_Giovanni Bellini_[188] (Venetian: 1426-1516). _See 189._
"Peter Martyr was general of the Dominicans in 1252, a most
powerful person in the Holy Inquisition, and a violent
persecutor for what he deemed the true faith, which made him
many inveterate enemies. There was one family in particular
which he had treated with excessive cruelty, and their
relations, who were in the army, were so enraged by Peter's
barbarity that they resolved to revenge themselves.... Having
been informed that he was to make a visit to a distant province
in pursuit of some wretched heretics, who had been denounced to
the inquisition, they lay in wait for him in a wood, through
which they knew he must pass, in company with one person, a
friar of his convent; here they attacked him, cleft his skull
with a sabre, and left him dead on the spot" (Mrs. Jameson;
_Handbook to the Public Galleries_, 1842, i. 70).
This picture, one of the painter's latest works, is interesting, first,
for its skill in landscape. It is a true piece of local scenery that
Bellini paints,--"all Italian in masses of intricate wood and foliage,
in plain, mountain, and buildings, and glowing, not under direct
sunshine, but with the soft suffusion of southern light" (_Layard_,
i. 312). It is, says Ruskin, one of the six most beautiful landscapes
in the earlier mediæval art, of the "purist" school, "being wholly
felicitous and enjoyable." Every leaf is painted with loving care, and
Bellini treats the incident in the foreground as "entirely cheerful
and pleasing; it does not disturb or even surprise him, much less
displease in the slightest degree." "You see in a moment the main
characteristic of the school,--that it mattered not in the least to
John, and that he doesn't expect it to matter to you, whether people
are martyred or not, so long as one can make a pretty grey of their
gown, and a nice white of their sleeves, and infinite decoration
of forest leaves behind, and a divine picture at last out of all.
Everything in the world was done and made only that it might be rightly
painted--that is the true master's creed" (_Verona and its Rivers_, §
27, and _Lectures on Landscape_, pp. 22, 65, 73).[189] Notice, further,
Bellini's compliance, as far as the subject admitted, with one of the
conditions of the greatest art, "serenity in state or action." "You
are to be interested in the living creatures; not in what is happening
to them.... It is not possible, of course, always literally to observe
this condition, that there shall be quiet action or none; but Bellini's
treatment of violence in action you may see exemplified in a notable
way in his "St. Peter Martyr." The soldier is indeed striking the sword
down into his breast; but in the face of the Saint is only resignation
and faintness of death, not pain--that of the executioner is impassive;
and while a painter of the later schools would have covered breast and
sword with blood, Bellini allows no stain of it; but pleases himself
with most elaborate and exquisite painting of a soft crimson feather
in the executioner's helmet" (_Relation between Michael Angelo and
Tintoret_, p. 16).