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Giovanni Bellini

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Giovanni Bellini
Bust of Giovanni Bellini in Venice
Born	c. 1430 Venice, Republic of Venice, (now Veneto, Italy)
Died	1516 Venice, Republic of Venice, (now Veneto, Italy)
Nationality	Venetian
Known for	Painting
Movement	Venetian Renaissance
Number of Surviving Paintings	220
Length of Career	~7 decades

Giovanni Bellini (Italian pronunciation: [dʒoˈvanni belˈliːni]; c. 1430 – 26 November 1516) was an influential Italian Renaissance painter who was highly regarded for his stylistic mastery of landscapes and introduction of new painting styles and probably the best known of the Bellini family of Venetian painters. Although Bellini had a long artistic career close to seven decades, his output and attention to detail never frayed. Even in the latter years of career, Venetian writer Nicoló Liburnio declared Bellini as a second Apelles. However, Bellini's artistic mastery did not develop independently of other's influence. Bellini came from a family already well-established in the art world. His father, Jacopo Bellini, brother Gentile Bellini (who was more highly regarded than Giovanni during his lifetime, although the reverse is true today), and brother-in-law Andrea Mantegna, are all credited for Bellini's foundation and development as a painter. Over 220 surviving paintings have helped art historians understand better the changing artistic styles of Bellini throughout his life. These different stylistic periods of his career can be grouped by early career, maturity, and late career. Overall, both Bellini's influence on the Italian Renaissance and his most renowned pupils like Titian and Giorgione is still clear today in many museums and his legacy.

Contents

• 1Life
  • 1.1 Early career
  • 1.2 Maturity
  • 1.3 Late Career
• 2Assessment
• 3References
• 4Further reading
• 5External links

Life

Early career

St. Jerome in the Desert, c. 1455; Tempera on panel; Barber Institute, Birmingham

Giovanni Bellini was born in Venice around 1430 to his father, Jacopo Bellini, a painter of moderate status and foundation for Giovanni's artistic career. Although questions have been raised regarding Giovanni's legitimacy as Jacopo's son, it is clear he maintained a steady and fruitful relationship with Jacopo his entire life. Giovanni's first exposure to the arts initiated as Jacopo would bring both Giovanni and his other son, Gentile Bellini, to his studio as workshop assistants. As a workshop assistant, Giovanni began to show early signs of promise in addition to his building fascination with painting. The first 20 years of Bellini's artistic career were largely dedicated to small private devotional works. In this period, Bellini mainly produced different iterations of Madonnas, Pietás, and Crucifixions. His paintings from the early period are all executed in the old tempera method in order to create a scene softened by new and beautiful effects of romantic sunrise colors (as, for example, in the St. Jerome in the Desert). There is no doubt, however, that Bellini's later works were influenced by his famous brother in-law, Andrea Mantegna.

Bellini began to incorporate Mantegna's style of neutral and dark overtones to many of his paintings. In a changed and more personal manner, he drew Dead Christ pictures (In these days one of the master's most frequent themes e.g. Dead Christ Supported by the Madonna and St. John, or Pietà) with less harshness of contour, a broader treatment of forms and draperies and less force of religious feeling, a stark contrast from his earlier works with emphasis on brighter and vibrant romantic colors.

Maturity[edit]

Christ Blessing, 1500; Tempera, oil, and gold on panel; Kimbell Art Museum, Texas.

Beginning in 1470, when Bellini was roughly 40 years old, his career can be identified as his maturation as both an artist and stylistically. In 1470, Giovanni received his first commission to work along with his brother and other artists in the Scuola di San Marco, where he was to paint a Deluge with Noah's Ark. Additionally, he was appointed as the lead conservator and was tasked with restoring old paintings in the Great Hall of the Doge's Palace. The importance of this commission can be measured by the payment Giovanni received: he was awarded, first the reversion of a broker's place in the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, and afterwards, as a substitute, a fixed annual pension of eighty ducats. Besides repairing and renewing the works of his predecessors he was commissioned to paint a number of new subjects, six or seven in all, in further illustration of the part played by Venice in the wars of Frederick Barbarossa and the pope. Sadly, all of the master's works painted for the various schools, confraternities, or ducal palace, were destroyed in a fire of 1577, a rather common occurrence in a city with wooden founded buildings.

Pastoral Concert, c. 1509; Oil on canvas, Titian & Giorgione

During this same period, Bellini had opened his own workshop where he began to recruit young aspiring painters as workshop assistants. Two of the most notable Bellini assistants were Titian and Giorgione. As the two developed their skills in the workshop, they began to assist Bellini with the creation of his works, ultimately adding their own interpretations to some of Bellini's greatest works. One great example of Titian and Giorgione's collaboration was their production of pastoral concert, a piece which incorporates many of the techniques they would have learned under Bellini, one such being the mastery of Sfumato.

Coronation of the Virgin - Pesaro Altarpiece, c. 1471; oil on panel

One artistic niche of focus during Bellini's maturation period was his creation of altarpieces. It is likely his inspiration to create altarpieces initiated after many encounters with famous Italian painter Piero della Francesca. Piero della Francesca's influence is most obvious in Bellini's production of the Pesaro Altarpiece, containing his Coronation of the Virgin. Most notably is the new use of perspective in this altarpiece. In previous decades, Bellini's productions were largely non-interactive, two-dimensional images, with the sole purpose of highlighting divinity with no distractions. However, In the Coronation of the Virgin, the newly used 'linear perspective,' as incorporated by della Francesca, is used extend space into the background, allowing the figures to truly interact with both each other and the viewer.

