanni Bellini, Dead Christ, 151015, wood. Nationalmuseum, Stockholm.
multiple sonorities composed of white with gold, blue, red and blue, and green. Never before had Bellini painted such a melody of colours in a unied rhythm. In contrast to the melody of colours stands the regular beat of the tree-trunks and the continuum of its darkgreen leaf canopy, not unlike a pictorial version of a musical basso continuo. With his partial overpainting, Titian destroyed Giovanni Bellinis unique musical composition. After 1514 Bellini completed only a few works. One is a variation of the gure of the child Bacchus in the Feast of the Gods (illus. 180), now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, dc.74 In the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna is a small painting in horizontal format depicting a young nude woman at her toilette with two mirrors (illus. 181), which is signed Giovanni Bellini and dated 1515.75 Everything about this painting is untypical for Bellini: its subject matter, the distorted rendering of the young womans left arm, the competition with sculpture in conformity with the story of Giorgione, and nally the signature on the cartellino, which reads: joannes bellinus faciebat mdxv. This is the only instance among the few surviving signatures of Bellini that employs the imperfect of facere, which must be understood in the sense of Plinys Natural History, namely that the artist makes no claim to perfection and reserves the possibility of attaining greater excellence in the future.76 The Dead Christ (illus. 183) in Stockholm is puzzling in several respects.77 The attribution of 1933 to Giovanni Bellini proposes identifying this painting with a work painted for the church of San Francesco della Vigna. According to Vasaris report, this Dead Christ was so highly praised that the French king Louis xii compelled the convent to surrender it to him.78 Neither report nor identication has proved veriable. The state of preservation of the Stockholm picture makes it difcult to form precise conclusions: the paint is so heavily abraded in parts that its appearance today is virtually monochromatic. Its original colouration must have been muted, not unlike the portrait of Fra Teodoro of Urbino as St Dominic in the National Gallery in London and the painting of the Drunkenness of Noah (illus. 184) in Besanon, both dating from the nal decade of Bellinis life.79 In the case of the portrait of Teodoro, it is even more difcult to draw conclusions about the original tonal unity, based on Leonardos development of sfumato, than in the paintings in Stockholm and Besanon.80 In his Vite, Vasari discusses the contrast between the style of the fteenth century, which he characterizes as a certa maniera secca e cruda e tagliente (a rather dry, rough, and sharp manner), and the maniera moderna
initiated by Leonardo and adopted by Giorgione in Venice. In Vasaris view, Giovanni Bellini had contributed nothing to this third that is to say, modern and perfect style.81 Bellinis nal pictures demonstrate that he had indeed developed this mode of tonal harmonization during his last active years.82 In comparison to other works from this period, such as the San Giovanni Crisostomo altarpiece of 1513 and the Feast of the Gods of 1514, it becomes clear that Bellini regarded such an approach to tonal harmonization not as progress, but instead as one mode, one tonality, that was capable of producing a specic emotional temperament. The source of the rst direct references to the expressive possibilities of the different musical keys or modes was Nicolas Poussin in the seventeenth century. In order to respond to the complaints of Paul Frart de Chantelou, his most important French client, Poussin invoked the necessity for unifying the great variety of elements contained in the painting by means of a specic musical key. In this context, the painter referred to a successful book entitled Le istitutioni harmoniche by Gioseffo Zarlino, the Venetian theoretician of music and maestro di cappella, which rst appeared in 1558.83 In a certain sense, Poussins adoption of the terminology of musical modes for his conception of painting concluded a long process of generating analogies between the two arts. The case of Poussin perhaps represents a kind of after-effect of the impact of Giovanni Bellini, whose Feast of the Gods was copied by the French artist in Rome.84
184 Giovanni Bellini, The Drunkenness of Noah, c. 151015, canvas. Muse des Beaux-Arts, Besanon.
Harmony | 213
Chronology
The chronology concentrates on the timeline of the Bellini family. It relies on early archive research and on the recent classication of the documents by Meyer zur Capellen in 1985, Eisler in 1989 and Goffen in 1989. Despite intensive research in the archives, important events remain without documentation. This is true both of the birth dates of the Bellini family and of information about the organization of their workshops. The existing documents were examined. One important correction must be made concerning a document that Colin Eisler in 1989 mistakenly dated 1421. A Mariegola der Sculoa Grande di S. Marco, Venice, Museo Correr, Biblioteca, Prov. Correr A sc 6, no.32 (ms iv, no. 19) describes an altar in S. Marco with a golden background by maistro Iacomo Belin pentor. This Mariegola comprises various inventories. The rst one originates in 19 July 1421 and comprises fol 1. recto to fol 6. verso. The inventory, which lists the altar of Jacopo Bellini on fol 7. verso, includes a date of 13 April 1466 and refers to additions made up to 1476. This inventory was drawn up by Piero di Chonti, guardian de tutte le chose. This is important because it backs up the existing information that Jacopo Bellini was employed in the rst half of the 1420s in Gentile da Fabrianos workshop in Florence. Jacopos knowledge of Florentine painting in the 1420s came from direct experience. The dates of birth of Jacopo and his sons Gentile and Giovanni are not documented. In 1550 and 1568 Vasari mistakenly suggested a birth date of 1421 for Gentile and 1426 for Giovanni. For Gentile nowadays we assume a birth date of between 1432 and 1434, for Giovanni between 1435 and 1438. On the problem of the easily assumed illegitimacy of Giovanni, please see chapter One. Abbreviations: asv Archivio di Stato, Venice bmv Biblioteca nazionale Marciana, Venice m.v. more veneto
1424, 11 April
Will of Niccol Bellini: Jacopo and his older sister Elena asv, Sez. notarile Testamenti, notaio Lorenzo each receive 24 gold ducats and the duty to care for their Boscarini [also Buscarino], Busta 545, Libro in mother Franceschina. perg., fol. 10, Nr. 63. Will of Anna Rinversi, wife of Jacopo Bellini, resident in the asv, Sez. notarile, Testamenti, notaio Enrico parish S. Geminiano, on the occasion of an imminent birth Salomon, Busta 946/c, Nr. 313. (daughter Niccolosia or son Nicol?). Birth of Gentile Bellini, son of Jacopo Birth of Giovanni Bellini, son of Jacopo. In the register of Scuola Grande di S. Giovanni Evangelista is entered Ser Iacomo Belin pentor. The entry does not accord with the date of the record. Jacopo Bellini buys a decorated panel from the estate of Jacobello del Fiore. The half-brothers Jacopo and Giovanni Bellini end their partnership and divide their furniture and property. Leonello dEste of Ferrara sends two bushels of wheat to Jacopo Bellino pictori de Venetijs. Ulisse degli Aleotti writes two sonnets in honour of Jacopo Bellini, who also won the competition, ahead of Pisanello, to paint the portrait of Leonello dEste. The Scuola Grande di S. Giovanni Evangelista list Jacopo Bellini as decano. Not documented Not documented asv, Scuola Grande di S. Giovanni Evangelista, Registro 72, fol. 43t [48i], lost since 1999. asv, Scuola Grande di S. Maria della Carit, Busta 56, commissario Giacomo del Fior, fasc. iv, Testamenti, Nr. 2. asv, Cancelleria inferiore, notaio Vettore Pomino, Busta 149, Protocolli 14391442, fol. 55 verso. Modena, Archivio di Stato, Registro de mandati, 14411442. Modena, Biblioteca Estense, Ms. ix, A. 27.
Paoletti 1894, doc. p. 5; Eisler 1989, p. 530. Paoletti 1894, pp. 56; Meyer zur Capellen 1985, p. 106, doc. p. 1.
1429, 6 February [1428 m.v.] Between 1432 and 1434 Between 1435 and 1438 1437, 3 March
Paoletti 1894, p. 6; in Sohm 1982 not entered; Eisler 1989, p. 530. Paoletti 1894, p. 6, Itemised list of the estate with buyers; Eisler 1989, p. 530. Goffen 1989, p. 262, doc. 2. wrong date: correct is 13 Sept. 1440; see Eisler 1989, pp. 53031. Eisler 1989, p. 531. Eisler 1989, p. 531.
1439, 6 December
1440, 13 September
1441, 26 August 1441
1441, 22 October
asv, Scuola Grande di S. Giovanni Evangelista, Registro 72, fol. 112. Lost since 1999.
Paoletti 1894, p. 6 under the year 1437; Sohm 1982, pp. 31718, Nr. 178 document; Eisler 1989, p. 531. Paoletti 1894, pp. 78, doc.; Goffen 1989, p. 262, doc. 3; Eisler 1989, p. 531. Alberti 2000, pp. 37071, doc. 6; Eisler 1989, p. 31, 172, 253, 2589, Pl. 131, 132. Paoletti 1894, p. 89; Sohm 1982, p. 303, doc. 134; Eisler 1989, p.531. Paoletti 1894, p. 9; Eisler 1989, p. 531.
1443, 23 August
Jacopo Bellini takes his nephew Leonardo, the son of his asv, Cancelleria inferiore, notaio, Francesco sister Elena, into his workshop. (dagli) Elmis, Busta 74, fasc. 28, fol. 20. Leon Battista Alberti (14041472) becomes the artistic advisor of Leonello dEste for the projected horseback monument of Niccol iii. Jacopo Bellini sends in two drawings for the competition. Comission for a banner for the Scuola Grande di S. Maria. Jacopo Bellini receives support from the Scuola Grande di S. Giovanni Evangelista of 20 ducats for the marriage of his daughter Niccolosia (with Andrea Mantenga). Payment by Lorenzo Giustiniani (13801465), rst Patriarch of Venice since 1451 to Jacopo Bellini for a painting (?) d auer p[er] una gura del n predecessor posta sop[ra] la sua sepultura duc. 16 (for the gravestone) and for an altarpiece with three saints for die Sala del Patriarca 3 gure fate su tela mese i[n] la salla del patriarca duc 21, also called pala grande. Giovanni Bellini signs as witness to the will of Margarita, wife of the doctor Aritinio. Giovanni Bellini lives in the contrata S. Leonis / San Lio. Andrea Mantegna nishes the Pala di S. Zeno for S. Zeno in Verona commissioned by the Abbot Gregorio Correr from Venice. Andrea Mantegna takes up the position of court painter to Count Lodovico Gonzaga and moves to Mantua. Four altar triptychs for S. Maria della Carit, Venice (today in the Galleria dell Accademia, Venice) probably executed by Jacopo, Gentile and Giovanni Bellini. Only the names of the donors are mentioned in the documents: Andrea da Molin donates 2 x 50 ducats for an altarpiece with the saints Ursula, Victor, Francis and Peter Martyr, and another hundred ducats for additions and improvements. Zuane Pelestrina donates 80 ducats for a picture of the Capella di Sta Ursola. Giovanni Bellini signs the picture of hl. Hieronymus im Gehuse for the Scuola di San Gerolamo (lost). asv, Convento di Sta Maria della Carit, serie iii, Busta 3 [busts in carton]: Memoriale et spese per lo barco et organo, 1460-63, fol. 25 verso, 31 recto, 33 verso, 34 recto, 54 verso. London, British Museum, Jacopo Bellini, Pattern book, fol. 27 verso and 79 verso.
1443
1452, 19 June 1453, 25 February
asv, Scuola Grande di S. Maria della Carit, Busta 3, Perg. Nr. 105. asv, Scuola Grande di S. Giovanni Evangelista, Registro 72. Lost since 1999. asv, Mensa Patriarcale, [Registro. di Cassa 1444-59], Busta 58, 1: Librette carte, cop. perg. elenco afttali, spese [ . . . ] e varie 145660, fol. 106, 107, carta 122 (left).
14567
Paoletti 1894, p. 9 (Busta 66); Eisler 1989, p. 521, doc. updated place), p. 531 (still Busta 66 how Paoletti); the document Mensa Patriarcale was reordered from 1980 until 1995.
1459, 2 April
asv, Sez. notarile, Testamenti, notaio Giuseppe Paoletti 1894, p. 11; Goffen 1989, Moisis, Busta 727, Nr. 32, fol. 1 verso, 2 verso. p. 262, Nr. 5 document (rst archive of Giovanni Bellini). Lightbown 1986, Kat. No. 9, pp. 4068. Lightbown 1986, pp. 8197. Eisler 1989, pp. 51819, 532.
1459
1460 146064
1464
Ridol 1914, Bd. 1, p. 64.
Goffen 1989, p. 259.
Chronology | 215
1465, 31 January
Payment of the Scuola Grande di S. Giovanni Evangelista to Jacopo Bellini for the cycle with episodes from the life of the Virgin Mary. Work by his sons Gentile and Giovanni von Ridol entered in 1648. The inventory of the Scuola Grande di San Marco records an altar of S. Marco with golden background by maistro Iacomo Belin pentor. Commission by the Scuola Grande di S. Marco to Jacopo Bellini for two paintings: Carrying of the Cross and Crucixion. Commission by the Scuola Grande di S. Marco to Gentile Bellini for two paintings: Moses in the Desert and Flood of Sin [or: Downfall of the Pharaoh].
asv, Scuola S. Giovanni Evangelista, Registro 72, fol. 269 recto. Lost since 1999.
Ridol 1914, Bd. 1, p. 54; Meyer zur Capellen 1985, p. 106; doc. 4; Sohm 1982, p. 320, doc. 185.
1466, 13 April
Venice, Museo Civico, Racc. Correr, Ms. perg. iv, Nr. 19, carta 9, fol. 7 verso (Inventar of 13 April 1466 of Piero di Chonti). asv, Scuola Grande di S. Marco, Registro 16bis, Not. 14281503, p. 35, Sala Diplomatica, autogra. asv, Scuola Grande di S. Marco, Registro 16bis, Not. 1428-1503, p. 36, Sala Diplomatica, autogra.
Correction of the wrong dating by Eisler 1989, pp. 267, 530. Molmenti 1888, pp. 2257; Sohm 1982, p. 259, doc. 19; Eisler 1989, pp. 524, 532. Sohm 1982, pp. 25960, doc. 20; Meyer zur Capellen 1985, pp. 1067, doc. 6. Paoletti 1894, p. 10; Sohm 1982, p. 260, doc. 21. Paoletti 1894, p. 18; Meyer zur Capellen 1985, p. 107, 11617, doc. 55. Momenti 1888, pp. 2289; Sohm 1982, p. 260, doc. 23. Paoletti 1894, p.11; Meyer zur Capellen 1985, p. 107, doc. 8; Goffen 1989, p. 263, doc. 9.
1466, 17 July
1466, 15 December
1467, 10 January
The Scuola Grande di S. Marco commission Andrea asv, Scuola Grande di S. Marco, Registro. 16bis, da Murano and Bartolomeo Vivarini to continue Not. 14281503, p. 37, Sala Diplomatica, autogra. Jacopo Bellinis work. Friedrich iii gives Gentile Bellini the titles Venetus Eques and Comes Palatinus. Giovanni Bellini is commissioned by the Grande di S. Marco for the paintings Noahs Ark and the Flood of Sin. Will of Anna Rinversi, widow of Jacopo Bellini. Only Gentile and Niccol are taken into consideration, not Niccolosia and Giovanni, which leads to the supposition that Niccolosia was already dead and Giovanni was not the child of Anna Rinversi. The will promises the artists estate of the father to Gentile. Dating of the Piet by Giovanni Bellini in the Palazzo Ducale by Zanetti. Dating of The Crucixion with the Three Marys and the Church Fathers, Venice, S. Maria della Carit. The Signoria decides on the decoration of the Sala Marino Sanudo, Cronaca veneziana, bmv, MSS del Maggior Consiglio with paintings of the Storia di Ital. Cl. vii.cxxv (7460), fol. 340 verso. Ancona. Antonio di Choradi in Pera commissions his brother-in-law, the stonemason Nicol Gratto, to order a painting of Christ by Lazzaro Bastiani and in the case of his death, gives the commission to Giovanni Bellini. Date of Giovanni Bellinis Portrait of Raffale Zovenzoni. Decree by Marin Zorzi, the patron of the Resurrection of Christ in San Michele in Isola, for Giovanni Bellini to build a chapel. Antonello da Messina (14311479) arrives in Venice at the invitation of Pietro Bon and completes an altarpiece for his tomb in the Church S. Cassiano and other works. Giovanni Bellini is appointed as decano of the Scuola asv, Scuola Grande di S. Marco, Registro cariche 6 Grande di S. Marco. bis, 14401743, fol. 24 recto. First dated painting by Giovanni Bellini: Transguration of Christ, Naples, Museo di Capodimonte. The altar donated by Marin Zorzi is erected in San Michele in Isola. asv, S. Michele in Isola, Busta 1 and 2. asv, S. Michele dIsola, Busta 2, Tom. 1, fol. 284 and 285; attached are 1. The will of the mother of 1479 and 2. An addition of 1515 by the notary of Zorzi. asv, Scuola Grande della Misericordia, Busta 23. Subsequent notarial act 1501, 28. August: asv, Cancelleria Inferiore, Notai, Busta 29, i, Giovanni Bonetti 1501, lza viii (1-2), without pagination. asv, Scuola Grande di San Marco, Registro 16bis, Not. 14281503, p. 38, Sala Diplomatica, autogra. asv, Sez. notarile, Testamenti, notaio Francesco (dagli) Elmi, Busta 361, Fasc. in perg. Nr. 173.
1469, 13 February
1470, 24 April
1471, 25 November
1472
Zanetti 1771, p. 49.
1473
1473, 18 April
Paoletti 1894, pp. 1213; Goffen 1989, p. 263, doc. 10.
1474 1475, 5 June
Meneghin 1962, pp. 32023; Tempestini 1992, p. 112, Nr. 36.
1475, August
Gronau 1897, p. 348; Antonello da Messina Kat. 2006, Nrn. 34, 36, 42, 44.
1476
1478/79
Dalhoff 1997, pp. 35, 1913.
1478/79
Paoletti 18937, p. 166; Meneghin 1962, pp. 32023; Tempestini 1992, p. 112, Nr. 36.
1479, 29 August
Declaration by Maggior Consiglio about the replacement for Gentile Bellini during his mission to Istanbul with Giovanni Bellini to carry out the works in the Sala del Maggior Consiglio: Giovanni is promised the next available position as negotiator at Fondaco dei Tedeschi, as well as compensation for the materials and a yearly salary of 80 ducats, for as long as the work is worth this amount. Ditto.
asv, Maggior Consiglio, Deliberazioni, Vol. Regina, 145579, fol. 192 recto (new fol. 200 recto).
Meyer zur Capellen 1985, p. 110, doc. 16; Goffen 1989, p. 263, doc. 11.
1480, 1 July
asv, Collegio, Notatorio Registro 12, 147481, fol. 127 verso. Innsbruck, Landesregierungsarchiv, Standnummer: Kunstsachen, i, 65. asv, Collegio, Notatorio Registro 13, 14819, fol. 22 recto (new 25 recto). asv, Sez. notarile, Testamenti, notaio Lorenzo Stella, Busta 875, Nr. 162. Not documented.
