Nearly all the Venetian pictures were bought in 1654 by Cardinal
Leopoldo de' Medici from Messer Paolo del Sera, a Florentine merchant in
Venice. More truly representative of the Renaissance, its humanism and
splendour, than any other school of painting in Italy, the earlier works
of that great Venetian School are not seen to advantage in the Uffizi.
There is nothing here by Jacopo Bellini, nothing by his son Gentile; nor
any work from the hands of Antonio or Bartolommeo Vivarini, or Antonello
da Messina, who apparently introduced oil painting into Venice. It is
not till we come to Giovanni Bellini, born about 1430, that we find a
work of the Quattrocento in the delightful but puzzling Allegory (631),
where Our Lady sits enthroned beside a lagoon in a strange and lovely
landscape of rocks and trees; while beside her kneels St. Catherine of
Alexandria, and again, St. Catherine of Siena; farther away stand St.
Peter and St. Paul, while below children are playing with fruit and a
curious tree; on the other side are Job and St. Sebastian, while in the
background you may see the story of the life of St. Anthony. This
mysterious picture certainly stands alone in Giovanni Bellini's work,
and suggests the thoughts at least of Mantegna; and while it is true
that Giovanni had worked at Padua, one is surprised to come upon its
influence so late in his life.[125]
The influence of the Bellini is to be found in almost all the great
painters of Venice in the Cinquecento. We come upon it first in the work
of Vittore Carpaccio, of which there is but a fragment here, the
delicate little picture, the Finding of the True Cross (583 _bis_);
while in two works attributed to Bissolo and Cima da Conegliano (584,
564 _bis_), we see too the influence of Bellini.
If Carpaccio was the greatest pupil of Gentile Bellini, in Giorgione we
see the first of those marvellous painters who were taught their art by
his brother Giovanni. Giorgio Barbarelli, called Giorgione, was born at
Castelfranco, a little town in the hills not far from Padua, in 1478.
Three of his rare works--there are scarcely more than some fifteen in
the world--are here in the Uffizi, the two very early pictures--but all
his works were early, for he died in 1510--the Trial of Moses (621), and
the Judgment of Solomon (630), and the beautiful portrait of a Knight of
Malta (622). Giorgione was the dayspring of the Renaissance in Venice.
His work, as Pater foretold of it, has attained to the condition of
Music. And though in the portrait of the Knight of Malta, for instance,
we have to admit much repainting, something of the original glamour
still lingers, so that in looking on it even to-day we may see to how
great a place the painters of Venice had been called. It is in the work
of his fellow-pupil and Titian that the great Venetian treasure of the
Uffizi lies. In the Madonna with St. Anthony (633) we have a picture in
Giorgione's early manner, and a later, but still early work, in the
Flora (626). The two portraits, Eleonora Gonzaga and Francesco Maria
della Rovere, Duke and Duchess of Urbino, were painted in Venice in 1536
or 1538, and came into the Uffizi with the other Urbino pictures, with
the Venus of Urbino (1117), for instance, where Titian has painted the
Bella of the Pitti Palace naked on a couch, a little dog at her feet,
and in her hand a chaplet of roses. In the background two maids search
for a gown in a great chest under a loggia. This picture, first
mentioned in a letter of 1538, was painted for Duke Guidobaldo della
Rovere. The Venus with the little Amor (1108) appears to have been
painted about 1545. It is not from Urbino. Dr. Gronau thinks it may be
identical with the Venus "shortly described in a book of the Guardaroba
of Grand Duke Cosimo II in the year 1621." The Portrait of Bishop
Beccadelli (1116) was painted in July 1552, and is signed by Titian. It
was bought, with the other Venetian pictures, by Cardinal Leopoldo de'
Medici in 1654. I say nothing of Titian here: preferring to speak of him
in dealing with his more various and numerous work in the Pitti Palace.
Other pupils of Giovanni Bellini, beside Giorgione and Titian, are found
here--Palma Vecchio for instance--in a poor picture of Judith with the
Head of Holofernes (619); Rondinelli in a Portrait of a Man (354) and a
Madonna and two Saints (384); Sebastiano del Piombo in the Farnesina
(1123), long given to Raphael, and the Death of Adonis (592). All these
men, whose work is so full of splendour, came under the influence of
Giorgione after passing through Bellini's bottega. Nor did Lorenzo
Lotto, the pupil of Alvise Vivarini, escape the authority of that serene
and perfect work, whose beauty lingered so quietly over the youth of the
greatest painter of Italy, Tiziano Vecelli: his Holy Family (575) seems
to be a work of Giorgione himself almost, that has suffered some change;
that change was Lotto.
Titian's own pupils, Paris Bordone, Tintoretto, and Schiavone, may also
be found here; the first in a Portrait of a Young Man (607), full of
confidence and force. Tintoretto has five works here, beside the
portrait of himself (378): the Bust of a Young Man (577), the Portrait
of Admiral Vernier (601), the Portrait of an Old Man (615), the Portrait
of Jacopo Sansovino (638), and a Portrait of a Man (649). His portraits
are full of an immense splendour; they sum up often rhetorically enough
all that was superficial in the subject, representing him as we may
suppose he hardly hoped to see himself. Without the subtle distinction
of Titian's art, or the marvellous power of characterisation and
expression that he possessed with the earlier men, Tintoretto's work is
noble, and almost lyrical in its confidence and beauty. In his day
Venice seems to have been the capital of the world, peopled by a race of
men splendid and strong, beside whom the men of our time, even the best
of them, seem a little vulgar, a little wanting in dignity and life.
Two pictures by Paolo Veronese, the early Martyrdom of S. Giustina
(589), and the Holy Family and St. Catherine (1136), bring the period
to a close. It is a different school of painting altogether that we see
in the Piazzetta of Canaletto (1064), perhaps the last picture painted
by a Venetian in the gallery.