THE ACCADEMIA. III: GIOVANNI BELLINI AND THE LATER PAINTERS
Pietro Longhi--Hogarth--Tiepolo--A gambling wife--Canaletto--Guardi--The
Vivarini--Boccaccini--Venetian art and its beginnings--The
three Bellinis--Giovanni Bellini--A beautiful room--Titian's
"Presentation"--The busy Evangelists--A lovely ceiling.
A number of small rooms which are mostly negligible now occur. Longhi is
here, with his little society scenes; Tiepolo, with some masterly
swaggering designs; Giambettino Cignaroli, whom I mention only because
his "Death of Rachel" is on Sundays the most popular picture in the
whole gallery; and Canaletto and Guardi, with Venetian canals and
palaces and churches. For Tiepolo at his best the Labia Palace must be
visited, and Longhi is more numerously represented at the Museo Civico
than here. Both Canaletto and Guardi can be better studied in London, at
the National Gallery and the Wallace Collection. There are indeed no
works by either man to compare with the best of ours. No. 494 at
Hertford House, a glittering view of the Dogana, is perhaps Guardi's
masterpiece in England; No. 135 in the National Gallery, Canaletto's.
Pietro Longhi was born in Venice in 1702, five years after Hogarth was
born in London. He died in 1762, two years before Hogarth in Chiswick. I
mention the English painter because Longhi is often referred to as the
Venetian Hogarth. We have a picture or two by him in the National
Gallery. To see him once is to see all his pictures so far as technique
goes, but a complete set would form an excellent microcosm of
fashionable and frivolous Venice of his day. Hogarth, who no doubt
approximates more to the Venetian style of painting than to any other,
probably found that influence in the work of Sebastiano Ricci, a
Venetian who taught in St. Martin's Lane.
The brave Tiepolo--Giovanni Battista or Giambattista, as the contraction
has it--was born in Venice in 1696, the son of a wealthy merchant and
shipowner. In 1721 he married a sister of Guardi, settled down in a
house near the bridge of S. Francesco della Vigna, and had nine
children. His chief artistic education came from the study of Titian and
Paul Veronese, and he quickly became known as the most rapid and
intrepid ceiling painter of the time. He worked with tremendous spirit,
as one deduces from the the examination of his many frescoes. Tiepolo
drew with masterly precision and brio, and his colour can be very
sprightly: but one always has the feeling that he had no right to be in
a church at all, except possibly to confess.
At the National Gallery we have some small examples of Tiepolo's work,
which, if greatly magnified, would convey an excellent impression of his
mural manner. Tiepolo went to Spain in his old age to work for Charles
III, and died there in 1770. His widow survived him by nine years, dying
in 1779. She seems to have been a gambler, and there is a story of her
staking all her losses one evening against her husband's sketches.
Losing, she staked his villa, containing many of his frescoes, and lost
again.
Antonio Canal, called Canaletto, was born in Venice in 1697, the son of
a scene-painter. At first he too painted scenery, but visiting Rome he
was fascinated by its architecture and made many studies of it. On
returning to Venice he settled down as a topographical painter and
practically reproduced his native city on canvas. He died in 1768.
Venice possesses only inferior works from his hands; but No. 474
here--the view of the Scuola of S. Marco--is very fine.
Canaletto had a nephew named Bernardo Bellotto, who to much of his
uncle's skill brought a mellow richness all his own, and since he also
took the name of Canaletto, confusion has resulted. He is represented in
the Accademia; but Vienna is richest in his work.
The great Canaletto has a special interest for us in that in later life
he lived for a while in England and painted here. The National Gallery
has views of Eton College and of Ranelagh seen through his Venetian
eyes. In Venice Tiepolo often added the figures for him.
Francesco Guardi was born in Venice in 1712 and died there in 1793, and
all his life he was translating the sparkling charm of his watery city
into paint. His master was Canaletto, whom he surpassed in charm but
never equalled in foot-rule accuracy or in that gravity which makes a
really fine picture by the older man so distinguished a thing. Very
little is known of Guardi's life. That he married is certain, and he had
a daughter who eloped with an Irishman. We are told also that he was
very indolent, and late in life came upon such evil days that he
established himself at a corner of the Piazza, where Rosen's book-shop
now is, and sold sketches to whomever would buy for whatever they would
fetch; which is only one remove from a London screever. Guardi's picture
of S. Giorgio Maggiore in the Accademia, No. 707, shows us that the
earlier campanile, which fell in 1774, was higher and slenderer than the
present one.
