| Bellini Family Bellini There were three painters in this Venetian family: Jacopo, and hissons Gentile and Giovanni. Jacopo (c.1400-1470/71) was a pupil of Gentile da Fabriano, with whomhe was working in Florence in 1423, when he was prosecuted as a result of anaffray with a youth who threw stones into the workshop yard. Only fourpictures are known to be certainly his, all rather stiff and hieratic in pose andtreatment; yet in 1441 he defeated Pisanello in a competition portrait of Lionello d'Este of Ferrara, but this portrait cannot be identified with certainty.His major surviving works are his two sketchbooks (BM and Louvre), whichwere the source of many ideas and designs used by his sons and by his son-in-law, Mantegna. The four signed works are in Lovere, near Bergamo, Milan (Brera),Venice (Accad.) and Verona. Other, attributed, pictures are in Florence (Uffizi),Milan (Poldi-Pezzoli), Padua and Verona. Gentile (c.1429/30-1507) probably worked in the family shop until his fatherdied (an altarpiece said to have been signed by all three and dated 1460 isrecorded), but he had achieved sufficient fame to be ennobled by the Emperor in 1469, though nothing is known of the work that procured him this honour. In 1479—81 he was in Constantinople, painting portraits for, and of, the Sultan, Mahomet II, whose portrait is in London (NG). He worked on the cycle ofhistory pictures in the Doge's Palace in 1474, and again on his return fromTurkey, but all were burnt in the fire of 1577. His series depicting the processionsand ceremonies of two of the major charitable foundations in Venice (theScuola Grande di S. Marco was one) became the standard type for this kind ofpicture, full of portraits and views of the city, for instance, the Miracle of theReliquary of the Cross, at the bridge of S. Lorenzo (1500: Venice Accad.) paintedfor the Scuola di S. Giovanni Evangelista - another great foundation. His large St Mark Preaching at Alexandria (Milan, Brera) was unfinished at his death, andhe bequeathed one of his father's sketchbooks to his brother on condition thathe finished it. He also bequeathed to two of his pupils his sketchbook of Romandrawings (now lost), which may be evidence for his having visited Rome.There are works in Berlin, Birmingham, Boston (Gardner), Budapest, Chicago,Istanbul (Univ.), London (NG), Milan (Brera), New York (Frick Coll.), SanFrancisco and Venice (Accad., Correr, S. Marco Mus.). Giovanni (c.1430-1516) is usually thought to be the younger son, but hisbirthdate is pure conjecture. There is some evidence that he was independentby 1459, but he can be presumed to have been connected with the familyworkshop until Jacopo's death. His early work derives mainly from his father's,but, like Gentile, he was strongly influenced by Mantegna, who married theirsister Nicolosia in 1454. The chronology of his works is difficult because hebecame the main teacher of his generation, the main source of new ideas andforms, with a large shop of pupils and assistants, so that 'OP. IOH. BELL.'is not only a signature but a trademark, the sign of the workshop rather thanthe artist. His pupils included Giorgione, Titian, Raima Vecchio and Sebastiano del Piombo, and he influenced directly or indirectly all the painters of his ownand the next generation, even when they were the pupils of his brother or the Vivarini; Cima, Catena, Basaiti, Montagna and Carpaccio are examples ofthis. Durer wrote home from Venice during his visit in 1505—7 that he was'very old, but still the best in painting'. He became the greatest of the Venetian Madonnieri, or Madonna painters, evolving a succession of designs and types ofunparalleled imaginativeness and versatility for official commissions, such as thevotive offerings of the Doges, large altarpieces and small devotional works, inwhich, despite their private purpose, he never departed from the hieraticcharacter of the Madonna as the Theotokos (mother of God). He was influencedby Antonello, and from the latter's St Cassiano altarpiece and one of his own,painted for SS. Giovanni e Paolo (and burnt in 1867), stem the great sacreconversazioni of St Giobbe (c.1483/5: now in the Accad.) and St Zaccaria (1505: still in S. Zaccaria) and the later developments of the form, notably those by Giorgione and Titian. His compositions of the Pieta, particularly those withthe dead Christ supported in the tomb by angels or by the Virgin and St John, derive ultimately from Donatello and Jacopo Bellini, and were intended moreas private devotional works than for churches. He frequently included landscapeas a background, and in the Agony in the Garden, painted in emulation of Mantegna's similar work (both in London, NG), he combines observation ofnature with rare poetic feeling, but naturalistic details are never allowed tooverwhelm the figures. In 1479, when Gentile went to Turkey, he took overthe work in the Doge's Palace and eventually became chief painter to the State,a position he held until his death, in spite of Titian's attempts'to displace him.The loss of these history paintings, together with those by Pisanello and Gentile da Fabriano, in the fire of 1577 means that the early style of Venetian historypainting can only be guessed at. His official duties included painting portraitsof the Doges - the Doge Loredano (c.1501: London, NG) is the finest of these- and his portraits, many of which adaptt tttthe Flemish type of the three-quarterview against a landscape background, are simple, sensitive and compelling.His last works break new ground. His St Jerome (1513: Venice, S. GiovanniCrisostomo), with its spatial device of the saint seated in a landscape and seenthrough an arch, before which the other life-size figures stand, is an entirelynew invention. He had painted Christian and classical allegories before, butnever a mythology on such a scale as the Feast of the Gods, painted in 1514 forthe Duke of Ferrara (now in Washington, N G), which depicts a rustic Olympianpicnic in a mildly erotic pastoral vein. Titian later repainted the landscapebackground to make it suit his own mythologies painted for the same room.The Lady at Her Toilet (1515: Vienna), a semi-mythological subject whichpossibly started as a portrait, combines the composition used for his late Madonna pictures with genre detail and a nude figure. These three works show the old Bellini coming to terms with the new century. Technically, he learned muchfrom Antonello; stylistically, he digested Mantegna, yet survived as an independent personality; iconographically, he was the most theologically learned andinventive painter North Italy produced. There are works in the Royal Coll.,Baltimore (Walters), Bergamo, Berlin, Besancon (a very late Noah), Birmingham(Mus., Barber Inst.), Boston (Gardner), Bristol, Cambridge Mass. (Fogg),Detroit, Dresden, Florence (Uffizi), Glasgow (Mus., Burrell), Houston Texas,Kansas City, London (NG, Courtauld Inst.), Los Angeles, Milan (Brera, Poldi-Pezzoli), Naples, New Orleans, New York (Brooklyn, Frick Coll., Met. Mus.,Morgan Library), Ottawa, Oxford, Padua, Paris (Louvre, Jacquemart-Andre),Pasadena Cal. (Simon), Pesaro, Philadelphia (Johnson), Rimini, Rome(Borghese, Capitoline Mus.), San Diego Cal., San Marino Cal. (Huntington),Stuttgart, Toledo Ohio, the Vatican, Venice (Accad., Correr, Ca d'Oro, Doge'sPalace, Querini-Stampalia, churches), Verona, Vienna and Washington (NG). Source: The Penguin Dictionary of Art and Artists (Penguin Reference Books) BOOK Affiliate/Advertising policy. Leonardo Book Must Read: |