Meyer zur Capellen 1985, p. 111, doc. 19; vgl. Goffen 1989, p. 263. Meyer zur Capellen 1985, p. 111, doc. 20. Goffen 1989, pp. 2634, doc. 13.
1481, 15 January
Letter from Sultan Mehmet ii to Gentile Bellini, bestowing on him the titles Miles Auratus and Comes Palatinus. The college names Giovanni Bellini as state painter and frees him from the obligation of paying income to the guild of painters. Giovanni Bellini guarantees his wife Ginevra Bocheta the contents of her dowry for their heirs. Birth of their son Alvise. Agostino Barbarigo (14191501) is elected as successor to his brother Marco as Procuratore di S. Marco de supra. Giovanni Bellini is named as decano of Scuola Grande di S. Marco. Agostino Barbarigo (14191501) is elected Doge as successor to his brother Marco. Giovanni Bellini signs and dates the Pala votiva Barbarigo. Giovanni Bellini signs and dates the Pesaro-Triptych for S.M. Gloriosa dei Frari with ioannes bellinvs /.F./1488. A note on the reverse of the middle panel includes the date 15 February 1488 (m.v. d.i. 1489). Giovanni Bellinis wife, Ginevra Bocheta, makes a will and names her brother, her cousin and her husband as executors. Pietro Priuli, Procuratore di S. Marco has the Cappella della Croce in S. Michele in Isola built. Gentile and Giovanni Bellini make an offer to the Scuola Grande di S. Marco to replace paintings lost in the re in Albergo in 1485 with new works at reasonable prices. Giovanni Bellini is listed as Decano of the Scuola Grande di S. Marco. Listings of the salaries of the painters working on the Sala del Maggior Consiglio in the Doges palace by the Ofcio da Sal: since May 1492 Giovanni Bellini and Alvise Vivarini have received payments of 5 ducats a month, more than other artists. Beginning of correspondence with Isabella dEste about Giovanni Bellinis comission for the Studiolo in Mantua. Will of the Knight Donato Civalelli: 300 ducats for an altarpiece by Giovanni Bellini in the tomb of the Civalelli in S. M. in Zara in Dalmatia (Croatia).
1483, 26 February [m.v. 1482] 1485, 30 July
Paoletti 1894, p. 13. doc. [[AQ: ?]]; Goffen 1989, p. 264, doc. 14.
148? 1485, 25 November
Nani-Mocenigo 1909, pp. 23440.
1486
asv, Scuola Grande di S. Marco, Busta 202, unpaginated., bzw. Registro cariche 6bis, 14401743, fol. 25 recto.
Goffen 1989, p. 264, doc. 15.
1486, 30 August
Nani-Mocenigo 1909, pp. 23440.
1488
1489
Tempestini 1992, pp. 1727, Nr. 60; Tempestini 1997, p. 179, Nr. 72.
1489, 23 September
asv, Sez. notarile, Testamenti, notaio Lorenzo Stella, Busta 877, Nr. 829, (Lettering on pergament in the Protocolli, fol. 59 verso, Nr. 214). asv, Sez. notarile, Miscellanea, notai diversi, Busta 1235 atti di Antonio Savina, Nr. 142 and Busta 1237, Nr. 227 fol. 205 verso206 recto asv, Scuola Grande di S. Marco, Registro 135, Note e conti di fabbriche e Palazzi, unpaginated.
Paoletti 1894, p. 13, doc. Goffen 1989, p. 264, doc. 19. Meneghin 1962, p. 322; Tempestini 1992, Nr. 79, pp. 2245. Paoletti 1894, p. 17, doc; Sohm 1982, p. 272, doc. 62.
1491
1492, 15 July
1494
asv, Scuola Grande di S. Marco, Registro 202, atti diversi 1301-1676 unpaginated, bzw. Registro cariche 6bis, 14401743 fol. 15 verso. asv, Consiglio deDieci, Misto, Registro 26, 14931495, fol. 199 recto200 recto, and Provveditori al Sal, Busta 2, fol. 74 verso76 verso.
Goffen 1989, p. 264, doc. 21.
1495, 23 December
Meyer zur Capellen 1985, pp. 11516, doc. 47; Goffen 1989, p. 264, doc. 22.
1496, 26 November
Mantua, Archivio di Stato, Busta 1439, c. 317.
Brown 1982, p. 157 (Alberto da Bologna to Isabella dEste); Goffen 1989, p. 264, doc. 23. Goffen 1989, p. 265, doc. 24.
1497, 10 August
asv, Sez. notarile, Testamenti, notaio Pietro Giovanni Floriano, Busta 408, Nr. 95.
Chronology | 217
1497, 4 October
Francesco Gonzaga, Count of Mantua, sends a canvas to Giovanni Bellini to paint a view of Paris. Negative answer by Giovanni Bellini to Count Francesco Gonzaga. Letter from Isabella dEste to Cecilia BergaminiVisconti asking her to lend her portraits by Leonardo da Vinci to compare some beautiful images by the hand Giovanni Bellini. Alvise, son of Giovanni Bellini, makes his will. asv, Sez. notarile, Testamenti, notaio Stella, Lorenzo, Busta 877, Nr. 755 as Busta 875, Nr. 162. Inscription Letter apparently in Mantua, Archivio di Stato, vgl. Goffen.
Goffen 1989, p. 265, doc. 25.
1497, 12 October
Goffen 1989, p. 265, doc. 26.
1498, 26 April
Goffen 1989, p. 265, doc. 27.
1498, 14 December
Paoletti 1894, pp. 1314; Goffen 1989, p. 265, doc. 28. Goffen 1989, pp. 1636, and p. 265, doc. 29. Roeck 1991, pp. 99126 (transcription after lettering in pergament).
1500
Consecration of the Cappella Garzadori in the Chiesa di S. Corona, Vicenza. Will of the Doge Agostino Barbarigo Item nui lassemo al predicto monasterio [St. Maria degli Angeli in Murano] quatro de i nostri bancali et uno tapedo grando in do pezi per ornamento dela sua giexa. Item nui ordenemo che la palla nostra granda che e in la crozola de el palazzo la sia mandada al monasterio de santa maria di anzioli predicto: et per esser ben conforme quella gura de nostra dona cum i anzioli ad essere messa sopra el suo altar grando de la sua giesia: ma che i nostri Commissarij la debia farla adornarla si dessoto come dai ladi et desopra per modo che la sia ben adornata per contento nostro et de quelle venerabile done: et quanto pluj presto sera messa tal palla in opera, tanto pluj speremo in la beata verzene maria habia essere nostra advocata apresso el nostro sumo creator idio: et che nostri zeneri, ni nostre e ni nostri nevosi non pensano de metterla ni in la caxa granda nostra ni in altro luogo salvo sopra latar grando de quello devotissimo et religioso monasterio: le qual semo certi che in ogni tempo le habia pregar idio per lanima nostra de tuti ialtri nostri che sono passati de questa vita.. . . Correspondence between Isabella dEste and various agents about a painting by Giovanni Bellini. Gentile and Giovanni Bellini are included in a collection of the Scuola Grande di San Marco. Giovanni Bellini signs and dates Pala di S. Zaccaria, Venice, S. Zaccaria; The Sacra Conversazione Vernon (Birmingham) and dates the painting of Hl. Hieronymus (Washington, dc, National Gallery). The paintings which were promised to the Scuola Grande di S. Marco by Gentile and Giovanni Bellini in 1492 were still not executed up to 1504. Letter by Albrecht Drer from Venice to Willibald Pirckheimer in Nrnberg. Death of Andrea Mantegna.
1501, 17 July and 5 August
The will is given different forms auf der asv, Sez. notarile, Testamenti, notaio Canciano de Florini, Busta 416, secundus quinternus 14-15-16, fol. 2 versofol. 8 recto [lettering in pergament] In the same Busta 416 there are in Faszikel 6 the three documents, dated from 17 July 1501 and from 5 August 1501.
1501, 2 March until 1505, 19 October 1503, 23 January
Brown 1982, pp. 15865; Goffen 1989, pp. 2658, doc. 3051. asv, Scuola Grande di San Marco, Notatorio Registro 17 (im Alphabet. Index and z). Meyer zur Capellen 1985, p. 117, doc. 56. Tempestini 1992, pp. 2525, Nr. 90.
1505
1505, 9 March
asv, Scuola Grande di San Marco, Notatorio Registro 17, fol. 28, nach dem Index Drer 195669, vol. i, p. 423.
Paoletti 1894, pp. 1819, doc.; Meyer zur Capellen 1985, p. 119, doc. 68; Sohm 1982, p. 279, doc. 82. Goffen 1989, p. 268, doc. 52
1506, 7 February
1506, 13 September
Lightbown 1986, p. 242.
1506, 7 February [1505 m.v.] 1507, 18 February
Will of Giacomo Doln about the chapel in S. Francesco della Vigna and Giovanni Bellinis unnished painting for it. Will of Gentile Bellini, in which he bequeaths his brother Giovanni a book with drawings by their father Jacopo, on the condition that he nishes the painting for the Scuola Grande di S.Marco. Marino Sanudo notes the burial of Gentile Bellini, optimo pytor, but does not give his age at death.
asv, Sez. notarile, Testamenti, notaio Cristoforo Rizzo, Busta 1228, Nr. 205. asv, Sez. notarile, Testamenti, notaio, Bernardo (de) Cavagnis, Busta 271, Nr. 307.
Goffen 1898, p. 268, Nr. 53.
Molmenti 1888, pp. 2312; Meyer zur Capellen 1985, p. 120, doc. 75.
1507, 23 February
Sanudo 1888, vol. vi, col. 552.
Goffen 1989, pp. 2689, doc. 56.
1507, 7 March
Giovanni Bellini informs the Sucola Grande di S. Marco that he will complete Gentiles painting on the same conditions. Giovanni Bellini is pressed to complete the three paintings for the Sala del Maggior Consiglo including the one which Alvise Vivarani had begun. Three painters, amongst them Vittore Carpaccio, are assigned to Bellini as helpers. Ducat 100 a Zuan Bellin per la Palla della Croce, 15 il Monastero, il resto Ca Prilli in S. Michele dIsola, see above, 1491. Giovanni Bellini sits on a commission for Giorgione on the honorarium for his works on the Fondaco dei Tedeschi. Giorgione had complained about it on 8 November. Signed and dated The Madonna with the Blessed Child (Milan, Brera). Giovanni and Nicol Bellini sell their fathers inherited antique bust of Plato to Isabella dEste. Tizian demands the Consiglio dei Dieci, in the Sala del Gran Consiglio that he works under the same conditions as Giovanni Bellini. Giovanni Bellini signs and dates the Pala di S. Giovanni Crisostomo. Giovanni Bellini signs and dates the painting Feast of the Gods, painted for Alfonso dEste, duke of Ferrara. (Today in National Gallery of Art, Washington, dc.) Alfonso dEste sends a last installment of 85 gold ducats for Feast of the Gods Giovanni Bellini works in the Sala del Maggior Consiglio. Contract between the Scuola Grande di S. Marco and Giovanni Bellini about the painting of the Martyrdom of the Holy Markus (completed by Vittore Belliniano, dated 1526, Venice, Galleria dellAccademia). Giovanni Bellini signs and dates the painting Naked Woman with Mirror (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum). Consiglio deDieci: Report about the Madonna picture that is to be gifted to Madame dAlenon, sister of King Francis i.
asv, Scuola Grande di S. Marco, Notatorio, Registro 14981526, fol .34, after the Index.
Molmenti 1888, pp. 2334; Sohm 1982, p. 279, Nr. 83; Meyer zur Capellen, p. 129, doc. 77; Goffen 1989, p. 269, doc. 57. Goffen 1989, p. 269, doc. 58.
1507, 28 September
asv, Provveditori al Sal, Busta 6, Registro 4, 14821514, fol. 183 verso184 recto.
1507, 1 December
Rome, Archivio del monastero da San Gregorio al Celio, Cod. 1080.
Meneghin 1962, p. 322, Anm. 84.
1508, 11 December
asv, Notatorio dei Provveditori al Sal, Registro 2, 14911529, Busta 60, Nr. 3, fol. 123 verso (Beschwerde Giorgiones) Registro 6, 150514, Busta 63, fol. 95 recto (Settlement of the complaint).
Goffen 1989, p. 269, doc. 59 [not: Busta 62].
1510 1511 1513, 31 May
Tempestini 1992, pp. 2823, Nr. 100. Brown/Lorenzoni, in: GBA, 97, 1978, p. 77; Goffen p. 269, doc. 60. asv, Consiglio deDieci, Misto, Registro 35, fol. 103 verso-104 recto (new fol. 236 verso-237 recto). Goffen 1989, p. 269, doc. 61.
1513 1514
Paoletti 18937, p. 179; Tempestini 1992, p. 287, Nr. 102.
1514, 14 November 1515, 27 February [1514 m.v.] 1515, 4/5 July
Goffen 1989, p. 269, doc. 62. asv, Provveditori al Sal, Busta 60, fol. 176 verso. asv, Scuola Grande di S. Marco, Registro 17, fol. 60. Goffen 1989, p. 269, doc. 63. Paolettti, p. 14; Sohm 1982, p. 281, doc. 89; Goffen 1989, p. 270, doc. 64u, pp. 2713, 326; Tempestini 1992, Nr. 107, pp. 3023. Tempestini 1992, Nr. 104, pp. 2967.
1515
1515, 31 October
asv, Capi del Consiglio deDieci, Lettere, lza 16 (1515), Nr. 383.
Goffen 1989, pp. 956 and pp. 3056; Toscano 2004, pp. 1989. Goffen 1989, pp. 956 and pp. 3056; Toscano 2004, p. 199.
1516, 15 January [1515 m.v.]
Letter to Giovanni (?) not Francesco Badoer in Paris, asv, Procuratori di San Marco, Misti, Busta 57 in which the writer informs the reader that the (Commissaria di Francesco Badoer), fascicle xxii b picture for the Kings sister by Giovanni Bellini (15 January 1515 m.v.). is almost completed. Marino Sanudo marks the death of Giovanni Bellini, but does not give his age at death. The place of burial is the cemetery of the Scuola di SantOrsola behind the apsis of SS. Giovanni e Paolo. Will of Jeronimo Hollivier [= Girolamo Olivieri]: Bellinis Madonna picture should be installed on an altar in S. Madonna dellOrto. asv, Sez. notarile, Testamenti, notaio Girolamo Canal, Busta 192, Nr. 339, addition to will from the year 1524, Busta 190.
1516, 29 November
Sanudo 1888, vol. 23, col. 256; Goffen 1989, p. 270, Nr. 68.
1528, 16 May
Paoletti 1894, p. 15; Goffen 1989, pp. 9092, Anm. 857, p. 302, p. 270, doc. 71.
Chronology | 219
References
Preface
1 Petrarch 2003, pp. 5669; Felix Gilbert, Humanism in Venice in 1979, vol. i, pp. 1326. 2 Zanetti 1771, p. vii: Egli pur troppo il vero che limmensa copia di libri onde ripieno il mondo, e tutto d va crescendo proviene in gran parte dal ripetere le cose gi dette prima, che per voglia di scrivere e di stampare si tornano a dire; e si vestono con abito di novit e di apparente grazia originale, a misura della sagacit di chi vuol farla da autore. 3 Robertson 1968. 4 Huse 1972. 5 Goffen 1989; cf. Giovanna Nepi Scirs obituary on Rona Goffen in Studi Tizianeschi, iii (2005), p. 126. 6 Tempestini 1992; Tempestini 2000. 7 Bellini 2004. 8 Kasl 2004. i
Training
1 Eisler 1989, g. 60, p. 70, dated 1460(?); pp. 396, 403. 2 Martin Davies, The Early Italian Schools before 1400, National Gallery Catalogues (London, 1988), no. 3543, pp. 11718; Friedmann 1980, pp. 456, 229. 3 On the bestiary of St Jerome, see Friedmann 1980, pp. 22953 (lion), 2868 (rabbit or hare). The exterior of the left wing of the Sforza triptych from the workshop of Rogier van der Weyden in the Muse Royal des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, displays a depiction of St Jerome as a cardinal with a lion in the desert, without a throne; a copy from Lombardy is found in the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo. For an opposed analysis of this painting by Bellini, see Gentili 2004, pp. 1678. 4 For the text passages in Latin and English, see Friedmann 1980, pp. 2022. 5 Johannes Andreae, In Laudem Hieronymi Carmen, in Johannes Andreae, Hieronymianus divi Hieronymi vitae mortis prodigiorum dictorum ac scriptorum exorationes perstingens [] (Basel, 1514), fols a3ra4v. 6 Crowe and Cavalcaselle 1871, vol. i, pp. 13940. 7 Tempestini 1992, no. 1, pp. 1819. 8 Longhi 1949, p. 278. 9 Robertson 1968, pp. 1617. 10 Goffen 1989, pp. 45, 259: 1434 ca. 11 Humfrey 2004, p. 6. 12 The notation reads: Johan bellino veneto pictor quando era morto in cathalecto. The drawing was published for the rst time by Jennifer M. Fletcher in Sunday Times Magazine (14 December 1975), p. 22. 13 Vasari 196687, vol. iii, p. 441; Longhi 1949, pp. 27483; see also Christiansen 2004a, pp. 53, 2823, n. 11: Perhaps the greatest disservice to Bellini scholarship. 14 Ridol 1914, vol. i, p. 56. 15 Berenson 1916, p. 60. 16 Vasari 196687, vol. vi, pp. 1589. 17 Wilson 2004, p. 101. 18 Conway 1889, p. 48; see Drer 195669, vol. i, p. 434. 19 Ridol 1914, vol. i, p. 56, with a birth year, however, of 1421 after Vasari; Gibbons 1963; Meyer zur Capellen 1985, p. 10. 20 Robertson 1968, pp. 1011; Humfrey 2004, p. 14: c. 14356, or even a year or two later.
220
21 See the discussion in Humfrey 2004, p. 6; Christiansen 2004a, pp. 523. 22 Steer 1982, p. 1. 23 Robertson 1968, p. 11: In fact the hypothesis of illegitimacy seems quite unnecessary and Giovannis omission from the will (the daughter Niccolosia was also omitted, unless we accept a not wholly convincing emendation of the text) may be more easily explained by the hypothesis that he had already received his portion of the estate under Jacopos will, which has not come to light. 24 Tempestini in Magherini, Paolucci and Tempestini 2001, pp. 289, concludes, for example, based on Giovannis maintenance of a separate residence and the absence of any mention of him in the last will and testament of Anna Rinversi: forces the conclusion that Giovanni was the result of an adulterous relationship by Jacopo, which he must have acknowledged, because he named the son Bellini and because the name Giovanni was that of Jacopos brother. The latter was certainly illegitimate, born outside the fathers, Nicols, marriage with the mother of Jacopo and Elena, who in turn, was called Giovanna. It would be part of a secret game in which Nicol gives the name of his own wife to an illegitimate son and its the same name which the son Jacopo imparts in turn his son in adultery. 25 Lorenzi 1868, no. 197, p. 92 (26 February 1483): Ioannes Bellinus per egregium ingenium suum in arte picture, pictor nostri Dominij est appellatus et ideo assumptus ad renovandam Salam Maioris Consilij. 26 Schulz 1982. 27 Venice, Archivio di Stato, Cancelleria inferiore. Miscellanea notai diversi, busta 33. Neither for Gentile nor for Giovanni is such a paper found among these notarized documents. 28 Fletcher 2004, p. 25, holds the opposing view, once again with the presumption of illegitimacy: On the downside Giovanni was almost certainly illegitimate, which ruled him out of an inherited share of the family rm and must have precipitated his departure from home. Against this view, see Humfrey 2004, p. 5. 29 The division of 13 September 1440 of the workshop by Jacopo and Giovanni Bellini is documented: Venice, Archivio di Stato, Cancelleria inferiore, Notaio Vettore Pomino, Busta 149, Protocolli de 1439[1442], fol. 55v. 30 Vasari 196687, vol. iii, p. 438: Rimaso Givoanni vedovo di Gentile, il quale aveva sempre amato tenerissimamente. 31 Robertson 1968, pp. 1245; Goffen 1989, pp. 2712; Humfrey 1990, no. 17, pp. 8894; Tempestini 1992, no. 97, pp. 2747. 32 Maria Tiepolo, Archivio di Stato di Venezia, regards this construction as plausible, but nonetheless deems it unusual that not even something small, a shawl or something similar, was bequeathed. 33 Pallucchini 1962, pp. 1135, 3754, 815; Steer 1982, pp. 16. 34 Humfrey 1993, especially pp. 13760. 35 Steer 1982, pp. 4461; see the document on p. 97 and a translation on p. 44 with the informative central sentence: And for the moment I ask no more than the canvas for the picture and the expenses, including that of assistants, which I shall incur, in the same way as is done for the said Bellini. 36 Steer 1982, pp. 99100. 37 Lightbown 1986, no. 1, pp. 387400. 38 Bauer-Eberhardt 1989. 39 Christiansen 2004a, pp. 523. 40 On its reverse, the portrait or an inscription with the names of the depicted and the date 20 June 1474. 41 Robertson 1968, p. 58; Goffen 1989, pp. 197201; Tempestini 1992, no. 24, pp. 8081. 42 Dirk de Vos, Hans Memling: The Complete Works (London, 1994), no. 9, pp. 10003. 43 Martin Davies, Early Netherlandish School, National Gallery Catalogues (London, 1968), no. 696, pp. 556; Renaissance Venice 1999, no. 1, pp. 1845 (B. Aikema); Lucco 2004. 44 Lightbown 1986, no. 11, pp. 40810. 45 Meyer zur Capellen 1985, pp. 1417, 1078 (docs 911). 46 Bellini exh. cat. 2005. 47 See chapter Six. 48 Gibbons 1965; Gentili 1991; Conti 1994; Paris 1995; Galassi 1998; Fletcher 1998; Bambach 1999; Dunkerton 2004. 49 Baxandall 1972. 50 Kasl 2004; See also Galassi 1998. 51 Vasari 196687, vol. iii, p. 428. 52 Boskovits 1986. 53 Eisler 1989, pp. 6064, 51617; Humfrey 1993, pp. 17780, no. 3, p. 341; for a contrary view, see Conti 1994; see also Michiel 2000, p. 27. 54 Scir Nepi 1991, no. 39, pp. 867, 1315; Tempestini 1992, no. 5, pp. 2630. 55 Eisler 1989, pp. 267, 530. Mariegola of the Scuola Grande di S. Marco, Venice, Museo Correr, Biblioteca, Prov. Correr a sc 6, no. 32 (ms iv, no. 19). It is a question here of a volume encompassing multiple inventories. The rst is dated 19 July 1421 and encompasses fols 1r6v. The inventory, which lists the altarpiece of Jacopo Bellini on fol. 7v, bears the date 13 April 1466 on the same sheet and displays supplements as late as 1476. This inventory was compiled by Piero di Chonti, guardian de tutte le chose.