We now come to Room XVII, which has a number of small interesting works,
some by great masters. Mantegna is here with a S. George, which I
reproduce on the opposite page. Very beautiful it is, both in feeling
and colour. It is painted on wood and the dragon is extremely dead. Here
too is Piero della Francesca, that rare spirit, but his picture, No. 47,
has almost perished. The mild Basaiti and milder Catena are here; a
pretty little Caravaggio; two good Cimas, No. 611, sweet and
translucent, and No. 592, a Tobias; and excellent examples of both
Alvise and Bartolommeo Vivarini, those pioneer brothers, a blue and
green dress of the Virgin in No. 615 by Bartolommeo being exquisite.
Here too is a Cosimo Tura, No. 628, poor in colour but fine in the
drawing of the baby Christ; and a rich unknown Lombardian version of
Christ washing His disciples' feet, No. 599, which is not strong in
psychology but has noticeable quality.
The most purely charming work in the room is a Boccaccio Boccaccini, No.
600, full of sweetness and pretty thoughts. The Madonna is surrounded by
saints, the figure in the centre having the true Boccaccini face. The
whole picture is a delight, whether as a group of nice holy people, a
landscape, or a fantasy of embroidery. The condition of the picture is
perfect too. The flight into Egypt, in two phases, goes on in the
background. I reproduce it opposite page 266.
And then we move to the room devoted to Giovanni Bellini, performing as
we do so an act of sacrilege, for one cannot pass through the pretty
blue and gold door without interrupting an Annunciation, the angel
having been placed on one side of it and the Virgin on the other.
[Illustration: S. GEORGE
FROM THE PAINTING BY MANTEGNA
_In the Accademia_]
Giovanni Bellini was born in 1426, nearly a century after Giotto died.
His father and teacher was Jacopo Bellini, who had a school of painting
in Padua and was the rival in that city of Squarcione, a scientific
instructor who depended largely on casts from the antique to point his
lessons. Squarcione's most famous pupil was Andrea Mantegna, who
subsequently married Giovanni Bellini's sister and alienated his master.
According to Vasari, oil-painting reached Venice through Antonello da
Messina, who had learned the art in the Netherlands. But that cannot be
true. It came to Venice from Verona or Padua long after Florence could
boast many fine masters, the delay being due to the circumstance that
the Venetians thought more of architecture than the sister art. The
first painters to make any success in Venice were the Vivarini of
Murano. The next were Giovanni Bellini and Gentile his brother, who
arrived from Padua about 1460, the one to paint altar-pieces in the
Tuscan manner (for there is little doubt that the sweet simplicity and
gentle radiance of the Giotto frescoes in the chapel of the Madonna
dell'Arena, which the Paduans had the privilege of seeing for two or
three generations before Squarcione was born, had greater influence than
either Jacopo Bellini or Mantegna); and the other to paint church
pageants, such as we saw in an earlier room.
Giovanni remained in Venice till his death, in 1516, at the ripe age of
ninety, and nearly to the end was he both a busy painter and an
interested and impressionable investigator of art, open to the influence
of his own pupil Giorgione, and, when eighty, being the only painter in
Venice to recognize the genius of Dürer, who was then on a visit to the
city. Dürer, writing home, says that Bellini had implored him for a work
and wanted to pay for it. "Every one gives him such a good character
that I feel an affection for him. He is very old and is yet the best in
painting."
In his long life Bellini saw all the changes and helped in their making.
He is the most varied and flexible painter of his time, both in manner
and matter. None could be more deeply religious than he, none more
tender, none more simple, none more happy. In manner he was equally
diverse, and could paint like a Paduan, a Tuscan, a Fleming, a Venetian,
and a modern Frenchman. I doubt if he ever was really great as we use
the word of Leonardo, Titian, Tintoretto, Mantegna; but he was
everything else. And he was Titian's master.
