The conquest of Byzantium during the Fourth Crusade by Doge Enrico
Dandolo in 1204, an epoch-making event in the history of Venice and
Venetian art, strengthened the intercourse between the East and the
City of the Lagoons. At the same time it riveted the fetters of
Byzantinism on to the nascent art of Venice, to which it also imparted
a sense of intense Oriental colour.
The frescoes painted in Tuscany on the lines of Giottesque tradition
and the environment under which its painters worked, in time gave
to the Florentines a sense of line and form which produced a school
of idealists: on the other hand, the colour-impressions created on
the mind of the Venetian painter by the relics from the East and the
brilliant mosaics which he saw around him resulted eventually in the
formation of a school of colourists with a realistic tendency.
It will cause little surprise that the Louvre contains no polyptych by
the very early Venetians, Niccolò Semitecolo (fl. 1351-1400), Jacobello
del Fiore (died 1439), and Michele Giambono (fl. 1420-1462). The
Gallery possesses, however, a fourteenth-century Venetian arched panel
of the _Madonna and Child_ (No. 1541) which is attributed to Stefano
Veneziano.
In the early fifteenth century the dominating influence exerted on
the painters of Venice was that of Jacopo Bellini (1400?-1470), whose
sons, Gentile and Giovanni, and son-in-law, Andrea Mantegna, were to
shape the destinies of the school throughout the Renaissance. Jacopo’s
drawing is seen in its full maturity in the Sketch-book of about 1450
which belongs to the Louvre but is not publicly exhibited. Another
Sketch-book by him of about 1430 is one of the treasured possessions
of the British Museum. Jacopo had in early life been the pupil of
Gentile da Fabriano, who, together with Alegretto Nuzi, stands at the
head of the Umbrian school, and of Antonio Pisanello (1397-1455),
the medallist-painter who played such an important part in the art
of Verona. Both Gentile da Fabriano and Pisanello worked for a time
at Venice. Under the circumstances, therefore, it is not surprising
to find that a _Madonna and Child with a Donor_ (No. 1159A, formerly
No. 1279 and No. 171), which is now justly ascribed in the Catalogue
to Jacopo Bellini, was long assigned officially to Gentile Bellini,
although held by some critics to have been painted in the school of
Pisanello. The name of the Donor in this picture is given in the
Catalogue as Leonello d’Este and on the frame as Pandolfo Malatesta; it
would, however, seem to be the portrait of Sigismondo Malatesta.
Four small triptychs (Nos. 1280-83) from the Campana collection still
pass officially under the ambiguous designation of “School of Gentile
da Fabriano”; they may, however, without much doubt be ascribed to
Antonio Vivarini, who remained outside the Bellini sphere of influence,
and died about 1470.