References | 221
56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72
73 74 75 76 77
78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92
93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106
Sohm 1982, doc. 19, p. 259. Ridol 1914, vol. i, p. 54. Sohm 1982, doc. 21, p. 260. Sohm 1982, docs 1923, pp. 25960. Boskovits 1986. Conti 1994; I hope I have grasped the view contained in my late friends last essay, a text that cultivates a genuinely Byzantine manner of expression. Goffen 1989, p. 1. Ridol 1914, vol. i, p. 52: La Famiglia de Bellini tenne ne tempi andati honorato luogo tr Cittadini Veneti dalla quale essendo usciti valorosi Pittori. Fletcher 2004, p. 13. On the documents, see the Chronology. Voltolina 1998, vol. i, no. 105, pp. 1323. Fletcher 1998; Fletcher 2004, p. 40. ioannes bellinvs. venet[us]. pictor.op[timus]; see Pollard 1967, no. 146, p. 31; Voltolina 1998, vol. 1, no. 227, p. 273; Fletcher 2004, p. 40. Erizzo 1559, pp. 15560. On the artists claim to genius, see Kemp 1977, pp. 38991. Sanudo 18791903, vol. vi (1881), col. 552; vol. xxiii (1888), col. 256; Goffen 1989, p. 270, no. 67. Lorenzi 1868, no. 197, p. 92 (26 February 1483): Ioannes Bellinus per egregium ingenium suum in arte picture, pictor nostri Dominij est appellatus et ideo assumptus ad renovandam Salam Maioris Consilij: []; cf. the earlier reference to Gentile Bellini as pentor egregio et optimo maistro, no. 188, p. 85 (1 September 1474); or for Giovanni Bellini as pictor egregius, no. 192, p. 89 (28 August 1479). Eisler 1989, p. 515; Humfrey 1990, no. 1, pp. 257. Eisler 1989, p. 525. Vasari 196687, vol. iii, pp. 4278. Michiel 2000, p. 31. Eisler 1989, pp. 245, pp. 52021; Gentile da Fabriano exh. cat. 2006, pp. 20, 1247. During the nal third of the fteenth century, the fresco was incorporated into the successor work executed by Gentile and Giovanni Bellini and other painters. The heavily damaged fresco was not repaired, but instead replaced by paintings on canvas. In 1577 the entire furnishings of the Sala del Maggior Consiglio were burnt. Baxandall 1964, pp. 10001. Eisler 1989, pp. 267. Eisler 1989, pp. 267; 530. The inventory cited by Eisler dates from 13 April 1466 (see note 54 above). Fletcher 1998. Gentile da Fabriano exh. cat. 2006, pp. 1951 (K. Christiansen). Krautheimer/Krautheimer-Hess 1956, no. 53, p. 349; Eisler 1989, p. 30. Eisler 1989, p. 30. Cf. the later commentary by Angelo Decembrio: Baxandall 1963, pp. 31415. Rosenberg 1997, pp. 5482. Jacopo Bellini, London, British Museum, fols 27v and 79v; see the eagle on fols 54r and 95r; Eisler 1989, pp. 2523, pls 1312; Rosenberg 1997, p. 56; Grafton 2000, pp. 21719. Rosenberg 1997, pp. 5761; Grafton 2000, pp. 21719; Alberti 2000, doc. 6, pp. 37071. Grafton 2000, pp. 26192. Alberti 2000, pp. 3656. Alberti 2004, pp. 4851. Vasari 196687, vol. 3, pp. 28990: Figur ancora una Vinegia in prospettiva e San Marco, ma le gure che vi sono furono condotte da altri maestri, et questa una de le miglior cose che si vegga di suo pittura. Eisler 1989, p. 197. Eisler 1989, p. 533, doc. 1493; Meyer zur Capellen 1985, p. 114, doc. 39. Alberti 2000, pp. 6972. Baxandall 1963. Ames-Lewis 2000, p. 141. Rthlisberger 1960; Eisler 1989; Degenhart and Schmitt 1990; Ames-Lewis 2000, pp. 378, 2624. Pacioli 1494, fols 1r2v. Meyer zur Capellen 1985, no. a20, p. 135. Leonardo exh. cat. 1992. Pacioli 1509, fol. 29v. Bauer-Eberhardt 1989; Christiansen 2004a, pp. 578. Btschmann 1997; Pon 2004. Lambert 1999, nos 6435, pp. 3456; cf. the use of a gure by Bellini for the Bacchus, no. 640, p. 341. Fry 1899, pp. 12.
ii
Orientations
1 Lightbown 1986, pp. 6476, no. 9, pp. 4068. 2 Christiansen 2004a; see Baxandalls excursus Against inuence in Baxandall 1985, pp. 5862. 3 Christiansen 2004a, pp. 546; see the discussion of this Crucixion group in Robertson 1968, pp. 312; Goffen 1989, pp. 913; Tempestini 1992, no. 12, pp. 545. 4 Eisler 1989, pp. 34652; Degenhart and Schmitt 1990, no. 2/720. 5 Renaissance Venice and the North 1999, no. 12, pp. 2067 (B. Aikema). 6 Belting and Eichberger 1983. 7 Cyriel Stroo and Pascale Syfer-dOlne, The Flemish Primitives, Catalogue of Early Netherlandish Painting in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, vol. i (Brussels, 1996), no. 9, pp. 13151. 8 Robertson 1968, p. 37; Tempestini 1992, no. 4, pp. 245. 9 Robertson 1968, pp. 323; Huse 1972, pp. 610; Goffen 1989, pp. 1067; see Lightbown 1986, no. 6, p. 404, c. 1455, conrming Longhis dating. 10 Goldner 2004, pp. 22730. 11 Ridol 1914, vol. i, p. 66. 12 Landino 1974, vol. i, pp. 1235 (Fiorentini eccellenti in pittura e scultura): Andreino fu grande disegnatore e di gran rilievo, amatore delle difcult dellarte e di scorci, vivo e pronto molto e assai facile nel fare. 13 Robertson 1968, p. 33: Light is seen here as love, the divine element permeating and binding nature and man in a single order. This realization of the formal and spiritual function of light ist the true essence of Giovannis achievement. 14 Christiansen 2004a, pp. 6065. 15 Lightbown 1986, no. 10, p. 408; Mantegna exh. cat. 1992, no. 10, pp. 12934; Fletcher 2004, pp. 312. 16 Christiansen 2004a, p. 66. 17 Antonello da Messina exh. cat. 2006, no. 28, pp. 198207 (M. Lucco). 18 Renaissance Venice and the North 1999, pp. 17683 (B. Aikema, B. L. Brown). 19 See chapter Three. 20 Mantegna exh. cat. 1992, nos 6571, pp. 25872. 21 Lightbown 1986, no. 70, p. 461, no. 216, p. 492; Mantegna exh. cat. 1992, nos 6571, pp. 25872; Schulze Altcappenberg 1995, pp. 645. 22 Tempestini 1992, no. 33, pp. 1067. 23 Berenson 1916, p. 60. 24 Mantegna exh. cat. 1992. 25 Fletcher 2004. 26 On Feliciano (14331479): DBI, vol. xlvi (1996), pp. 8390. 27 Fletcher 2004, p. 34. 28 Lucco 2004, p. 75; see Meiss 1976, pp. 1935, 3659; Robertson 1968, pp. 19. 29 Renaissance Venice and the North 1999. 30 Renaissance Venice and the North 1999, pp. 3143 (Peter Stabel). 31 Campbell 1981; Renaissance Venice and the North 1999, no. 1, pp. 1845 (B. Aikema). 32 Baxandall 1964. 33 Campbell 1981, p. 468; Humfrey 1993, pp. 159, 330. 34 Renaissance Venice and the North 1999, especially Bernard Aikema, The Lure of the North: Netherlandish Art in Venetian Collection, pp. 8391; Michiel 2000; Lauber 2005. 35 See Aikema 2005; Lauber 2005. 36 Pomian 2003; Collezionismo a Venezia 2005. 37 Burckhardt 2000, p. 296. 38 Baxandall 1971, pp. 5160. 39 Baxandall 1971, pp. 14043. 40 Querini diptych, fth century, ivory, 24.5 x 14 cm, Brescia, Museo Cristiano. 41 Tilman Buddensieg, Die Statuenstiftung Sixtus iv. im Jahre 1471: von den heidnischen Gtzenbildern am Lateran zu den Ruhmeszeichen des rmischen Volkes auf dem Kapitol, in Rmisches Jahrbuch fr Kunstgeschichte, xx (1983), pp. 3373. 42 Dunkerton 2004, p. 203. For different datings, see Tempestini 1992, no. 31, p. 100. 43 Tempestini 1992, no. 31, pp. 10001. 44 Vos 1994, no. 42, pp. 19091. 45 Renaissance Venice and the North 1999, no. 8, pp. 1989, with the dating ca. 14901500 (B. Aikema); Tempestini 1992, no. 55, pp. 16061, with dating according to Longhi to 148085. 46 See Boehm 1985, pp. 14354. 47 Vasari 196687, vol. iii, p. 307. 48 Vasari 196687, vol. iii, pp. 35861. 49 Luigi Lanzi, Storia pittorica della Italia, 6 vols (Bassano, 1809), vol. i, pp. 6472. 50 Ridol 1914, vol. i, p. 65.
References | 223
51 Nougaret 177680, vol. i, p. 263: Tous les Auteurs attribuent Jean Bellin la gloire davoir gnreusement rpandu en Italie la connoissance de la peinture lhuile, dont Antoine de Messine faisoit un grand mystre. Voici comment Jean Bellin eut, son tour, lart de tromper Antoine de Messine. Il shabilla en Noble Vnitien, alla chez Antoine, qui ne le connoissoit pas, lui t faire son portrait, observa le mlange des couleurs, tandis que lArtiste toit au travail; & apprit, par ce moyen, un secret quil se t aussi-tt un devoir de publier. 52 Nougaret 177680, vol. i, p. vii. 53 Merime 1830. 54 Giovanni Bellini, ngendosi un nobile Veneto, si fa ritrarre dal pittore Antonello da Messina onde potere scoprire la nuova maniera di dipingere ad olio, che quellartista appreso da Giovanni da Bruges, 1870, canvas, 100 x 129 cm, Milan, Pinacoteca di Brera; see Pinacoteca di Brera. Dipinti dellOttocento e del Novecento. Collezioni dellAccademia e della Pinacoteca, ed. F. Mazzocca, 2 vols (Florence, 1994), vol. ii, no. 754, pp. 6768. The painting by Edmond Lechevallier-Chevignard is lost; an illustration is reproduced in an article by Paul Mantz, Salon de 1872, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, xiv (1872), pp. 4723. 55 Gemme darti italiane 184561, vol. iv, before p. 3, text by Pietro Selvatico, pp. 313. The painting must be considered lost. Selvatico notated the name and origin of the client, a certain Signor Hirschel of Trieste. Pietro Estense Selvatico (18031880), son of Marchese Bartolomeo Selvatico, studied law in Padua and taught himself painting, sculpture and architecture. In 1849 he became a secretary of and instructor at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice and served as its president between 1851 and 1856. 56 Teniers 1660; Berenson 1917. 57 Bellini exh. cat. 2000, p. 180. 58 Dunkerton 2004, pp. 198201; Dunkerton 1999. 59 Renaissance Venice and the North 1999, nos 1012, pp. 2027 (B. Aikema). 60 Cennini 1995, pp. 97102. 61 See Investigating Jan van Eyck, ed. Susan Foister, Sue Jones and Delphine Cool (Turnhout, 2000), especially pp. 97105. 62 Antonello da Messina exh. cat. 2005, pp. 617 (Ursula Baumer, Irene Fiedler, Johann Koller); Antonello da Messina exh. cat. 2006, pp. 91113 (Gianluca Poldi, Giovanni C. F. Villa). iii 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Transformations
8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26
Byzantium exh. cat. 2004, no. 131, pp. 2213; Wolf 2002, pp. 1645. Belting 1981, pp. 2818. Wolf 2002, pp. 16670. Another engraving by van Meckenem shows the gure of Christ in an open grave surrounded by the instruments of the Passion, while a fourth work shows Christ anked by Mary and John. Belting 1981, pp. 67, 25163. Belting 1981, pp. 5368. Robertson 1968, p. 36; Goffen 1989, pp. 77, 79 (with dating according to the Dead Christ Mourned by Angels in the Museo Correr), p. 287; Tempestini 1992, p. 15 (workshop). Museo Poldi Pezzoli. Dipinti, Milan: Electa, 1982, no. 102, pp. 11516. Belting 1981, pp. 1718. Van Os 1994, no. 32, pp. 10611. Tempestini 1992, no. 11, pp. 523. Fry 1899, pp. 1617. Pope-Hennessy 1992, p. 219. Belting, 1986, pp. 1920. Burckhartd, Das Altarbild, published posthumously in 1898, in: Burckhardt 2000, p. 50. Goffen 1975; Kecks 1988; Goffen 1989, pp. 24118; Van Os 1994; Kasl 2004. Erwin Panofsky, Imago pietatis. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Schmerzensmannes und der Maria Mediatrix [1927], in: Panofsky 1998, vol. 1, pp. 186233; cf. among others Ringbom 1984; Belting 1981; Kecks 1988; Van Os 1994; Hauser 2000; Wolf 2002. Goffen 1989: Images for Private Devotion and Images for Public Devotion. Baxandall 1972, pp. 4045; Belting 1981, pp. 76104. Kecks 1988, illus. 1, 28, 29, 11. Colonna 1499, fol. d8 recto. Belting 1990, pp. 8791, 22032, 571. Goffen 1986, chapter Five: The Cult of the Madonna in Venice, pp. 13854. Roeck 1991 and 1992. Ronda Kasl, Holy Households: Art and Devotion in Renaissance Venice, in Kasl 2004, pp. 5989. Boskovits 1985, p. 117; Eisler 1989, pp. 51920, proposes a dating between 1450 and 1460; Humfrey 1990, p. 25, accepts the proposal of Boskovits. Christiansen 2004b; cf. The Early Venetian Paintings in Holland, ed. Henk Van Os et al., Maarssen: Schwartz, 1978.
27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41
42 43 44 45 46 47 48
49 50 51
52 53 54 55 56 57
Christiansen 2004b, pp. 1011; cf. on this Gentili 1991; Tempestini 1992, no. 14, pp. 5861; Galassi 1998. Tempestini 1992, no. 32, pp. 1025. Christiansen 2004b, p. 13; for the situation in Florence, cf. Kecks 1988. Cf. among others the contributions of David Alan Brown, David Bull, Joyce Plesters in Titian Symposium 1993; Bellini exh. cat. 2000; Dunkerton 2004; Kasl 2004. Bambach 1999; cf. Artists Workshop 1993. Golden 2004, p. 91; cf. the works by Gentili 1991; Gibbons 1965. Kasl 2004. Baxandall 1972, pp. 1723. Tempestini 1992, no. 62, pp. 17980; no. 56, pp. 1623; no. 64, pp. 1845. Michiel 2000, p. 31: Il quadro in tavola picola della Nostra Donna che presente il puttino alla circuncisione, fu di mano dil Mantegnia, et a mezze gure. Lightbown 1986, no. 7, pp. 4045. Tempestini 1992, no. 19, pp. 7071. Ringbom 1984, pp. 7293. Lightbown 1986, no. 43, pp. 4456. Tempestini 1992, no. 69, pp. 20001 (Vienna, New York, Verona); Heinemann 196291, vol. i, pp. 412, lists altogether 29 variants of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple. Tempestini 1992, no. 76, pp. 21415; Heinemann 196291, vol. i, pp. 423, mentions 34 variants. Sandra Gianfreda, Caravaggio, Guercino, Mattia Preti: Das halbgurige Historienbild und die Sammler des Seicento (Emsdetten and Berlin, 2005). Burckhardt 2000, pp. 298303. Ringbom 1984, pp. 72106. On Agostino Barbarigo, Doge until 1501, see F. Gaeta, Barbarigo, Agostino, in DBI, vol. vi (1964), pp. 479. Meyer zur Capellen 1985, pp. 645; Tempestini 2000, no. 47, p. 178. Lucco 1990, vol. ii, p. 450; Tempestini 1992, pp. 16870. Cf. Votive Picture of Doge Leonardo Loredan, c. 15012, marble relief, Venice, Doges Palace, Sala degli Scarlatti; attributed to Pietro Lombardo, and Titian, Votive Picture of Doge Andrea Gritti (c. 1531), burnt in 1574; the composition is repeated in a large-format woodcut of the Votive Picture of Doge Francesco Don, between 1545 and 1553. Rosand 1977. R. Grisley, De Fossis, Pietro, in DBI, vol. xxxvi (1988), pp. 234. Tempestini 1992, no. 59, pp. 16871. As a location, we can exclude the Palazzo Barberigo alla Terrazza, with the Palazzo Barberigo opposite San Treviso perhaps coming into question; see Finocchi Ghersi 2003, p. 110. Roeck 1991; Roeck 1992. Roeck 1991, p. 44, identies the entry la crozola with a t-shaped arrangement of two rooms in the Doges Palace and hence arrives at the Sala dello Scudo. Cf. Chronology 1501. Howard 2004, pp. 14950. Meersseman 195860, vol. i, p. 218, the Venetian litany, however, does not contain this predicate; ibid., vol. ii, pp. 21522. Dittrich 2004, pp. 34760, 37988, 3917, 50813. iv
Invention
1 Robertson 1968, pp. 2930. 2 Meiss 1951, pp. 1212, g. 121; Ringbom 1984, p. 107. Paolo Veneziano, Coperta dipinta per la Pala dOro, Venice, Museo di San Marco. 3 Humfrey 1990, no. 2, pp. 2832; no. 3, pp. 338. 4 Tempestini 1992, no. 13, pp. 567. 5 Tempestini 1992, no. 13, pp. 567, gives the date of 1472, which Zanetti was still able to read from the cartellino in 1771, although this was probably not especially reliable after the overpainting of 1571, all the more so since this date is no longer visible. Bellini exh. cat. 2000, no. 30, p. 153. 6 Descrizione italiana e francese di tutto ci che si contiene nella Galleria del. Sig. Marchese Senatore Luigi Sampietri (Bologna, 1795), pp. 267. 7 Humfrey 1990, no. 4, pp. 3942; for the history of the Pinacoteca, see pp. 1122. 8 Fry 1899, pp. 245. 9 Belting 1985, pp. 2831. 10 The inscription reads: haec fere qvvm gemitvs tvrgentia lvmina promant // bellini poterat ere ioannis opvs. For both new translations, my thanks to Christoph Schublin. See the discussion of the various translations and interpretations in Grave 2004, pp. 11930. 11 Propertius, Quid nostro gemitu turgentia lumina torques?; see Charles Brinks reference to Propertius
References | 225