The National Gallery is rich indeed in Bellini's work. We have no fewer
than ten pictures that are certainly his, and others that might be; and
practically the whole range of his gifts is illustrated among them.
There may not be anything as fine as the S. Zaccaria or Frari
altar-pieces, or anything as exquisite as the Allegories in the
Accademia and the Uffizi; but after that our collection is unexcelled in
its examples.
[Illustration: MADONNA AND CHILD
FROM THE PAINTING BY GIOVANNI BELLINI
_In the Accademia_]
In this little precious room of the Accademia are thirteen Bellinis,
each in its way a gem: enough to prove that variousness of which I
spoke. The "Madonna degli Alberetti," for example, with its unexpected
apple-green screen, almost Bougereau carried out to the highest power,
would, if hung in any exhibition to-day, be remarkable but not
anachronistic. And then one thinks of the Gethsemane picture in our
National Gallery, and of the Christ recently acquired by the Louvre, and
marvels. For sheer delight of fancy, colour, and design the five scenes
of Allegory are the flower of the room; and here again our thoughts leap
forward as we look, for is not the second of the series, "Venus the
Ruler of the World," sheer Burne-Jones? The pictures run thus: (1)
"Bacchus tempting Endeavour," (2) either Venus, with the sporting
babies, or as some think, Science (see the reproduction opposite page
158), (3) with its lovely river landscape, "Blind Chance," (4) the Naked
Truth, and (5) Slander. Of the other pictures I like best No. 613,
reproduced opposite page 260, with the Leonardesque saint on the right;
and No. 610, with its fine blues, light and dark, and the very Venetian
Madonna; and the Madonna with the Child stretched across her knees,
reproduced opposite page 144.
Giovanni Bellini did not often paint anything that can be described as
essentially Venetian. He is called the father of Venetian painting, but
his child only faintly resembles him, if at all. That curious change of
which one is conscious at the National Gallery in passing from Rooms I
and VI to Room VII, from Tuscany and Umbria to Venice, is due less to
the Bellinis in Room VII than to any painter there. The Bellinis could
be hung in Rooms I and VI without violence; the Giorgiones and Titians
and Tintorettos would conflict. Bellini's simplicity allies him to
Giotto traditions; but there was no simplicity about Giorgione, Titian,
and Tintoretto. They were sophisticated, and the two last were also the
painters of a wealthy and commanding Republic. One can believe that
Bellini, wherever he was, even in the Doges' Palace, carried a little
enclosed portion of the Kingdom of God within him: but one does not
think of those others in that way. He makes his Madonnas so much more
real and protective too. Note the strong large hands which hold the
Child in his every picture.
Titian's fine martial challenging John the Baptist is the great picture
of the next room, No. XIX. Here also are good but not transcendent
portraits by Titian, Tintoretto, and Lotto, and the Battle of Lepanto,
with heavenly interference, by Veronese.
Finally, we come to the room set apart for Titian's charming conception
of "The Presentation of the Virgin," which fills all one wall of it. I
give a reproduction opposite page 36. The radiant figure of the
thick-set little brave girl in blue, marching so steadily away from her
parents to the awe-inspiring but kindly priests at the head of the
steps, is unforgettable. Notice the baby in the arms of a woman among
the crowd. The picture as a whole is disappointing in colour, and I
cherish the belief that if Tintoretto's beautiful variant at the Madonna
dell'Orto (see opposite page 282) could be cleaned and set up in a good
light it might conquer.
Before leaving this room one should give the ceiling a little attention,
for it is splendid in its lovely blue and gold, and its coloured
carvings are amusing. The four Evangelists have each a medallion. All
are studious. S. Matthew, on the upper left as one stands with one's
back to the Titian, has an open-air study, and he makes notes as he
reads. His eagle is in attendance. S. Mark, with his lion at ease under
his chair, has also his open-air desk, and as he reads he thinks. S.
John is indoors, reading intently, with a box full of books to fall back
on, and a little angel peeping at him from behind his chair. Finally S.
Luke, also indoors, writing at a nice blue desk. He holds his pen very
daintily and seems to be working against time, for an hour-glass is
before him. His bull is also present. Among the many good ceilings of
Venice, this is at once the most sumptuous and most charming.