_Giovanni Bellini_ (Venetian: 1426-1516).
Giovanni Bellini (often shortened into Giambellini)--the
greatest of the fifteenth-century artists--"the mighty
Venetian master who alone of all the painters of Italy
united purity of religious aim with perfection of artistical
power"[106]--belonged, it is interesting to note, to a
thoroughly artistic family. His father, Jacopo, drawings by
whom may be seen in the British Museum, was an artist of
repute; his elder brother Gentile (see 1213) was another. The
two brothers studied together in their father's school at
Padua, and there they formed a friendship with Mantegna, who
afterwards married their sister. Two pictures in our Gallery
(Bellini's, 726; and Mantegna's, 1417) recall the days of
their early association. By blood every inch an artist, so was
Giovanni also in character. His life was one long devotion
to his art. He lived to be ninety, and showed to the end
increasing knowledge and power. Albert Dürer wrote in 1506,
when the grand old man was eighty, that "though very old he was
still the best painter in Venice."[107]
This famous portrait must have been painted about the same
time, for Leonardo Loredano only became Doge in 1501. About
1460, Bellini had settled in Venice, where he soon rivalled and
eclipsed the established school of the Vivarini. In 1479, when
his elder brother Gentile departed to Constantinople, Giovanni
was appointed in his place to carry on the series of pictures
for the Hall of the Great Council in the Ducal Palace. These
works were destroyed by fire in 1577. The documents referring
to them show the terms on which he worked. He was engaged at
a fixed rate of salary to work "constantly and daily, so that
said pictures may be completed as expeditiously as possible,
with three assistants, also paid by the State, to render speedy
and diligent assistance." One of these assistants was Carpaccio
(see 750). Three years later he was appointed State painter to
the Republic. His fame is sounded by Ariosto, who in "Orlando
Furioso" ranks him with Leonardo. It may be gathered also
from the number of great painters who attended his studio,
including Giorgione and Titian. He was overwhelmed with work,
and doubtless employed assistants to complete commissions from
his design. Hence the confusion that exists in the matter of
attribution among pictures of this school (see under 599).
With Titian he was on terms of warm friendship, and his last
work (a companion piece to Titian's "Bacchus and Ariadne," now
in the Duke of Northumberland's Gallery at Alnwick) was left
for Titian to finish. Bellini was buried in the Church of SS.
Giovanni e Paolo, in the same tomb where Gentile had lain since
1507.
Giovanni Bellini's long life covers the end of one period
and the beginning of another in the history of Italian art.
In point of technique this is so: his earliest works are in
tempera, his later ones in oil--the use of which medium he
learnt perhaps from Antonello da Messina. It is so also in
motive. "The iridescence of dying statesmanship in Italy, her
magnificence of hollow piety, were represented in the arts of
Venice and Florence by two mighty men on either side--Titian
and Tintoret, Michael Angelo and Raphael. Of the calm and
brave statesmanship, the modest and faithful religion,
which had been her strength, I am content to name one chief
representative artist at Venice, John Bellini." The years of
change were 1480-1520 (roughly speaking those of Raphael's
life). "John Bellini precedes the change, meets and resists it
victoriously till his death. Nothing of flaw or failure is ever
to be discerned in him" (_Relation between Michael Angelo and
Tintoret_, pp. 11-13). His position is thus unique: he was the
meeting-point of two ways: as great in artistic power as the
masters who came after, as pure in religious aim as those who
went before. An interesting episode is recorded which marks
the transition and Bellini's meeting of it. Isabella Gonzaga,
the Duchess of Mantua, wrote in 1501 to her agent in Venice to
get Bellini to do for her a picture of which the subject was
to be profane, to suit Mantegna's allegories. Bellini suggests
that he cannot do such a subject in a way to compare with
Mantegna; with such a subject "he cannot do anything to look
well." Isabella thereupon is content to put up with a religious
subject, but Bellini on his side agrees to add "a distant
landscape and other fantasies" (_qualche luntani et altra
fantaxia_). Bellini, however, was by no means stagnant in his
art, or in his outlook. At the end of his life, he undertook,
as we have seen, a Bacchanal, and in his middle period he
painted the beautiful little allegories now in the Academy at
Venice. "Bellini," says Morelli, "was ever making progress. He
knew how to adapt himself to his subject, and was, as occasion
required, grand and serious, graceful and attractive, naïve and
simple." It is in Venice that Bellini can be best studied; but
our National Gallery is fortunate in having more of his works
than can be seen in any other collection north of the Alps. And
how varied are his powers! The same hand has given us subjects
of intense religious conviction, like "The Agony in the Garden"
(726) and "The Blood of the Redeemer" (1233); "sunny pictures
of devotional sentiment" (280 and 599); the noble portrait here
before us; and delicate landscape work, like the "Peter Martyr"
(812). In his earliest pictures he devoted himself to the
profoundest sentiments of Christianity--perhaps, as has been
suggested, under the influence of S. Bernardino, then preaching
at Padua (Roger Fry's _Giovanni Bellini_, p. 22). Afterwards
the "note" in Bellini's work is rather "genial serenity." The
expression of his Madonnas is often tender and solemn, but
he never lets it pass into the region of the ecstatic. All
is bright and peaceful and sunny. He belongs to what Ruskin
calls "the age of the masters," in which the main object is
"pictorial perfectness and deliciousness."
A magnificent portrait of one of the greatest men of the Venetian
Republic. Leonardo, the 67th Doge, held office from 1501 to 1521. He
belonged to one of the most ancient and noble families in the State,
and Venice, under his rule, was one of the Great Powers of Europe--as
the league of Cambrai formed against him sufficiently shows. There
is all the quiet dignity of a born ruler in his face--"fearless,
faithful, patient, impenetrable, implacable--every word a fate"
(_Modern Painters_, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. ix. § 1). In his capacity of
State painter to the Republic it was Bellini's duty to execute the
official portraits of the Doges. During his long life he saw no fewer
than eleven Doges, and was State painter during the reigns of four.
This, however, is the only portrait of a Doge by Bellini which has been
preserved (Richter's _Lectures on the National Gallery_, p. 42). It is
remarkable alike for strong characterisation, simplicity of conception,
and brilliancy of colouring.