in Robertson 1968, p. 55, note 1; Belting 1985, pp. 2831; Goffen 1989, pp. 713; Arasse 1993. 12 Tibullus, Elegiae (Venice, 1472); the elegies of Propertius on fols 33r42r; Biblioteca Marciana, Venice, Inc.v.553. 13 Felix Gilbert, Humanism in Venice, in Florence and Venice 1979, vol. i, pp. 1326. 14 Fletcher 1991; Fletcher 2004. 15 Baxandall 1971. 16 Belting 1985, pp. 2736. 17 Alberti, De pictura, 42: Alberti 2000, pp. 2713. 18 Shearman 1992. 19 Fehrenbach 2003; Fehrenbach 2005. 20 Pino, Dialogo di pittura [1548], in Trattati darte 196063, vol. i, p. 106. 21 Alberti, De pictura, 3545; Alberti 1991, pp. 7181; Alberti 2000, pp. 25681. 22 Pino, Dialogo di pittura [1548], in Trattati darte 196063, vol. i, pp. 11516: E perch la pittura propria poesia, cio invenzione, la qual fa apparere quello che non . See Puttfarken 2000, pp. 17780. 23 Cennini 1995, cap. 1, p. 4: Per lo simile al dipintore dato libert potere comporre una gura ritta, a sedere, mezzo uomo cavallo, s come gli piace, secondo sua fantasia. 24 Kemp 1977; Psterer 1996. 25 On the use of rulers and angles, see the recommendation in Filarete 1972, vol. ii, p. 643. 26 Roesler-Friedenthal 1996. 27 Lightbown 1986, nos 3940, pp. 4423. 28 Robertson 1968, pp. 13440; Verheyen 1971; Jennifer M. Fletcher, Isabella dEste, Patron and Collector, in Gonzaga exh. cat. 1981, pp. 5163; Brown 1982 (documents on Bellini pp. 157-167); Goffen 1989, pp. 2648 (documents); Land 1994, pp. 10211; Ames-Lewis 2000, pp. 17787; Christiansen 2004a, pp. 4950; Campbell 2004. 29 Verheyen 1971, pp. 414. 30 Brown 1982, pp. 1589. 31 Brown 1982, pp. 15960, 59: Giovane Belino dice far una bela fantasia cercha al quadro dela Signoria Vostra, ma ancora non l principiato. 32 Land 1994, p. 102. 33 See the comprehensive analysis by Campbell 2004, pp. 191204. 34 Brown 1982, pp. 1625. 35 Tempestini 1992, no. 74, pp. 20911; no. 88, pp. 2467. 36 For the documents, see Goffen 1989, p. 268, docs 4951; Bembo 198793, vol. i, no. 225, pp. 20910. 37 Gibbons 1978; Land 1994, p. 106. 38 As in so many cases, the identication and attribution of this drawing remain uncertain: Robertson 1968, p. 73; Schulze Altcappenberg 1995, pp. 668. 39 Alberti 2000, pp. 2569 (De pictura, 35); for the discussion of the various interpretations of Albertis historia, see Alberti 2000, pp. 8794; Btschmann 2001. 40 Michiel 2000, p. 53: La tavola del San Francesco nel deserto a oglio fo opera de Zuan Bellino, cominciata da lui a M. Zuan Michiel et ha un paese propinquo nito e ricercato mirabilimente. 41 Michiel 2000, pp. 567: El paesetto in tela cun la tempesta, cun la cingana et soldato, fo de mano de Zorzi da Castelfranco. Cf. the classic study by Ernst H. Gombrich, The Renaissance Theory of Art and the Rise of Landscape [1953], in Gombrich 1966, pp. 10721. 42 Janson 1994, pp. 413. 43 Meiss 1964, p. 21. 44 The polyptych was sold and subdivided in 1810. See Enzo Carli, Sassettas Borgo San Sepolcro Altarpiece, Burlington Magazine, xciii (1951), pp. 14552. 45 Hecht 2003, pp. 1278. 46 Eisler 1989, pls 2557, pp. 2923. 47 Meiss 1964, p. 31. 48 But see the report on the works condition in The Frick Collection: An Illustrated Catalogue, vol. ii: Paintings (New York, 1968), pp. 2039. Robertson 1968, pp. 767; Goffen 1989, pp. 10710. 49 Cf. Grave 2004, pp. 2942. 50 Humfrey 1990, no. 3, pp. 338. 51 Land 1980; Wolf 2002, pp. 1623. 52 Wethey 196975, vol. i, no. 55, pp. 1013. 53 Anderson 1996, pp. 1589. 54 Renaissance Venice and the North 1999, no. 9, pp. 20001 (B. Aikema). 55 Dalhoff 1997, pp. 858. 56 On the painting: Robertson 1968, pp. 912; Goffen 1989, pp. 13940, with a date of between 1475 and 1480; Tempestini 1992, no. 50, pp. 1479; 57 Dalhoff 1997, p. 35; see note 100, pp. 1913, on the deciphering of this by Vera Bendt and David Jacoby; see Humfrey 2004, p. 6. 58 Tempestini 1992, no. 58, pp. 1667.
59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67
68 69 70 71
72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84
85 86 87 88
89 90 91 92 93 94 95
Tempestini 1992, no. 36, pp. 11215. Tempestini 1992, no. 50, pp. 1479; Goffen 1989, pp. 13740; Humfrey 1993, p. 222, no. 30, p. 347. Cf. Dalhoff 1997, doc. iv, pp. 14953. Dalhoff 1997, doc. v, pp. 1536. Dalhoff 1997, Inventory, pp. 15770. Tempestini 1992, no. 73, pp. 2068. Matthew 1998. Sansovino 1581, fol. 62v; this amount corresponds to approximately 1819 million euros in todays currency Scir Nepi 1991, no. 38, pp. 845; Boschini 1664, pp. 41415; Tempestini 2000, no. 56, p. 189; Bellini exh. cat. 2000, no. 1113, p. 134. In the Virgin and Child in the sacristy of Santa Maria della Salute in Venice, Pier Maria Pennacchi adopts Giovanni Bellinis style. Howard 2004, pp. 15760. Baxandall 1972, pp. 4556. Iacopo da Voragine 1497; see also the comprehensive compilation of the predicates of Mary in Meersseman 195860. Antonello da Messina exh. cat. 2006, no. 35 (Palermo), pp. 2325, no. 41 (Munich), pp. 2545, with dating prior to the version in Palermo. See also Antonio de Salibas copy of the Palermo version, probably executed in Venice during the 1480s (Venice, Galleria dellAccademia). Wethey 196975, vol. i, nos 911, pp. 7072. Cennini 1995, pp. 7380; cf. the analysis by Kruse 2000, which also demonstrates the connection to Petrarch. Tempestini 1992, nos 345, pp. 10811. Painted for the tomb chapel of Marin Zorzi in the church of San Michele in Isola; Tempestini 1992, no. 36, pp. 11215. Bellini exh. cat. 2000, no. 11, p. 133. Antonello da Messina exh. cat. 2006, no. 34, pp. 22631; no. 42, pp. 2569; no. 46, pp. 27493; Humfrey 1993, pp. 198201; Antonello da Messina exh. cat. 2005; see chapter Five. Robertson 1968, pp. 10910; Boehm 1985, pp. 15052; Goffen 1989, pp. 197, 212; Tempestini 1992, no. 82, pp. 23032. Luchs 1995, pp. 1013. Pincus 2004, especially concerning contacts between Bellini and Pietro Lombardo. Tempestini 1992, no. 78, pp. 21823. Crowe and Cavalcaselle 1871, vol. ii, pp. 1245. Cf. the most recent interpretations: Belting 2001; Eisler 2004; Aikema 2004. Cf. the presentation of this exegesis in Magherini, Paolucci and Tempestini 2001, pp. 319; Graziella Magherini has given a novel turn to this variegated interpretive history; she examines the painting with an eye towards the childhood, life and sexual problems of the elderly Bellini, who was unloved by his supposed stepmother. Cf. Robertson 1968, pp. 99103. Hofmann 1996. Magherini, Paolucci and Tempestini 2001, p. 36. Kanz 2002 on Vasaris introduction of the term capriccio to art theory. Vasari 1927, vol. ii, p. 106; Vasari 196687, vol. iii, p. 553 (edition of 1550): E fra gli altri gli venne capriccio di fare una gura che si cava una calza, che per essersi per il sudore appiccata alla gamba, colui la tira a rovescio, appoggiandosela allo altro stinco con tanta forza e disagio ch e luna e laltro gli appare nel viso, cosa ch fu tenuta molto in que tempi in maraviglia e venerazione. Vasari 196687, vol. iv, p. 46; Vasari 1927, vol. ii, p. 171. The translation a beautiful and ingenious work is only approximately relevant to Vasaris argument. Benedetto Varchi, Lezione sopra un sonetto di Michelangelo [1547], in Scritti darte 19717, vol. ii, pp. 132241 (especially p. 1329). Roskill 1968, pp. 1225. G. Innamorati, Aretino, Pietro, in dbi, vol. iv (1962), pp. 89104. Gentili 2004, p. 174. Robertson 1968, p. 101. Sansovino 1581, fols 202v203v: Andata per la Madonna di Marzo. v
Composition
1 2 3 4 5 6
Cf. Humfrey 1993, pp. 1814, no. 9, pp. 3424. Humfrey 1993, pp. 1848. Wethey 196975, vol. i, no. 133, pp. 1535. Zanotto 1860, pl. 5. Cavalcaselle 1973, nos 6062, pp. 8890. Humfrey 1983, pp. 1621; Humfrey 1993, pp. 20812, no. 42, p. 349.
References | 227
7 Crowe and Cavalcaselle 1912, vol. i, p. 154. 8 Humfrey 1993, pp. 1834. 9 Sansovino 1581, fol. 23v: Ma dalla destra, la palla di San Tommaso fu opera di Gian Bellino, il quale dipinse anco quellaltra di San Vicenzo, San Rocco, & San Sebastiano. On Humfreys discussion, see Humfrey 1993, pp. 3423. 10 Cf. Tempestini 1992, no. 9, pp. 3849. 11 Robertson 1968, p. 43. 12 Goffen 1989, pp. 2746; Bellini exh. cat. 2000, no. 27, pp. 1459. 13 Christiansen 2004a, pp. 679. 14 For the iconography, see Hecht 2003. 15 Goffen 1979. 16 Wethey 196975, vol. i, no. 119, p. 143. 17 From the immense literature, we should single out Jacob Burckhardts treatise of 1897 on the altar painting (see Burckhardt 2000); English version by Peter Humfrey (see Burckhardt 1988); Italian Altarpieces 1994. 18 Humfrey 1994b, pp. 1512. 19 Humfrey 1994b, p. 152. 20 On the Venetian Sacra conversazione, see Humfrey 1993, with a comprehensive bibliography pp. 36172. 21 Cavalcaselle 1973, nos 6062, pp. 8890. 22 Maurer 1982. 23 Humfrey 1993, p. 188. 24 Lightbown 1986, pp. 6477, no. 9, pp. 4068. 25 Bertelli 1991, pp. 13150, 21213. 26 Schmidt Archangeli 1998, pp. 338, with a discussion of additional references. 27 Bertelli 1993. 28 Venice, Galleria dellAccademia, since 1816. 29 Venice, Galleria dellAccademia, previously in San Giobbe (Carpaccio) and Santa Chiara in Murano (Cima da Conegliano). 30 Humfrey 1993, pp. 14657. 31 Trattati darte 196063, vol. i, p. 145 (Dolce 1557). 32 Bellini exh. cat. 1988, pp. 12743. 33 Tempestini 1992, no. 25, pp. 828; Humfrey 1993, pp. 18893, no. 17, p. 345; Humfrey 2004, with the dating c. 14736 (pl. v) or c. 14715 (p. 148). 34 Bellini exh. cat. 1988, pp. 359 (Maria Rosaria Valazzi). 35 Bellini exh. cat. 1988, pp. 1528 (Patrizia Castelli). 36 Humfrey 1993, pp. 18893. 37 Florence, Ufzi, formerly in the church of the Ospedale di Santa Maria Nuova in Florence. 38 Meersseman 195860, vol. i, p. 218, but the Venetian litany does not contain this predicate, cf. vol. ii, pp. 21522. 39 For discussions of this problem, see Robertson 1968, pp. 624; Huse 1972, pp. 1718; Goffen 1989, pp. 825; Tempestini 1992, no. 30, pp. 979; Tempestini 2000, p. 72. 40 Bertelli 1991, pp. 389, 2025. 41 Bellini exh. cat. 1988, pp. 15 (P. Zampetti). 42 Sanudo 1980, p. 50. 43 Humfrey 1993, p. 195: a turning-point. On the legend concerning oil painting, see Vasari 196687, vol. iii, p. 307; Ridol 1648, vol. i, p. 47; Ridol 1914, vol. i, p. 65; see below, chapter Six. 44 Antonello da Messina exh. cat. 2006, nos 42, 44, pp. 2569, 2649. 45 Michiel 2000, pp. 51, 56. 46 Sansovino 1581, 49r: & Antonello da Messino che fu il primo inventore della pittura olio, fece il San Christoforo, & Pino da Messina il San Sebastiano che sono da i lati del San Rocco fatto di rilievo. See Humfrey 1993, pp. 1989. 47 Antonello da Messina exh. cat. 2005. 48 Antonello da Messina exh. cat. 2006, no. 46, pp. 27483 (Mauro Lucco). 49 Antonello da Messina exh. cat. 2006, doc. 31, pp. 3612: la qual opera illustrissimo mio signor sera de le pi eccellenti opere del penelo che habia Ittalia e fuor dIttalia. 50 Sansovino 1581, fol. 75r: Antonello da Messina inventor del dipingere a olio, vi fece una palla. 51 Sansovino 1581, fol. 23v (Santi Giovanni e Paolo): Ma dalla destra, la palla di San Tomaso fu opera di Gian Bellino, il quale dipinse anco quellaltra di San Vincenzo, San Rocco, & San Sebastiano; fol. 27v (San Zaccaria): Di pitture vi notabile la palla di Nostra Donna di mano di Gian Bellino. 52 Sansovino 1581, fol. 48v: una palla di Nostra Donna, di mano dAlberto Duro, di bellezza singolare, per disegno, per diligenza, & per colorito. 53 Sansovino 1581, fol. 57r: & si come allora fu stimata molto da i buoni maestri, cosi al presente per la sua molta eccellenza tenuta in gran prezzo. 54 Antonello da Messina exh. cat. 2006, no. 34, pp. 22631 (Mauro Lucco), with an overview of the history
55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70
71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78
79 80 81 82 83 84
85
86 87 88
89
90 91 92 93
94
of the picture and research about it. Antonello da Messina exh. cat. 2006, no. 34, pp. 22631; no. 75, pp. 3445. Berenson 1917. Humfrey 1993, pp. 195201; Antonello da Messina exh. cat. 2006, no. 34, pp. 22631 (Mauro Lucco). On Alvise Vivarinis altar painting of circa 1485, see Humfrey 1993, pp. 208, 348, no. 36. Antonello da Messina exh. cat. 2006, no. 34, pp. 22631 (Mauro Lucco). Antonello da Messina exh. cat. 2006, no. 25, pp. 18693 (Mauro Lucco). Scir Nepi 1991, no. 41, p. 89. Antonello da Messina exh. cat. 2006, no. 34, pp. 22631 (Mauro Lucco), with reference to the rst written reports of 1476 and 1480. The green curtain in Alvise Vivarinis altarpiece of 1480 is an early subsequent addition; cf. Scir Nepi 1991, no. 41, p. 89. Schmidt Archangeli 1998, pp. 1418. Schmidt Archangeli 1998, pp. 2230. Howard 2004, pp. 1515; Humfrey 1993, pp. 435, 2037; Lucco 1990, Schmidt Archangeli 1998. Schmidt Archangeli 1998, pp. 3033, with a discussion of the earlier reconstructions; Bellini exh. cat. 2000, no. 31, pp. 1535, with new reconstructions. Bellini exh. cat. 2000, no. 31, pp. 1535. Baxandall 1972, pp. 6771. Meersseman 195860, vol. i, p. 210; vol. ii, p. 147. Goffen 1989, pp. 14754, translated on p. 154: Hail, undeled ower of virgin modesty and connects the inscription to the Feast of Immaculate Conception (that is to say, of the absence of original sin), propagated in particular by the Franciscans, and to whose festival on 8 December Pope Sixtus v granted substantial indulgences in 1476. Schmidt Archangeli 1998, pp. 423, accords preference to an allusion to the Annunciation, and calls attention to the sermons and writings of San Lorenzo Giustiniani. Humfrey 1993, pp. 193, 21720. Wethey 196975, vol. i, no. 14, pp. 746. Humfrey 1993, pp. 11920, 2335, no. 56, p. 351. Wethey 196975, vol. i, no. 92, pp. 1268. Sansovino 1581, fols 62v63r; Humfrey 1993, p. 218. Tempestini 1992, no. 79, pp. 2245; Finocchi Ghersi 1999; Fletcher and Mueller 2005. Until 1945 there was an additional triptych with a lunette in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin. Tempestini 1992, no. 60, pp. 1727; Humfrey 1993, pp. 21820, no. 38, p. 348. Goffen 1986, pp. 5861: Thus, Bellinis imagery of the tabernacle, the high pedestal, the prayer in the ctive mosaic apse, and the Book Ecclesiasticus held by Saint Benedict all express the condent hope of redemption through the intermediation of the Immaculate Mother of Christ. Meersseman 195860, vol. i, p. 218. Ciofetta 1991; Tempestini 1992, no. 85, pp. 2369. Menegazzi 1981, pp. 99100; Humfrey 1983, pp. 279, no. 154, pp. 1578; Aikema 1994. On the problem of gure and ground, see Aikema 1994; Puttfarken 2000, pp. 97121. Eisler 1989, pl. 186, p. 321 (London Pattern Book, fol.16r). Dittrich and Dittrich 2004, pp. 32234; Ciofetta 1991, pp. 678 (on the parrot as a herald of Caesar). My thanks to Georg Willi for calling to my attention the resemblance between this bird and the lesser kestrel. See the Baptism of Christ by Giovanni Bellini and his workshop in the church of San Giovanni Battista del Tempio in Venice with the depiction of the donor Sebastiano Michiel, Bellini exh. cat. 2000, pp. 118, 163. Bertelli 1991, pp. 5161, 1789. Bertelli 1991, p. 54. Bellini exh. cat. 2000, p. 91, 13940, with the correct naming of the Madonna in gloria e otto santi, cf. Finocchi Ghersi 2003, pp. 11416; for earlier designations, see Tempestini 1992, no. 98, pp. 2789. On the type, see Hecht 2003. Bellinis Madonna in Glory of 1491 preceded Carpaccios St Ursula in Glory (Venice, Galleria dellAccademia); as early as 1506, Lorenzo Lotto imitated Bellinis Madonna in Glory in his painting for Asolo Cathedral. Robertson 1968, pp. 12831; Lattanzi 1981; Goffen 1989, pp. 1838; Tempestini 1992, no. 102, pp. 2879; Humfrey 1993, no. 81, p. 356; Bellini exh. cat. 2000, pp. 119, 1646. Humfrey 1993, pp. 23842, no. 77, p. 355. Sansovino 1581, fol. 56v. Wethey 196975, vol. i, no. 119, p. 143. Since 1656, the location of this painting has been the church of Santa Maria della Salute in Venice. For a discussion on the relationship between the altarpieces of Sebastiano del Piombo and Bellini, with mention of Titian, see Goffen 1989, pp. 1838. David Rosand, Tiziano sacro e profano, Studi Tizianeschi, iii (2005), pp. 5766.
References | 229
