(VENICE)
]
Bellini also has the Bambino asleep, a beautiful but meagre figure of a
young child with one arm dropped, and something sombre in the depth of
sleep. Here is no _geste arrondi_, the grace is purely nature’s, and it
is lovely beyond the rivalry of artifice; I will not say of art, for an
English wit has well said that affectation displeases us because it has
not too much, but too little, art. Bellini has not been afraid of a
straight arm and a heavy head, and his art is more, not less, than his
Florentine contemporary Verrocchio’s. Furthermore, one may wonder why
Venice alone in Italy did not play the gossip nor boast like a nurse of
the weight of the central child of pictures. Christ is tender, thin, and
delicate in the designs of the Adriatic painters; never more sweet or
more worn than in Giovanni Bellini’s group referred to at the beginning
of this volume. The tender figure is tenderly treated; the little silken
rings of curls—no signs of vigour as with Botticelli or Raphael—are
exquisitely drawn. And it is only when he paints an attendant angel that
the master makes childhood flourish, sleeks the hair, and creases the
wrist. Bellini’s flute-playing winged _putto_ from the Frari picture is
more conventional, but he does not cease to be a child. Nor does
Vivarini’s, long taken for a work of Bellini, the detail of the
beautiful picture in the church of the Redentore, who sings to his lute,
as befits his wings, beyond his years, but has the attitude of a human
child, the only attitude tolerable with limbs so fair and full. Here
also is the Venetian characteristic. And doubtless it is also in that
singular design of Giovanni Bellini’s which is catalogued (at the
Uffizi, Florence) by no more definite name than that of _Un’ allegoria
religiosa_. We see here a landscape full of caves, rocks, steps, and
houses, a landscape into the depths of which the eye may follow Saints
to their business or their solitudes, wayfaring with an ass or in
retreat within a hollow. In the foreground is a well-paved court
inclosed within a white marble balustrade, waist-high. A beautiful
throne is raised to the left for the veiled and enwrapped Virgin, and at
her feet kneels one of the martyr-patronesses—Catherine, Barbara, Agnes,
or Lucy—with flowing hair; a humbler woman-saint, with gathered hair,
stands on the other side of the throne; Saint Paul, Saint Peter, Saint
Sebastian, and Saint Paul the Hermit, or some other anchorite, stand
praying, whilst four children at play have these reverend eyes, and
evidently the reverend thoughts, fixed upon them. They are all _putti_
unwinged; one shakes a little orange-tree growing in a pot in the middle
of the court, and the others catch the oranges, with charming actions,
hold them, and eat them, all absorbed in their pleasure, as are their
holy spectators. Saint Peter especially is intent upon them, holding up
his hands to pray, and the Virgin Mother herself, praying also, seems to
return to them the morning and evening prayers of childhood. There is no
interpreting the allegory. The little boys are symbolical, but they are
also mere boys, and not about the usual business of angels.
[Illustration:
_Alinari_