vi Harmony 1 Venice, Archivio di Stato, Demanio, b. 744, 30 April 1859. 2 Gemme darti italiane 184561, vol. xi, pp. 37. 3 Journal zur Kunstgeschichte und zur allgemeinen Litteratur, x (1781), pp. 333; Le Cabinet de lAmateur et de lAntiquaire, i (1842), pp. 30623. 4 Aloisi and Gransinigh 1996, pp. 1921. 5 Drer 195669, vol. i, pp. 434; Conway 1889, p. 48: [. . . ] There are so many nice men among the Italians who seek my company more and more every day which is very pleasing to one men of sense and knowledge, good lute players and pipers, judges of painting, men of such noble sentiment and honest virtue, and they show much honour and friendship. On the other hand there are also amongst them some of the most false, lying, thievish rascals; I should never have believed that such were living in the world. [ . . . ] Among the Italians I have many good friends who warn me not to eat and drink with their painters. Many of them are my enemies and they copy my work in the churches and wherever they can nd it; and then they revile it and say that the style is not antique and not so good. But Giovanni Bellini has highly praised me before many nobles. He wanted to have some thing of mine, and himself came to me and asked me to paint something and he would pay well for it. And all men tell me what an upright man he is, so that I am very friendly with him. He is very old, but is still the best painter of them all. Among the numerous works dealing with Drer in Venice, see Luber 2005. 6 Conway 1889, p. 58; Drer 195669, vol. i, pp. 52, 59: Hier bin ich ein Herr, daheim ein Schmarotzer. 7 Anzelewsky 1971, no. 49, pp. 1525. 8 Vasari 196687, vol. iv, pp. 412. 9 Baldassar Castiglione, Il libro del cortegiano (Venice, 1528), lib. i, 47; Haar 1998, pp. 2037 (The Courtier as Musician: Castigliones View of the Science and Art of Music). 10 Alberti 2004, pp. 389. 11 Vasari 196687, vol. iv, pp. 245: Lionardo port quello strumento chegli aveva di sua mano fabbricato dargento gran parte, in forma dun teschio di cavallo, cosa bizzarra e nuova, acchiocch lharmonia fosse con maggior tuba e pi sonora di voce; laonde super tutti i musici che quivi erano concorsi a suonare. Cf. Winternitz 1982, pp. 3972. 12 Wittkower 1949, p. 117: Das Studium der Musiktheorie wurde eine conditio sine qua non jeder knstlerischen Erziehung. 13 Rosand 1977. 14 Paul Oskar Kristeller, Music and Learning in the Early Italian Renaissance [1947], in Kristeller 1990, pp. 1422; Rosand 1977; Lewis Lockwood, Music in Renaissance Ferrara, 14501505: The Creation of a Musical Centre in the Fifteenth Century (Oxford, 1984). 15 Farago 1991, p. 162; Leonardo 1995, vol. i, pp. 13168. 16 Farago 1991, pp. 175287, especially 2489: E per questo il poeta resta in quanto alla guratione delle cose corporee molto in dietro al pittore, et delle cose invissibili rimane dietro al musico. 17 Onians 1984, p. 412. 18 Onians 1984, p. 414; on the origins of the paragone debate, see Farago 1992; 19 Pacioli 1509; the full title is: Divina proportione opera a tutti glingegni perspicaci e curiosi necessaria Ove ciascun studioso di Philosophia: Prospectiva Pictura Sculptura Architettura: Musica: e alter Mathematice: suavissima: sottile: e admirabile doctrina consequira: e delecterassi con varie questione de secretissima scientia. 20 Onians 1984, pp. 41314; Pacioli 1509, fol. b3rv: Se questi dicano la musica contentare ludito uno di sensi naturali. E quella el vedere, quale tanto e piu degno quanto egli e prima porta al intellecto. [ . . . ] Se quelle recrea lanimo per larmonia. E questa per debita distantia e varieta de colori molto delecta. 21 Robertson 1968, pp. 11617; Huse 1972, pp. 725; Goffen 1989, pp. 1717; Tempestini 1992, no. 90, pp. 2525. 22 Cf. Andrew McClellan, Inventing the Louvre: Art, Politics, and the Origins of the Modern Museum in Eighteenth-Century Paris (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 1254. 23 Ruskin 190312, vol. xxii, pp. 889. 24 Tempestini 1992, no. 90, pp. 2525; Bellini exh. cat. 2000, no. 34, pp. 15961. 25 Dittrich and Dittrich 2004, pp. 37988. 26 Winternitz 1982, pp. 2538 (The Lira da braccio). 27 Ovid, Metamorphoseos vulgare, ed. Giovanni de Monsignore (Venice, 1497), fol. 85r. 28 On Paolo Veneziano, see Scir Nepi 1991, no. 2, pp. 3031. 29 Gentile da Fabriano exh. cat. 2006, no. iii/1, pp. 12835. 30 Thomas de Celano, Das Leben des heiligen Franciskus von Assisi, ed. P. Schmidt (Basel, 1921), pp. 1812. 31 Winternitz 1963. 32 Johannes Tinctoris, Complexus effectuum musices [circa 1470], in Scriptorum de musca medii aevi novam seriam, ed. Edmond de Coussemaker, 4 vols (Paris, 186476), vol. iv, pp. 191200: Pictores, quando beatorum gaudia designare volunt, angelos diversa instrumenta concrepantes depingunt. 33 Ridol 1914, vol. i, p. 66: In vero naturali considerate gure, nelle quali Giovanni cerc dimprimere
34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42
43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50
51 52 53 54 55
56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64
65 66
67 68 69 70 71 72
quella pit, che si richiede nele Imagini de Santi: non badando scorci ad atteggiamenti, che furono poscia praticati da seguenti Pittori: ne si pu descrivere pieno la gratia e la bellezza di tre Angeletti, che siedono pie di quella Vergine, chi di loro tocca la viola, il liuto & il violino; darie cos gentili e di movimenti cos soavi, che rapiscono gli animi, qual maniere di gure destano somma divotione nelle mente de fedeli; e segli pu con ragione sottoscrivere quel detto: Manca il parlar, di vivo altro non chiedi: // ne manca questa ancor, se agli occhi credi. Boschini 1660, pp. 2830: E par sentir quei musichi concenti. Burckhardt 2000, vol. iv, p. 214. Berenson 1897, p. 2. Richard Wagner, Werke, Schriften und Briefe , Digitale Bibliothek vol. 107, vol. vi, pp. 55051. Angelo Poliziano, In Filippum Fratrem, Pictorem: [ . . .] Artices potui digitis animare colores, // sperataque animos fallere voce diu. See Fehrenbach 2005. Negro and Roio 2001, no. 9, pp. 878. Negro and Roio 2001, no. 10, pp. 889. Negro and Roio 2001, no. 23, p. 101. Helen I. Roberts, St Augustine in St Jeromes Study: Carpaccios Painting and its Legendary Source, Art Bulletin, xli (1959), pp. 28397; Edward E. Lowinsky, Epilogue: The Music in St Jeromes Study, Art Bulletin, xli (1959), pp. 298301; Patricia Fortini Brown, Carpaccios St Augustine in His Study: A Portrait Within a Portrait, in Augustine in Iconography: History and Legend, ed. J. C. Schnaubelt and F. Van Fleteren (New York, 1999), pp. 50737; Renaissance Venice and the North 1999, no. 18, p. 219 (B. Aikema). Augustinus, Opuscula (Venice, 1491). Lowinsky 1982; cf. Wethey 196975, vol. iii, no. 15, pp. 1513. Alberti 1991, p. 77; see also Alberti 2000, pp. 27073 (De pictura, 42); Cf. Btschmann 2003. Roskill 1968, p. 99; Dolce 1557, p. 153: Questa certa imaginatione di chi mira causata da diverse attitudini che a ci servano e non effetto o propriet della Pittura. Cf. Land 1994, pp. 1819. Naturalis Historia 35, 95; Plinius 1958, vol. ix, pp. 3323: Pinxit et quae pingi non possunt, tonitrua, fulgetra fulguraque. Drer 195669, vol. i, pp. 2967. Belting 1990, p. 526. Varchi and Borghini 1998, pp. 11920: E di tutte queste cose insieme ne nasce unarmonia e musica, dir cos, pittoresca [ . . . ]. Cf. Puttfarken 2000, ch. 6: In Search of the Whole and its Harmonies, pp. 16985. Francesco Petrarca, Le rime sparse e i trion, ed. E. Chirboli (Bari, 1930), no. 308, p. 226. Tempestini 1992, no. 87, pp. 2435; Bellini exh. cat. 2000, no. 18, pp. 1378. Renaissance Venice and the North 1999, no. 14, pp. 21011 (B. Aikema); Bellini exh. cat. 2003. Tempestini 1992, no. 67, pp. 19093. Humfrey 1990, no. 16, pp. 847; the painting is badly preserved. The animal on the pedestal bearing Bellinis signature was formerly believed to be a monkey, and was recognized as a feline predator only after a restoration, which reduced art-theoretical speculation to dust. Pliny, Naturalis Historia 35, 29; cf. Gage 1993, pp. 22746. Alberti, De pictura, 910, 469, cf. Alberti 2000, pp. 7782, 20813, 280291; Alberti 1991, pp. 446, 816. Plato, Timaios, 32ab; Pliny, Naturalis Historia 35, 50. Gage 1993, pp. 11719; cf. Fehrenbach 2003; Fehrenbach 2005. Alberti 1991, p. 85; Alberti 2000, pp. 2889 (De Pictura, 48). Baxandall 1972, p. 85; cf. Barasch 1978, pp. 312; Gage 1993, p. 119. Gage 1993, pp. 22746; J. Jewanski, Farbe-Ton-Beziehung, in MGG, vol. iii, cols 34571. Haar 1998, pp. 7992. Vasari 196687, vol. i, pp. 1248: La unione nella pittura una discordanza di colori diversi accordati insieme, i quali nella diversit di pi divise mostrano differentemente distinte luna da laltra le parti delle gure, come le carni dai capelli et un panno diverso di colore da laltro. Barasch 1978, pp. 90134. The literature on Alfonso i and his Camerino is abundant. See the bibliography in Camerino di alabastro exh. cat. 2004, pp. 298309; on the paintings of Bellini, Titian and Dossi, see the contribution by Charles Hope, pp. 8395; Fehl 1992; Rosen 2001. Wethey 196975, vol. iii, pp. 2941. Vasari 196687, vol. vi, pp. 1589. Burckhardt 2001, vol. iii, p. 89 (826); on the Camuccini brothers, who were artists and art dealers in Rome, see Anderson 1993. Wind 1948, pp. 2735. See dbi, vol. viii (1966, pp. 13351 (C. Dionisotti). Anderson 1993 proposed the theme Sine Cerere et Baccho friget Venus, in order to assimilate Bellinis painting to Titians Venus paintings.
References | 231
73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84
Walker 1956. Tempestini 1992, no. 103b, pp. 29095. Goffen 1989, pp. 2525; Tempestini 1992, no. 104, pp. 2967. Pliny, Naturalis Historia 1, 267; cf. Btschmann and Griener 1997, pp. 2235; Matthew 1998. Robertson 1968, pp. 11314; Goffen 1989, pp. 835; Tempestini 1992, no. 95, pp. 26870; Wilson 2004, pp. 108, 121. Vasari 196687, vol. iii, pp. 4379; Vasari wrote to Louis xi, probably erroneously. Robertson 1968, pp. 131, 153; Goffen 1989, pp. 21417, 24951; Tempestini 1992, nos 1056, pp. 298301; Titian exh. cat. 1993, no. 3, pp. 27071. Shearman 1962. Vasari 196687, vol. vi, p. 155. Laclotte 1993; Wilson 2004. See the famous letter of 24 November 1647 in Nicolas Poussin, Correspondance, ed. C. Jouanny (Paris, 1968), no. 156, pp. 37075. Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland.
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Aglietti 1815 Aglietti, Francesco, Elogio storico di Jacopo e Giovanni Bellini, in Discorsi letti nella I .R. Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia (Venice, 1815), vol. ii, pp. 1780. Aikema 1994 Aikema, Bernard, Avampiano e sfondo nellopera di Cima da Conegliano: la pala daltare e lo spettatore tra la ne del Quattrocento e linizio dl Cinquecento, Venezia Cinquecento, iv/8 (1994), pp. 93112. Aikema 2004 , Giorgione und seine Verbindung zum Norden: neue Interpretationen zur Vecchia und zur Tempesta, in Giorgione: Mythos und Enigma, ed. Sylvia Ferino-Pagden and Giovanna Nepi Scir, exh. cat., Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (2004), pp. 85203. Aikema 2005 , Collezionismi a Venezia e nel Veneto, in Collezionismo a Venezia 2005, pp. 2942. Alberti 1966 Alberti, Leon Battista, Larchitettura: De re aedicatoria, ed. Giovanni Orlandi, 2 vols (Milan, 1966). Alberti 1991 , On Painting, trans. Cecil Grayson, ed. Martin Kemp (London, 1991). Alberti 2000 , De statua, De pictura, Elementa picturae / Das Standbild, die Malkunst, Elemente der Malerei, ed. and trans. Oskar Btschmann and Christoph Schublin (Darmstadt, 2000). Alberti 2004 , Vita, ed. Christine Tauber and Robert Cramer (Frankfurt am Main and Basel, 2004). Alexander-Skipnes 2003 Alexander-Skipnes, Ingrid, St Jerome in the Wilderness: Paintings in Venice by Piero della Francesca, Giovanni Bellini and Hieronymus Bosch, in Jrme Bosch et son entourage et autres etudes, ed. Hlne Verougstraete (Leuven, 2003), pp. 28697. Aloisi and Gransinigh 1996 Aloisi, Stefano, and Vania Gransinigh, Jacopo DAndrea: un pittore friulano dellOttocento a Venezia (Udine, 1996). Ames-Lewis 1981 Ames-Lewis, Francis, Drawing in Early Renaissance Italy (New Haven, ct, and London, 1981). Ames-Lewis 2000 , The Intellectual Life of the Early Renaissance Artist (New Haven, ct, and London, 2000). Anderson 1993 Anderson, Jaynie, The Provenance of Bellinis Feast of the Gods and a New/Old Interpretation, Studies in the History of Art, xlv (1993), pp. 26487. Anderson 1996 , Giorgione peintre de la brivet potique: catalogue raisonn (Paris, 1996). Antonello da Messina 2005 Antonello da Messina: der heilige Sebastian, ed. Andreas Henning and Gnter Ohlhoff, exh. cat., Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden (2005). Antonello da Messina exh. cat. 2006 Antonello da Messina: lopera completa, ed. Mauro Lucco, exh. cat., [AQ: venue?] Rome (Milan, 2006). Anzelewsky 1971 Anzelewsky, Fedja, Albrecht Drer: das malerische Werk (Berlin, 1971).
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Arasse 1993 Arasse, Daniel, Giovanni Bellini et les limites de la mimsis: la Piet de la Brera, in Knstlerischer Austausch / Artistic Exchange. Akten des xxviii. Internationalen Kongresses fr Kunstgeschichte: Berlin, 1992, ed. Thomas W. Gaehtgens, 3 vols (Berlin, 1993), vol. ii, pp. 5039. Ariosto 1543 Ariosto, Ludovico, Orlando Furioso: novissimamente alla sua integrita ridotto & ornato di varie gure (Venice, 1543). Artists Workshop 1993 The Artists Workshop, ed. Peter M. Lukehart, Studies in the History of Art, xliv (Washington, dc, 1993). Baader 2003 Baader, Hannah, Das fnfte Element oder Malerei als achte Kunst: das Portrt des Mathematikers Frau Luca Pacioli, in Der stumme Diskurs 2003, pp. 177203. Bambach 1999 Bambach, Carmen C., Drawing and Painting in the Italian Renaissance Workshop: Theory and Practice, 1300 1600 (Cambridge, 1999). Barasch 1978 Barasch, Moshe, Light and Color in the Italian Renaissance Theory of Art (New York, 1978). Btschmann 1997 Oskar Btschmann, Leon Battista Alberti ber inventum und inventio, in Metamorphosen der Rhetorik, ed. Gerhart Schrder (Munich, 1997), pp. 23148. Btschmann 1999 , Leon Battista Alberti: De statua, in Theorie der Praxis: Leon Battista Alberti als Humanist und Theoretiker der bildenden Knste, ed. Kurt W. Forster and Hubert Locher (Berlin, 1999), pp. 10928. Btschmann 2001 , Albertis historia, in Ars et scriptura: Festschrift fr Rudolf Preimesberger zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Hannah Baader et al. (Berlin, 2001), pp. 10724. Btschmann 2003 , Looking at Pictures: The Views of Leon Battista Alberti, in The Enduring Instant: Time and the Spectator in the Visual Arts. 30th International Congress in History of Art, London, 2000, ed. Antoinette Roesler-Friedenthal and Johannes Nathan (Berlin, 2003), pp. 25070. Btschmann and Griener 1997 , and Pascal Griener, Hans Holbein (London, 1997). Bauer-Eberhardt 1989 Bauer-Eberhardt, Ulrike, Lauro Padovano und Leonardo Bellini als Maler, Miniatoren und Zeichner, Pantheon, xlvii (1989), pp. 4982. Baxandall 1963 Baxandall, Michael, A Dialogue on Art from the Court of Leonello dEste, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, xxvi (1963), pp. 30426. Baxandall 1964 , Bartholomaeus Facius on Painting: A Fifteenth-Century Manuscript of the De Viris Illustribus, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, xxvii (1964), pp. 90107. Baxandall 1971 , Giotto and the Orators: Humanistic Observers of Painting in Italy and the Discovery of Pictorial Composition, 13501450 (London, 1971). Baxandall 1972 , Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style (Oxford, 1972). Baxandall 1974 , Alberti and Cristoforo Landino: The Practical Criticism of Painting, in Convegno Internazionale indetto nel V Centario di Leon Battista Alberti 1472 (Rome: Accademia nazionale dei Lincei, 1974), pp. 14354. Baxandall 1985 , Patterns of Intention: On the Historical Explanation of Pictures (New Haven, ct, and London, 1985). Bellini exh. cat. 1988 La pala ricostituita: LIncoronazione della Vergine e la cimasa vaticana di Giovanni Bellini. Indagini e restauri, ed. Maria Rosaria Valazzi, exh. cat., Musei Civici, Pesaro (Venice, 1988). Bellini exh. cat. 2000 Il colore ritrovato: Bellini a Venezia, ed. Rona Goffen and Giovanna Nepi Scir, exh. cat., Venice (Milan, 2000). Bellini exh. cat. 2003 Bellini e Vicenza, exh. cat., Palazzo Thiene, Vicenza (2003). Bellini exh. cat. 2005 Bellini and the East, ed. Caroline Campbell and Alan Chong, exh. cat., Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, ma, and National Gallery, London (2005).
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Photo Acknowledgements
The author and publishers wish to express their thanks to the following sources of illustrative material and/or permission to reproduce it excluding those sufciently credited in the captions (donor or collection details are in some cases also given below): Photos Jrg P. Anders, courtesy of Scala, Florence: 1, 105, 110, 174; photos ( The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham / The Bridgeman Art Library: 2, 47; photo Bayerische Staatsgemldesammlungen, Munich: 109; photos courtesy of the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice: 162, 177; photos O. Bhm: 69, 82, 100, 107, 146, 152, 168, photo Bristols Museums, Galleries & Archives: 45 (bequest of fpm Schiller, 1946); after the reconstruction by Colin Eisler in The Genius of Giovanni Bellini (New York, 1989): 18; courtesy Eidos Processing (team graco Gulio Bertoncello): 141; photo Estel/Klut 2004 Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden: 112; photos the Frick Collection, New York: 95 (Henry Clay Frick bequest), 133; photo Galleria degli Alberti, Prato / The Bridgeman Art Library: 172; photos Galleria dell Accademia, Venice / The Bridgeman Art Library: 19, 43; photo Galleria dell Accademia, Venice / Cameraphoto Arte Venezia / The Bridgeman Art Library: 74; from Goffen, Giovanni Bellini (New Haven, ct and London, 1989): 123; from Humfrey, The Altarpiece in Renaissance Venice (New Haven, ct and London, 1993): 130; photos irpa-kik, Brussels: 36, 51; modied from Johannes Wilde, Die Pala di San Cassiano. . . (1929): 137; from Landon, Annales du muse et de lcole moderne des Beaux-Arts (Paris, 1807): 159; photos The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: 37 (Theodore M. Davis Collection, bequest of Theodore M. Davis, photo 1985), 72 (Rogers Fund, 1908), 99 (Rogers Fund, 1906), 144 (gift of J. Pierpont Morgan); courtesy of the Museo Correr, Venice: 119 (photograph after a lost copy); photos National Gallery Picture Library ( The National Gallery, London): 6, 16, 38, 41, 48, 77, 80, 96, 113, 149, 167, 170, 179; photo National Museums Liverpool: 7 (Weld-Blundell Collection); photo P. Rizzi: 129; photo The Royal Collection Picture Library, 2007, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth ii: 92; photo Saporetti Fotograco dellArte: 84; photos Scala, Florence: 13 ( 1990, courtesy of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attivit Culturali), 33 ( 2001 Scala, Florence), 44 ( 1990 Scala, Florence), 49 ( 1990 Scala, Florence), 58 ( 1990 Scala, Florence), 59 ( 1990 Scala, Florence), 62 ( 1990 Scala, Florence), 65 ( 1990 Scala, Florence), 73 ( 1991 Scala, Florence), 76 ( 1997 Scala, Florence), 78 ( 1990 Scala, Florence, courtesy of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attivit Culturali), 79 ( 1990 Scala, Florence), 83 ( 1990 Scala, Florence, courtesy of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attivit Culturali), 97 ( 1990 Scala, Florence, courtesy of the Comune di Pesaro/Servizio Musei), 102 (photo 1990 Scala, Florence, courtesy of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attivit Culturali, Contini Bonacossi collection), 103 ( 1990 Scala, Florence), 104 ( 2000 Scala, Florence, courtesy of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attivit Culturali), 108 ( 1990 Scala, Florence, courtesy of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attivit Culturali), 111 ( 1990 Scala, Florence, courtesy of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attivit Culturali), 114 ( 2004 Scala, Florence, courtesy of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attivit Culturali), 116 ( 1990 Scala, Florence, courtesy of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attivit Culturali), 118 ( 1990 Scala, Florence), 127 ( 1990 Scala, Florence, courtesy of the Comune di Pesaro/Servizio Musei), 128 ( 1990 Scala, Florence), 131 ( 1990 Scala, Florence), 132 ( 1990 Scala, Florence, courtesy of the Comune di Pesaro/Servizio Musei), 139 ( 2000 Scala, Florence, courtesy of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attivit Culturali), 142 ( 1990 Scala, Florence), 151 ( 1990 Scala, Florence), 160 ( 1990 Scala, Florence), 161 ( 1990 Scala, Florence), 163 ( 2000 Scala, Florence, courtesy of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attivit Culturali), 171 ( 1990 Scala, Florence, courtesy of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attivit Culturali), 173 ( 1990 Scala, Florence, courtesy of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attivit Culturali), 175 ( 1990 Scala, Florence, courtesy of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attivit Culturali), 181, 184 ( 1990 Scala, Florence); photos Soprintendenza ai Beni Artistici e Storici, Venice: 115, 138, 164; photos Service Photographique de la rmn: 20 ( rmn/Herv Lewandowski), 21 ( rmn/Herv Lewandowski), 26 ( rmn-Daniel Arnaudet), 35, 52, 89, 90; photo Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich/Martina Bienenstein: 56; photos Staatliche Museen zu Berlin Preussischer Kulturbesitz/Jrg P. Anders: 9, 50, 75, 94; from Walker, Bellini and Titian at Ferrara (London, 1956): 178.
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Index
Aikema, Bernard 23, 54 Alberti, Leon Battista 346, 38, 47, 55, 99100, 101, 102, 109, 110, 184 Autobiography 35 De pictura 356, 198, 2046 De re aedicatoria 35 Perspective View of Venice and San Marco 35 Self-portrait 35, illus. 29 Aleotti, Ulisse 36 Alfonso I dEste 185, 197, 207, 208 Ames-Lewis, Francis 36 Amman, Jost Procession in St Marks Square in Venice 767, 78, illus. 66 Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum Giovanni Bellini, Virgin and Child 723, 79, illus. 63 Anderson, Jaynie 8, 114 Andrea da Murano 28 Andrea del Castagno 47, 60 Andreae, Johannes 16 Anonymous Descent into Limbo 523, illus. 45 Giovanni Bellini Dead on his Bier 16, illus. 7 Piet with Two Angels 71, illus. 61 The Planet Mercury 25, illus. 17 St Jerome in a Landscape 15, illus. 6 Antonello da Messina 50, 62, 63, 64, 150, 157, 168 Annunciation (Munich) 123, 126, illus. 109 Annunciation (Syracuse) 52 Crucixion 42 Piet with Angel 159, illus. 134 Piet with Angels 127 Portrait of a Man (Il Condottiero) 59, 60, illus. 52 Portrait of a Young Man 57, illus. 50 San Cassiano altarpiece 127, 1594, 166, 189, illus. 135, illus. 136, illus. 137 (reconstruction) St Jerome in his Study 159 St Sebastian 64, 127, 130, 159, illus. 112 Antonio di Cristoforo 34 Antwerp, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Hans Memling, Portrait of a Man with a Coin of the Emperor Nero 57, 59, 60, illus. 51 Apelles 102, 198, 199
Apollonius of Tyana 49 Archer, Joseph 16 Aretino, Pietro 135 Aristotle 206 Arslan, Edoardo 119 artis studiosi 9, 55, 110, 198 Augsburg 7 Augustinus, Aurelius De musica 197 Balbus, Johannes 76 Bambach, Carmen 81 Barasch, Moshe 206 Barbari, Jacopo de 1920, illus. 11, 12, 117 Barbarigo, Agostino 55, 78, 8993, 130, 185, illus. 79 Barbarigo, Marco 22, 234, 55, 56, 8990, 131, 185, illus. 16 Baroncelli, Niccol 34 Basaiti, Marco Christ in the Garden at Gethsemane 164, 166 (and Alvise Vivarini) St Ambrose altarpiece 168 Bastiani, Lazzaro 28 Baxandall, Michael 76, 81, 99 Beauharnais, Eugne 96 Bellini workshops 1821, 2431 Bellini, Gentile 1618, 19, 22, 24, 2531, illus. 22, 83, 96 Defeat of Pharaoh (lost) 28 Gattamelata altarpiece 18, 256, illus. 18 Miracle of the Reliquary of the Cross at the Ponte di San Lorenzo 38 Moses and the Israelites in the Desert (lost) 28 Portrait of a Man (Self-portrait) 17, illus. 9 Procession of the Feast of St Mark (Procession in Piazza San Marco) 38 St Anthony Abbot 28, 29 illus. 21 St Augustine 28, 29, illus. 20 St Mark Preaching in Alexandria 2021, illus. 13 Triptych with SS John the Baptist, Sebastian and Anthony Abbot 27, illus. 19 Triptychs for Santa Maria della Carit 26, 27 Votive Picture of Doge Mocenigo 9091, illus. 80 Bellini, Gentile and Giovanni St Mark Preaching in Alexandria 2021, illus. 13
248
Votive Picture of Doge Mocenigo 9091, illus. 80 Bellini, Giovanni portraits of Giovanni Bellini 1618, illus. 7, 8, 10; 3031, illus. 23, 24 Agony in the Garden 4347, illus. 38 Allegory of Vanitas or Prudentia 136, 137, illus. 116 SS Jerome, Christopher and Louis of Toulouse altarpiece 1767, 17981, 213, illus. 151 Angel (detail from San Zaccaria altarpiece) 190, illus. 161 Annunciation 52, 115, 1236, illus. 108 Anointing of Christ 15052, illus. 128 Assassination of St Peter Martyr 210, illus. 179 Baptism of Christ 136, 1726, illus. 145 Blood of the Redeemer 479, 131, 136, illus. 41 Calvary 40, 41, 63, illus. 33 Christ (fragment of a Transguration) 121, 122, 174, illus. 106 Circumcision 86, 88, 89, illus. 77 Coronation of the Virgin (altarpiece for S. Francesco, Pesaro) 50, 93; 11112, 15058, 163, 166, 192, illus. 97 (detail), illus. 127, illus. 128, illus. 129 (reconstruction), illus. 132 (detail) Crucixion 202, 203, illus. 172 Dead Christ 212, illus. 183 Dead Christ with Two Angels (Piet) 127, 128, illus. 110 Drunkenness of Noah 21213, illus. 184 Feast of the Gods 197, 200, 20713, illus. 176, illus. 178 (x-ray) Fra Teodoro of Urbino as St Dominic 212 Fragment with Signature 122, illus. 107 Frari Triptych 16971, illus. 142, illus. 143 Gattamelata altarpiece 18, 256, illus. 18 Great Flood (lost) 28 Imago pietatis 6668, 71, 967, 175, illus. 58 Infant Bacchus 210, illus. 180 Madonna degli Alberetti 127, 129, illus. 111 Madonna dellOrto (stolen) 8081, illus. 71 Madonna of the Meadow 9, 199200, illus. 170 Noahs Ark (lost) 28 Piet (Milan) 889, 96100, 115, illus. 83 Piet (Venice) 9, 200, 201, illus. 171 Piet with Angels 127 Piet with Four Angels 157, illus. 131 Piet with the Virgin and St John (Bergamo) 94, 95, illus. 81 Piet with the Virgin and St John (Berlin) 201, 204, illus. 174 Piet with the Virgin and St John, with SS Mark and Nicholas 956, illus. 82 Piet with Two Angels (detail from the Polyptych of St Vincent Ferrer ) 7071, illus. 62 Piet with Two Angels (Venice, Museo Correr) 50, 63, 6871, 93, illus. 59 Polyptych of St Vincent Ferrer 24, 28, 50, 51, 7071, 90, 13943, 162, illus. 44 (detail), illus. 62 (detail), illus. 118 Portrait of a Boy 56, 57, illus. 47 Portrait of a Man (Pietro Bembo) 59, 107, illus. 92 Portrait of a Young Man 5961, illus. 53 Portrait of a Young Senator 57, 58, illus. 49 Doge Leonardo Loredan 567, 13031, 132, illus. 113
Jrg Fugger 223, 56, 119, 150, illus. 15 Raffael Zovenzoni 989, illus. 84 Presentation in the Temple 52, 83, 867, illus. 76 Priuli Triptych 169 Resurrection 119, 120, 127, illus. 105 Resurrection of Christ 174, 175, illus. 147 Sacred Allegory 1318, illus. 114 San Giobbe altarpiece 38, 50, 127, 150, 159, 160, 1649, 190, 191, illus. 139, illus. 140, illus. 141 (reconstruction), illus. 163 (detail) San Zaccaria altarpiece 166, 176, 18791, frontispiece, illus. 158, illus. 159, illus. 160 (detail), illus. 161 (detail) St Anthony Abbot 28, 29, illus. 21 St Augustine 28, 29, illus. 20 St Francis in the Desert 110, 11315, 136, illus. 95 St Jerome in the Desert (Birmingham) 1216, illus. 2 St Jerome in the Desert (Florence) 114, 116, illus. 102 St Jerome in the Desert (lost) 1223 St Mark Healing the Cobbler Ananias (attrib.) 1089, illus. 94 St Mark Preaching in Alexandria 2021, illus. 13 St Sebastian (detail from the Polyptych of St Vincent Ferrer) 50, 51, illus. 44 St Sebastian (detail from the Triptych for S Maria della Carit) 4950, illus. 43 Stigmatization of St Francis 11112, illus. 97 Three Studies of a Lying Man 46, illus. 40 Transguration (Naples) 115, 11819, 1212, illus. 104 Transguration (Venice) 43, 63, 115, 117, 118, illus. 103 Triptych with St Jerome in the Desert (lost) 169 Triptych with SS John the Baptist, Sebastian and Anthony Abbot 27, 63, illus. 19; 4950, illus. 43 (detail) Triptychs for Santa Maria della Carit 26, 27 Virgin and Child (Amsterdam) 723, 79, illus. 63 Virgin and Child (Berlin, c. 146065) 74, 79, illus. 64 Virgin and Child (Berlin, c. 147075) 11, illus. 1 Virgin and Child (Davis Madonna) 424, 72, illus. 37 Virgin and Child (Fort Worth) 7980, illus. 70 Virgin and Child (Milan) 201, 205, illus. 175 Virgin and Child (Morelli Madonna) 81, 83, 84, 127, illus. 73 Virgin and Child (Rogers Madonna) 812, illus. 72 Virgin and Child (Verona) 72, 75, 79, illus. 65 Virgin and Child with Seraphim 83, 85, illus. 74 Virgin and Child with St John the Baptist and a Female Saint (Sacra Conversazione Giovanelli) 107, 200201, 203, illus. 173 Virgin and Child with St John the Baptist and St Elisabeth 1067, illus. 91 Virgin and Child with SS Thomas Aquinas and Catherine (destroyed) 24, 139, 1457, 162, 166, 191, illus. 119 (anonymous copy), illus. 123 (reconstruction) (and workshop) Virgin in Glory with Eight Saints 176, 178, illus. 150
Index | 249
Votive Picture of Doge Agostino Barbarigo 78, 8993, 153, 199, illus. 79 Votive Picture of Doge Mocenigo 9091, illus. 80 Woman with a Mirror 211, 212, illus. 181 Bellini, Jacopo 1830, 3136 The London Drawing Book 1316, 34, 35, 36, 43, 112; St Jerome in the Wilderness 14, illus. 3, Study for Equestrian Monument, illus. 28 The Paris Drawing Book 1316, 36, 41, 42, 43, 11213, St Jerome in the Wilderness 14, illus. 4, Seven Lions and Three Stags, illus. 5, Stigmatization of St Francis, illus. 98, Virgin and St John the Evangelist Mourn Christ Crucied illus. 34 Carrying of the Cross (lost) 28 Crucixion (lost) 28 Crucixion (Verona, destroyed) 32 Gattamelata altarpiece 18, 2526, illus. 18 Life of the Virgin Mary (lost) 28 Madonna of Humility 33, 34, illus. 26 Madonna of the Cherubim 789, illus. 69 Gentile da Fabriano (lost portrait of) 32 St Anthony Abbot 28, 29 illus. 21 St Augustine 28, 29, illus. 20 Triptych with SS John the Baptist, Sebastian and Anthony Abbot 27, illus. 19 Triptychs for Santa Maria della Carit 26, 27 Virgin and Child 31, 32, illus. 25 Bellini, Jacopo, Gentile and Giovanni Gattamelata altarpiece 18, 256, illus. 18 St Anthony Abbot 28, 29, illus. 21 St Augustine 28, 29, illus. 20 Triptych with SS John the Baptist, Sebastian and Anthony Abbot 27, illus. 19 Triptychs for Santa Maria della Carit 26, 27 Bellini, Leonardo Doge Nicol Marcello before God the Father Enthroned 22, illus. 14 Frontispiece to Promissione of Doge Cristoforo Moro 145, illus. 122 Bellini, Niccol (father of Jacopo) 32, 33 Bellini, Niccol (son of Jacopo) 19 Bellini, Niccolosia 19, 21, 22, 83 Belliniano, Vittore Giovanni Bellini 18, illus. 10 Belting, Hans 71, 97, 98, 100 Bembo, Pietro 32, 59, 104, 107108, 135, 208, illus. 92 Berenson, Bernard 17, 523, 161, 195 Bergamo, Accademia Carrara Giovanni Bellini, Piet with the Virgin and St John 94, 95, illus. 81; Virgin and Child (Morelli Madonna) 81, 83, 84, 127, illus. 73 Pisanello, Leonello dEste 34, illus. 27 Berlin, Gemldegalerie 23 Antonello da Messina, Portrait of a Young Man 57, 59, illus. 50 Giovanni Bellini, Dead Christ with Two Angels (Piet) 127, 128, illus. 110; Piet with the Virgin and St John (Berlin) 201, 204, illus. 174; Resurrection 119, 120, 127, illus. 105; Virgin and Child (c. 146065) 74, 79, illus. 64; Virgin and Child (c. 147075) 11, illus. 1 Andrea Mantegna, Presentation in the Temple 83, 86, illus. 75
Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett Giovanni Bellini (attrib.), St Mark Healing the Cobbler Ananias 1089, illus. 94 Bertelli, Carlo 150 Besanon, Muse des Beaux-Arts Giovanni Bellini, Drunkenness of Noah 21213, illus. 184 Birmingham, Barber Institute of Fine Arts Giovanni Bellini, Portrait of a Boy 56, 57, illus. 47; St Jerome in the Desert 1216, illus. 2 Blanc, Charles 147, 150, 208 Boccaccio, Giovanni 105 Bon, Pietro 159 Borghini, Vincenzio 200 Borgia, Lucrezia 208 Borgo Sansepolcro 36, 111 Boschini, Marco 123, 143, 194 Boskovits, Mikls 26, 28 Bramante, Donato 185 Brescia, Santi Nazaro e Celso Titian, The Resurrection altarpiece 1689 Bristol, City Art Gallery Anonymous, Descent into Limbo 523, illus. 45 Brown, Beverly Louise 54 Bruges 60 Brussels, Muse Royal des Beaux-Arts Rogier van der Weyden (workshop), Sforzatriptych 423, 55, illus. 36 Burckhardt, Jacob 556, 878, 1945, 208 Byzantine art David before Saul (silver plate) 170, 172, illus. 144 Hodegetria, icon 78, 79 Man of Sorrows, icon 656, 68 Virgin Nicopeia, icon 789, illus. 68 Campbell, Stephen 105 Canova, Antonio 151 Carpaccio, Vittore 198 Arrival of the Ambassadors 778, illus. 67 (detail) The Dream of St Ursula 767, 123 Presentation of Jesus in the Temple 150, 164, 166 St Ursula in Glory 173 The Story of St Ursula 159 The Vision of St Augustine 1967, illus. 168 Castiglione, Baldassare Il Cortegiano 184 Cavalcaselle, Giovanni Battista 16, 131, 139, 140, 143, 147, 150, 151, 159, 208, illus. 120 Cennini, Cennino 64, 100, 127 Christiansen, Keith 41, 52, 72, 79, 81, 143 Christus, Petrus 55 Cicero, Marcus Tullius 100 Cima da Conegliano, Giambattista 139, 180 Baptism of Christ 1724, illus. 146 Madonna of the Orange Tree 150 Ciriaco dAncona 55 Clark, Kenneth 111 Codussi, Mauro 147, 177 Colonna, Francesco Hypnerotomachia Poliphili 77, 187 Constantinople 24, 30 Contarini, Taddeo 110 Conti, Alessandro 28 Correr, Gregorio 41
Cortona 37 Costa, Lorenzo 198 A Concert 195, 196, illus. 167 Coronation of a Poetess 105, illus. 90 Crowe, Joseph Archer 16, 131, 140, 151, 159, 208 DAndrea, Jacopo Giovanni Bellini and Venetian Artists Welcome Albrecht Drer 1824, illus. 153 Dalhoff, Meinolf 119 Dandolo, Francesco 92 Decembrio, Angelo 36 Dente, Marco 39 Diletti, Giorgio 177 Dolce, Lodovico 150 Dialogo della Pittura 135, 198, 206 Donatello 95 Piet with Two Angels 68, 70, illus. 60 Dresden, Gemldegalerie Alte Meister Antonello da Messina, St Sebastian 64, 127, 130, 159, illus. 112 Dunkerton, Jill 56, 63 Drer, Albrecht 7, 18, 24, 39, 68, 183, 184, 198 Altarpiece for San Bartolomeo 160 Self-portrait 184, 185, illus. 154 Dusseldorf, Museum Kunst Palast Giovanni Bellini, Priuli triptych 169 Eisler, Colin 26, 27, 33 Emperor Franz Joseph I 183 Emperor Frederick Barbarossa 33 Emperor Frederick iii 30, 176 Erasmus of Rotterdam 198 Eyck, Jan Van (follower of) 63, 64 Marco Barbarigo 234, 55, 56, illus. 16 Eyck, Jan Van (workshop) 63, 64 Crucixion 64 Eyck, Jan Van 22, 52, 55, 60 Portrait of a Young Man (Tymotheus) 23, 56, 57, illus. 48 Facio, Bartolomeo 33, 55 Feliciano, Felice 54 Ferrara 33, 34, 55, 207 Ferrer, Vincent, of Valencia 140 Filarete (Antonio Averlino) 102 Fiocardo, Alberto 119 Fletcher, Jennifer M 2930, 33, 54 Florence 33, 34, 38, 41, 55, 60 Florence, Galleria degli Ufzi 131 Giovanni Bellini, Sacred Allegory 1318, illus. 114; St Jerome in the Desert 114, 116, illus. 102 Fra Angelico, Coronation of the Virgin 156 Gentile da Fabriano, Adoration of the Kings 33 Florence, Museum S. Marco Fra Angelico, Annalena altarpiece 156 Florence, Santa Maria Novella Masaccio, Trinity 1479, illus. 126 Fort Worth, Texas, Kimbell Art Museum Giovanni Bellini, Resurrection of Christ 174, 175, illus. 147; Virgin and Child 7980, illus. 70 Fra Angelico 144 Annalena altarpiece 156 Coronation of the Virgin 156
Frankfurt am Main, Stdelsches Kunstinstitut Giovanni Bellini, Virgin and Child with St John the Baptist and St Elisabeth 1067, illus. 91 Frart de Chantelou, Paul 213 Fry, Roger 39, 68, 96, 153 Fugger, Jrg 223, illus. 15 Gaffurius, Franchinus Pratica musicae 114, 115, 206, illus. 101 Gage, John 205 Gambello, Vittore Medal of Gentile Bellini 3031, illus. 22 Medal of Giovanni Bellini 3031, 109, illus. 23, 24 Gandini, Domenico 62, 63, 182, 183, illus. 153 Geneva, Bibliothque Publique et Universitaire Luca Pacioli, De Divina proportione187, illus. 157 Gentile da Fabriano 323, 55 Adoration of the Kings 33 Valle Romita polyptych (central panel) 192, 193, illus. 165 Gentili, Augusto 136 Ghirlandaio, Domenico 36 Ghirlandaio, Filippo 36 Giambono, Michele 70 Coronation of the Virgin in Paradise 150 Piet 11314, illus. 99 Giorgione 7, 55, 110, 135, 180, 181, 184, 185, 212, 213, illus. 155 (or Titian) Adoration of Shepherds (Allendale Nativity) 108, illus. 93 Tempest 111, 131, 133, 198, illus. 115 Venus 197 Giotto di Bondone 191, 192 Giovanni dAlemagna 21, 22 Praglia Polyptych 95 Goffen, Rona 8, 16, 76, 143, 144, 169, 170 Goldner, George 46 Gonzaga, Francesco 35 Gonzaga, Giovanni Francesco 35 Gonzaga, Ludovico 41, 52, 54 Graziani, Battista 136, 172, 176 Grimani, Domenico 111 Guariento 153 Coronation of the Virgin 192 Hinderbach, Giovanni 99 Hofmann, Werner 135 Holbein the Younger, Hans 39 Horace, Quintus Flaccus Ars poetica 100, 101, 135 Howard, Deborah 93, 123 Humfrey, Peter 8, 16, 18, 140, 145, 155, 168 Huse, Norbert 8 Isabella dEste 41, 54, 1029, 111, 134, illus. 88 Israel van Meckenem Imago pietatis 656, illus. 57 The Mass of St Gregory 656, illus. 56 Jacobello del Fiore 32, 153 (and workshop) Coronation of the Virgin 192, illus. 164 Kasl, Ronda 9, 25, 72, 81
Index | 251
Kecks, Ronald 76 Kempis, Thomas A 76 Kepler, Johannes 206 Ketham, Johannes de Fasciculus medicine 38, illus. 31 Lancilotti, Francesco 187 Landino, Cristoforo 47 Landon, Charles 188 Lanzi, Luigi 60, 131 Leonardo da Vinci 36, 38, 184, 1856, 198, 206, 213 Isabella dEste 102, 103, illus. 88 Leonello dEste 335, illus. 27 Leopold Wilhelm 161 Lippi, Filippo 144, 195 Lombardo, Pietro 122, 147, 164, 169, 187 London, British Library Leonardo Bellini, frontispiece to Promissione of Doge Cristoforo Moro 145, illus. 122 London, British Museum 1316 Jost Amman, Procession in St Marks Square in Venice 7677, illus. 66 Giovanni Bellini, Three Studies of a Lying Man 46, illus. 40 Jacopo Bellini, Study for an Equestrian Monument 35, illus. 28 London, National Gallery Anonymous, St Jerome in a Landscape 15, illus. 6 Antonello da Messina, Crucixion 42 Gentile and Giovanni Bellini, Votive Picture of Doge Mocenigo 9091, illus. 80 Giovanni Bellini, The Agony in the Garden 437, illus. 38; The Assassination of St Peter Martyr 210, illus. 179; Blood of the Redeemer 479, 131, 136, illus. 41; Circumcision 88, illus. 77; Fra Teodoro of Urbino as St Dominic 212; Madonna of the Meadow 9, 199200, illus. 170; Piet with Angels 127; Portrait of a Man (Pietro Bembo) 59, 107, illus. 92; Portrait of Doge Leonardo Loredan 567, 13031, 132, illus. 113 Lorenzo Costa, A Concert 195, 196, illus. 167 Jan van Eyck, Portrait of a Young Man (Tymotheus) 23, 56, 57, illus. 48 Jan van Eyck (follower), Marco Barbarigo 234, 55, 56, illus. 16 Masaccio, Pisa polyptych 194 Piero della Francesca, Baptism of Christ 176, 177, illus. 149 Stefano di Giovanni Sassetta, Stigmatization of St Francis 111, illus. 96 Longhi, Roberto 16 Loredan, Leonardo 567, 91, 132, illus. 113 Lorenzo da Pavia 104, 1089 Los Angeles, Getty Center Andrea Mantegna, Adoration of the Kings 86 Lotto, Lorenzo 7 Lowinsky, Edward 197 Lucco, Mauro 18, 54, 159 Lucerne 39 Luchs, Alison 130 Madrid, Museo del Prado Antonello da Messina, Piet with Angel 159, illus. 134
Albrecht Drer, Self-portrait 184, 185, illus. 154 Andrea Mantegna, Death of the Virgin 52 Titian, The Andrians (Bacchanal) 197, illus. 169 Malatesta, Annalena 156 Malatesta, Carlo 157 Mantegna (workshop) Descent into Limbo 5253, illus. 46 Mantegna, Andrea 16, 19, 21, 22, 369, 4155, 83, 102, 103, illus. 87, 104, 151 Adoration of the Kings 86 Assumption of the Virgin 143 Baptism of Christ (lost) 135 Cardinal Lodovico Trevisan 23 Death of the Virgin 52 Entombment 99, illus. 85 Ovetari chapel 41, 50, 70 Pallas expelling the Vices from the Garden of Virtue 102 Parnassus 102, 103, illus. 89 Presentation in the Temple 83, 86, illus. 75 San Zeno altarpiece 4146, 50, 1478, 169, 170, 194, 195, illus. 124, illus. 166 (detail), predella: Agony in the Garden 447, 70, illus. 39, Crucixion 43, 70, illus. 35 St Luke altarpiece 70, 95, 113 St Sebastian 4750, illus. 42 Mantua 35, 36, 41, 54, 104 Marcello, Jacopo Antonio 49 Masaccio Pisa polyptych 194 Trinity 1479, illus. 126 Medici, Lorenzo de 35 Meiss, Millard 54, 111, 112 Melozzo da Forl 37 Memling, Hans 22 Portrait of a Man with a Coin of the Emperor Nero 57, 59, 60, illus. 51 Menabuoi, Giusto da 95 Mrime, J.F.L. 62 Michiel, Giovanni 110, 111 Michiel, Marcantonio 32, 55, 83, 110, 111, 143, 159 Milan 36 Milan, Accademia di Brera 62 Milan, Biblioteca Trivulziana Giovanni Bellini, Raffael Zovenzoni 989, illus. 84 Milan, Museo Poldi Pezzoli Giovanni Bellini, Imago pietatis 668, 71, 967, 175, illus. 58 Milan, Pinacoteca di Brera Giovanni Bellini, Piet 889, 96100, 115, illus. 83; St Mark Preaching in Alexandria 2021, illus. 13; Virgin and Child 201, 205, illus. 175 Jacopo Bellini, Virgin and Child 31, 32, illus. 25 Gentile da Fabriano, Valle Romita polyptych (central panel) 192, 193, illus. 165 Andrea Mantegna, Montefeltro altarpiece 1479, 162, illus. 125; St Luke altarpiece 70 Antonio Vivarini and Giovanni dAlemagna, Praglia Polyptych 95 Mocenigo, Giovanni 9091, illus. 80 Mocetto, Girolamo Baptism of Christ 176, 177, illus. 148
Virgin and Child with Saints and Angels 39, illus. 32 Montaigne, Michel de 8 Montefeltro, Federigo da 147, 148, illus. 125 Montefeltro, Guidobaldo da 36 Morelli, Giovanni 68 Moro, Cristoforo 145, 164, illus. 122 Munich, Alte Pinakothek Antonello da Messina, Annunciation 123, 126, illus. 109 Munich, Staatliche Graphische Sammlung Israel van Meckenem, The Mass of St Gregory 656, illus. 56 Murano 19, 42 Murano, San Pietro Martire Giovanni Bellini and workshop, Virgin in Glory with Eight Saints 176, 178, illus. 150 Giovanni Bellini, Votive Picture of Doge Agostino Barbarigo 78, 8993, 153, 199, illus. 79 Murano, Santa Maria degli Angeli 92 Naples 41, 60 Naples, Museo e Gallerie Nazionali di Capodimonte Giovanni Bellini, Transguration 115, 11819, 1212, illus. 104 Bartolomeo Vivarini, Virgin and Child with Saints 144, 145, 155, illus. 121 Napoleon i 7, 139 Napoleon iii 183 New York, Frick Collection Giovanni Bellini, St Francis in the Desert 110, 11315, 136, illus. 95 Piero della Francesca, St John the Evangelist 1578, illus. 133 New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art Giovanni Bellini, Virgin and Child (Davis Madonna) 424, illus. 37; Virgin and Child (Rogers Madonna) 812, illus. 72 Byzantine art, David before Saul (silver plate) 170, 172, illus. 144 Michele Giambono, Piet 11314, illus. 99 Niccol di Pietro 32 Niccol iii dEste 33 Nicholas of Cusa (Cusanus) 8, 100 Nicoletto da Modena Apelles 102, illus. 86 Nogaroli, Leonardo 169 Nougaret, Pierre-Jean-Baptiste 62 Nuremberg 7, 24, 183, 184 Ovid, Publius Naso Metamorphoseos vulgare 190, 191, 208, illus. 162, illus. 177 Pacioli, Fra Luca 102 Summa de arithmetica 368, illus. 30 De divina proportione 38, 187, illus. 157 Padovano, Lauro 143 Padua 53, 64 Padua, Baptistery 95 Padua, Basilica di SantAntonio (il Santo) Gentile, Giovanni and Jacopo Bellini, Gattamelata altarpiece (dispersed) 18, 256, illus. 18 (reconstruction)
Donatello, Piet with Two Angels 68, 70, illus. 60 Padua, Eremitani Church, Ovetari Chapel 21, 22, 41, 50, 70 Andrea Mantegna, Assumption of the Virgin 143 Padua, Museo Civico Giovanni Bellini, Portrait of a Young Senator 57, 58, illus. 49 Palma il Vecchio, Jacopo 110 Palmezzano, Marco 37 Panofsky, Erwin 76 Paride da Ceresara 104 Paris, Bibliothque Nationale de France Anonymous, The Planet Mercury 25, illus. 17 Israel van Meckenem, Imago pietatis 656, illus. 57 Mantegna (workshop), Descent into Limbo 523, illus. 46 Girolamo Mocetto, Baptism of Christ 176, 177, illus. 148; Virgin and Child with Saints and Angels 39, illus. 32 Paris, Muse du Louvre 1316 Antonello da Messina, Portrait of a Man (Il Condottiero) 59, 60, illus. 52 Giovanni Bellini, St Anthony Abbot 28, 29 illus. 21; St Augustine 28, 29, illus. 20 Jacopo Bellini, Madonna of Humility 33, 34, illus. 26; Stigmatization of St Francis 11213, illus. 98; Virgin and St John the Evangelist Mourn Christ Crucied 41, 42, illus. 34 Lorenzo Costa, Coronation of a Poetess 105, illus. 90 Leonardo da Vinci, Isabella dEste 102, 103, illus. 88 Andrea Mantegna, Crucixion 43, 70, illus. 35; Pallas Expelling the Vices from the Garden of Virtue 102; Parnassus 102, 103, illus. 89 Paolo Veronese, The Marriage Feast at Cana (detail) 185, 186, illus. 156 Paris, Muse Napolon 188 Pasadena: Norton Simon Foundation Giovanni Bellini, Jrg Fugger, 23, 56, 119, 150, illus. 15 Pasqualino, Antonio 159 Perugia 36, 37 Perugino, Pietro 367, 104 Pesaro 42, 93 Pesaro, San Francesco 24, 111 Pesaro, San Giovanni Battista 153, 155 Pesaro, Museo Civico Giovanni Bellini, The Coronation of the Virgin (altarpiece for S. Francesco, Pesaro) 50, 93, 151, 158, 163, 166, 192, illus. 127, illus. 132; Stigmatization of St Francis (detail of the altar piece for S. Francesco, Pesaro) 11112, illus. 97 Pesaro family 169 Pesaro, Benedetto 114 Petrarch, Francesco 7, 56, 99, 200 Phidias 36 Piero della Francesca 36, 81 Baptism of Christ 176, 177, illus. 149 Montefeltro altarpiece 1479, 162, illus. 125 St John the Evangelist 1578, illus. 133 Pietro de Fossis (Pietro Fossa) 912, 185
Index | 253
Pino, Paolo Dialogo di pittura 100101, 206 Pirckheimer, Willibald 183, 184 Pisanello 32, 34, 41, 55 Leonello dEste 34, illus. 27 Pizzolo, Niccol 21 Pliny Natural History 198, 2034, 212 Poliziano, Angelo 35, 105, 195 Pomponius Gauricus 187 Pope Alexander iii 33 Pope Clement viii 207 Pope Eugenius iv 34 Pope Gregory the Great 656, illus. 56 Pope Martin v 33 Pope Paul ii (Pietro Barbo) 38, 56 Pope Pius ii 140 Pope Sixtus iv 56 Portinari, Tommaso 22 Poussin, Nicolas 24, 213 Prato, Galleria di Palazzo Alberti Giovanni Bellini, Crucixion 202, 203, illus. 172 Praxiteles 123 Previtali, Andrea 7 Priuli, Peter 169 Propertius, Sextus 99 Pseudo-Bonaventura 88 Pythagoras 206 Quintilian, Marcus Fabius 100 Raimondi, Marcantonio 39 Raphael 39 Parnassus 190 Ravenna, Mausoleum of Theoderic 119 Ridol, Carlo Le Maraviglia dellArte 17, 28, 29, 467, 60, 62, 102, 103, 143, 185, 194, illus. 87, illus. 155 Rimini, Pinacoteca Comunale Giovanni Bellini, Piet with Four Angels 157, illus. 131 Ringbom, Sixten 88 Rinversi, Anna 18 Rizzo, Andrea 147 Robertson, Giles 8, 16, 18, 54, 136, 143 Rocco da Vicenza 172 Rome 38 Rome, Pinacoteca Vaticana 151 Giovanni Bellini, Anointing of Christ 15052, illus. 128 Rome, Santa Croce in Gerusalemme Byzantine art, Man of Sorrows Icon 656, 68 Rome, Vatican Raphael, Parnassus 190 Rosand, David 181 Ruskin, John 208 Lectures on Sculpture 1889 Sampieri, Luigi 96 San Michele in Isola 169 Sansovino, Francesco 122, 123, 138, 140, 143, 159, 160, 180 Sanudo, Marco 36 Sanudo, Marino 16, 31, 159
Sassetta, Stefano di Giovanni Stigmatization of St Francis 111, illus. 96 Sebastiano del Piombo 176, 177, 180, 181 Selvatico, Pietro 62, 183 Sforza, Alessandro 42, 55, 93, 155 Sforza, Galeazzo Maria 159 Sforza, Ludovico Maria 36, 184, 187 Signorelli, Luca 37, 81 Sommariva, Giorgio 28 Stockholm, Nationalmuseum Giovanni Bellini, Dead Christ 212, illus. 183 Sultan Mehmet II 24, 30 Syracuse, Galleria Regionale Antonello da Messina, Annunciation 52 Tasso, Torquato 194 Tempestini, Anchise 8, 83 Teniers ii , David 127 Theatrum pictorium 62, 161, 211, illus. 136, illus. 182 Tinctoris, Johannes 194 Titian 7, 81, 176, 184, 198, 20910 (or Giorgione) Adoration of Shepherds (Allendale Nativity) 108, illus. 93 The Andrians (Bacchanal) 197, illus. 169 Annunciation (Treviso) 123, 126 Annunciation (Venice, San Salvatore) 126 Annunciation (Venice, Scuola Grande di San Rocco) 126 Assumption of the Virgin 149, 168 Madonna of the Pesaro Family 93, 114, 115, 181, illus. 100 Martyrdom of St Peter Martyr (destroyed) 139 Resurrection altarpiece 1689 St Mark Enthroned with Saints 50, 144, 18081, illus. 152 Tours, Muse des Beaux-Arts Andrea Mantegna, Agony in the Garden 447, 70, illus. 39 Treviso, Cathedral Titian, Annunciation 123, 126 Varchi, Benedetto 135 Vasari, Giorgio 1617, 18, 20, 289, 35, 36, 60, 135, 184, 206, 2078, 212, 213 illus. 8, 54 Vendramin, Gabriel 111 Veneziano, Domenico 144 Veneziano, Paolo 95, 191 Virgin and Child with Saints 923 Venice, Accademia di Belle Arti 62 Venice, Archivio di Stato 9 Venice, Ca dOro Jan van Eyck (workshop), Crucixion 64 Vittore Gambello, Medal of Gentile Bellini, 3031, illus. 22; Medal of Giovanni Bellini, 3031, 109, illus. 23, 24 Venice, San Giovanni Battista in Bragora Giambattista Cima da Conegliano, Baptism of Christ 1724, illus. 146 Venice, San Giovanni Crisostomo Giovanni Bellini, altarpiece with SS Jerome, Christopher and Louis of Toulouse 1767, 17981, 213, illus. 151 Venice, San Marco Basilica 55, 138
Byzantine art, Icon of the Virgin Nicopeia 789, illus. 68 Venice, San Michele in Isola 119 Venice, San Salvatore Titian, Annunciation 126 Venice, San Trovaso 92 Venice, San Zaccaria, 90, 160, frontispiece Giovanni Bellini, San Zaccaria altarpiece 166, 176, 18791, frontispiece, illus. 158, illus. 159, illus. 160 (detail), illus. 161 (detail) Venice, Santa Maria dei Miracoli 52, 122, 169 Venice, Santa Maria del Rosario Anonymous, Piet with Two Angels 71, illus. 61 Venice, Santa Maria della Carit 26, 55 Venice, Santa Maria della Salute Titian, St Mark Enthroned with Saints 50, 144, 18081, illus. 152 Venice, Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari 92 Giovanni Bellini, The Frari Triptych 16971, illus. 142, illus. 143 Titian, Assumption of the Virgin 149, 168; Madonna of the Pesaro Family 93, 114, 115, 181, illus. 100 Paolo Veneziano, Virgin and Child with Saints 923 Alvise Vivarini and Marco Basaiti, St Ambrose altarpiece 168 Venice, Santi Giovanni e Paolo 21, 31, 139, 140, 160, illus. 117 Giovanni Bellini, Piet with Two Angels (detail from the Polyptych) 7171, illus. 62; Polyptych of St Vincent Ferrer 24, 28, 90, 13943, 162, illus. 118; St Sebastian (detail from the Polyp tych) 50, 51, illus. 44; Virgin and Child with SS Thomas Aquinas and Catherine (destroyed) 24, 139, 146, 166, illus. 119 (anonymous copy), illus. 123 (reconstruction) Niccol Cassana, copy of Titians altarpiece Martyrdom of St Peter Martyr 139 Venice, Doges Palace 19, 22, 24, 31, 33, 78, 92, 104, 108, 153 Giovanni Bellini, Piet with the Virgin and St John, with SS Mark and Nicholas 956, illus. 82 Guariento, Coronation of the Virgin 192 Venice, Fondaco dei Tedeschi 22, 24 Venice, Galleria dellAccademia Marco Basaiti, Christ in the Garden at Gethsemane 164, 166 Gentile Bellini, Miracle of the Reliquary of the Cross at the Ponte di San Lorenzo 38; Procession of the Feast of St Mark (Procession in Piazza San Marco) 38 Giovanni Bellini, Allegory of Vanitas or Prudentia 136, 137, illus. 116; Annunciation 52, 115, 1236, illus. 108; Christ (fragment of a Transguration) 121, 122, 174, illus. 106; Fragment with Signature 122, illus. 107; Madonna degli Alberetti 127, 129, illus. 111; Piet 9, 200, 201, illus. 171; San Giobbe altarpiece 38, 50, 127, 150, 159, 160, 165, 166, 190, 191, illus. 139, illus. 140, illus. 163 (detail); Triptych with SS John the Baptist, Sebastian and Anthony Abbot 27, 63, 4950, illus. 19, 43 (detail); Triptychs for
Santa Maria della Carit 26, 27; Virgin and Child with Seraphim 83, 85, illus. 74; Virgin and Child with St John the Baptist and a Female Saint (Sacra Conversazione Giovanelli) 107, 200201, 203, illus. 173 Jacopo Bellini, Madonna of the Cherubim 789, illus. 69 Vittore Carpaccio, Arrival of the Ambassadors 778, illus. 67 (detail); The Dream of St Ursula 767; Presentation of Jesus in the Temple 150, 164, 166; St Ursula in Glory 173; The Story of St Ursula 159 Cima da Conegliano, Madonna of the Orange Tree 150 Michele Giambono, Coronation of the Virgin in Paradise 150 Giorgione, Tempest 111, 131, 133, 198, illus. 115 Jacobello del Fiore and workshop, Coronation of the Virgin 192, illus. 164 Alvise Vivarini, Virgin and Child with Saints (Treviso altarpiece) 163, 164, illus. 138 Venice, Museo Civico Correr 9 Antonello da Messina, Piet with Angels 127 Giovanni Bellini, Calvary 40, 63, illus. 33; Piet with Two Angels 50, 63, 6871, 93, illus. 59; Transguration 43, 63, 115, 117, 118, illus. 103 Leonardo Bellini, Doge Nicol Marcello before God the Father Enthroned 22, illus. 14 Venice, Pinacoteca Querini Stampalia Giovanni Bellini, Presentation in the Temple 52, 83, 867, illus. 76 Venice, Palazzo Grassi 54 Venice, parishes San Geminiano 19 San Lio 18, 19, 20, 21 Santa Maria Formosa 21, 78 Piazza San Marco 19 Rialto Bridge 19 Venice, Scuole Scuola di San Giobbe 164 Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni 16 Vittore Carpaccio, The Vision of St Augustine 1967, illus. 168 Scuola di San Vincenzo Ferrer 139 Scuola di Santa Caterina 139 Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista 27, 28, 30 Scuola Grande di San Marco 16, 19, 20, 28, 30, 54, 108 Scuola Grande di San Rocco Titian, Annunciation 126 Scuola Grande di Santa Maria della Carit 26 Verona, Cathedral 32 Giovanni Bellini, Virgin and Child 72, 75, 79, illus. 65 Verona, San Zeno Mantegnas altarpiece 416, 1478, 169, 170, 194, 195, illus. 124, illus. 166 (detail) Veronese, Paolo The Marriage Feast at Cana (detail) 185, 186, illus. 156 Vianello, Michele 104, 105 Vicenza 119 S. Corona
Index | 255
Giovanni Bellini, Baptism of Christ 136, 1726, illus. 145 Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum Antonello da Messina, San Cassiano altarpiece (fragments) 127, 15964, 166, 189, illus. 135, illus. 136, illus. 137 (reconstruction) Giovanni Bellini, Woman with a Mirror 211, 212, illus. 181 Andrea Mantegna, St Sebastian 479, illus. 42 Vivarini, Alvise 18, 22, 92, 143, 161, 172 (and Marco Basaiti) St Ambrose altarpiece 168 Virgin and Child with Saints (Treviso altarpiece) 163, 164, illus. 138 Vivarini, Antonio 21, 22 Praglia Polyptych 95 Vivarini, Bartolomeo 21, 22, 28, 143 Virgin and Child with Saints 144, 145, 155, illus. 121 Voragine, Jacopo da Legenda aurea 13, 1516, 49, 88 Mariale 123 Wagner, Richard 195 Walker, John 209 Washington, dc, National Gallery of Art Leon Battista Alberti, Self-portrait 35, illus. 29 Giovanni Bellini, Feast of the Gods 197, 200, 20713, illus. 176; Infant Bacchus 210, illus. 180; Portrait of a Young Man 5961, illus. 53 Giorgione or Titian, Adoration of Shepherds (Allendale Nativity) 108, illus. 93 Weyden, Rogier van der (workshop) Sforza-triptych 423, 55 illus. 36 Wilde, Johannes 161 Willaert, Adrian 197 Wilson, Carolyn C 18 Wind, Edgar 208 Wittkower, Rudolf 185 Zanetti, Anton Maria 7 Zanotto, Francesco 139 Zarlino, Gioseffo 213 Zona, Antonio 62, 183 Giovanni Bellini Disguised as a Venetian Senator, in the Studio of Antonello da Messina 63, illus. 55 Zoppo, Marco Pesaro altarpiece 153, 155, 156, illus. 130 (reconstruction) Zorzi, Marin 119 Zovenzoni, Raffael 989, illus. 84

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Giovanni Bellini

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Giovanni Bellini

Training 13 Orientations 41 Transformations 65 Invention 95 Composition 139 Harmony 183

Jacopo Bellinis Strategy

The Bellini Workshops

18 A reconstruction of the Gattamelata altarpiece in the Basilica di SantAntonio, Padua.

33 Giovanni Bellini, Calvary, c. 1460, wood. Museo Civico Correr, Venice.

35 Andrea Mantegna, Crucixion, 1459, wood. Muse du Louvre, Paris.

42 Andrea Mantegna, St Sebastian, about 1460, wood. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

50 Antonello da Messina, Portrait of a Young Man, c. 1475/76, wood. Gemldegalerie, Berlin.

75 Andrea Mantegna, Presentation in the Temple, c. 1454/55, wood. Gemldegalerie, Berlin.

77 Giovanni Bellini, Circumcision, about 1500, canvas. National Gallery, London.

The Protection of Venice

83 Giovanni Bellini, Piet, c. 146570, wood. Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan.

84 Giovanni Bellini, Raffael Zovenzoni, c. 1474, parchment. Biblioteca Trivulziana, Milan.

100 | Giovanni Bellini

86 Nicoletto da Modena, Apelles, c. 1507, engraving. Kunstmuseum Basel (Kupferstichkabinett).

102 | Giovanni Bellini

89 Andrea Mantegna, Parnassus, c. 1497, canvas. Muse du Louvre, Paris.

106 | Giovanni Bellini

Song and Light

110 | Giovanni Bellini

97 Giovanni Bellini, Stigmatization of St Francis, 147075, wood. Museo Civico, Pesaro.

112 | Giovanni Bellini

114 | Giovanni Bellini

118 | Giovanni Bellini

opposite: 105 Giovanni Bellini, Resurrection, 147580, wood. Gemldegalerie, Berlin.

Incarnation: The Transgured Body

109 Antonello da Messina, Annunciation, 1473/74, wood. Alte Pinakothek, Munich.

136 | Giovanni Bellini

138 | Giovanni Bellini

140 | Giovanni Bellini

The Altarpiece for San Francesco in Pesaro

130 A reconstruction of Marco Zoppos 1471 Pesaro altarpiece.

opposite: 129 A reconstruction of Giovanni Bellini, Coronation of the Virgin altarpiece.

158 | Giovanni Bellini

The Antonello Problem

162 | Giovanni Bellini

170 | Giovanni Bellini

Symmetry and Asymmetry

172 | Giovanni Bellini

186 | Giovanni Bellini

The Music of Angels

188 | Giovanni Bellini

190 | Giovanni Bellini

The Involvement of the Beholder

196 | Giovanni Bellini

171 Giovanni Bellini, Piet, 15005, wood. Galleria dellAccademia, Venice.

204 | Giovanni Bellini

208 | Giovanni Bellini

178 An x-ray of Giovanni Bellini, Feast of the Gods (illus 176).

210 | Giovanni Bellini

183 Giovanni Bellini, Dead Christ, 151015, wood. Nationalmuseum, Stockholm.

212 | Giovanni Bellini

214 | Giovanni Bellini

1441, 26 August 1441

1452, 19 June 1453, 25 February

Ridol 1914, Bd. 1, p. 64.

Goffen 1989, p. 259.

Zanetti 1771, p. 49.

Paoletti 1894, pp. 1213; Goffen 1989, p. 263, doc. 10.

1474 1475, 5 June

Meneghin 1962, pp. 32023; Tempestini 1992, p. 112, Nr. 36.

Dalhoff 1997, pp. 35, 1913.

216 | Giovanni Bellini