Madonna and Child with the Infant St. John the Baptist, c. 1480; oil; Indianapolis Museum of Art

As is the case with a number of masterpieces of that time, many of Giovanni's great public works are now lost or destroyed. Fires, theft, and transportations are largely credited common reasons for paintings of the period to never survive. Of the others that do survive, the religious class of his work, including both altar-pieces with many figures and simple Madonnas, a considerable number have been preserved and remain on display. They demonstrate Bellini gradually acquiring a complete mastery of the new oil medium introduced in Venice by Antonello da Messina in 1473, and mastering with its help all, or nearly all, the secrets of the perfect fusion of colors and atmospheric gradation of tones. The old intensity of despair and devout feeling gradually fades away and gives place to a noble, if more worldly, serenity and charm. The transition is clear in the enthroned Virgin and Child (pictured left). They notedly become tranquil and commanding in their sweetness; the personages of the attendant saints gain in power, presence and individuality; enchanting groups of singing and viol-playing angels symbolize and complete the harmony of the scene. The full splendour of Venetian color invests alike the figures, their architectural framework, the landscape and the sky. This stylistic maturity matches the changing practices of devotional artwork techniques and contrasts the long tradition of simple, neutral, and fundamental devotion.

High Renaissance

Bellini entered the high renaissance in 1500 and continued creating as many productions with impeccable detail as his younger self, but with yet another stylistic change.

San Giobbe Altarpiece, 1487; oil on panel, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice

The best indication of this stylistic change is evident in Bellini's productions of the San Giobbe Altarpiece and San Zaccaria Altarpiece. Both altarpieces depict the Holy Conversation, the sacred conversation between the Madonna and Saints. Both depict the Madonna seated on a throne (thought to allude to the throne of Solomon), between classicizing columns. Additionally, both place the holy figures beneath a golden mosaicked half dome which alludes to Byzantine architecture in the basilica of St. Mark.

In the later work, the San Zaccaria Altarpiece, Bellini depicts the Virgin surrounded by (from left) St. Peter holding his keys and the Book of Wisdom, the virginal St. Catherine and St. Lucy, each holding a martyr's palm and an instrument of torture (Catherine a breaking wheel, and Lucy a dish with her eyes), and St. Jerome with a book symbolizing his work on the Vulgate. Stylistically, the lighting in the San Zaccaria piece has become so soft and diffuse that it makes that in the San Giobbe appear almost raking in contrast. Giovanni's use of the oil medium instead of the commonly used egg tempura, had matured, and the holy figures seem to be swathed in a still, rarefied air. The San Zaccaria altarpiece, dated 1505, is considered perhaps the most beautiful and imposing of all Giovanni's altarpieces.

San Zaccaria Altarpiece, 1505; oil on canvas, transferred from panel; San Zaccaria, Venice

Sadly, a fire in the Doge's Palace destroyed much of the work Bellini produced in the early 16th century. But of Giovanni's activity in the interval between the altar-pieces of San Giobbe and San Zaccaria, there are a few minor works left. The last ten or twelve years of the master's life saw him besieged with more commissions than he could well complete. Even in the early 1500's, the marchioness Isabella Gonzaga of Mantua had had great difficulty obtaining a Madonna and Saints commission from Bellini, which was eventually lost, even though she had paid in advance. Although she never received her original commissioned production, she requested another secular or mythological painting from Bellini, all indicative of Bellini's dominance as a renaissance master.

Bellini's dominance as one of Venice's top painters was not simply only the magnitude of his commissions. German painter and printmaker Albrecht Dürer, visiting Venice for a second time in 1506, describes Giovanni Bellini as still the "best painter of all," and as full of all courtesy and generosity towards foreign brethren of the brush. Another example of Bellini's brilliance during this period was his depiction of landscapes. In perhaps his best example of mastery of landscape is his St. Jerome Reading. There is a delicate interaction between the holy saint and the current world. Bellini plays with this interaction in order to highlight the holiness of these figures. It is important to mention that most of Bellini's religious works were private commissions for "highly sophisticated patrons"(Gasparotto).

In 1507, nearing the end of Bellini's life, his brother, Gentile Bellini, died, and Giovanni completed the picture of the Preaching of St. Mark which he had left unfinished; a task on the fulfillment of which the bequest by the elder brother to the younger of their father's sketch-book had been made conditional. As Bellini's career began to slow down, a few surprising events threatened his dominance amongst painters. For example, in 1513, Giovanni's position as the sole master in the Hall of the Great Council, a position that he had obtained after the passing of his brother, was threatened by one of his former and now widely renowned pupils, Titian. Young Titian desired a share of the same undertaking, to be paid for on the same terms. Titian's application was granted, then after a year rescinded, and then after another year or two granted again; and the aged master must no doubt have undergone some annoyance from his sometime pupil's proceedings.

Giovanni Bellini and Titian (additions made in 1529), 1514; oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Giovanni's dedication as a painter never wavered after he lost his position in the Hall of the Great Council. He continued to paint commissions for the last three years of his life. In 1514, Giovanni undertook to paint The Feast of the Gods, his last painting, for the duke Alfonso I of Ferrara, but died in 1516. Following his death, he was interred in the Basilica di San Giovanni e Paolo, a traditional burial place of the doges.

Assessment

St. Francis in Ecstasy, 1480; oil and tempera on panel; Frick Collection, New York.

See also: List of works by Giovanni Bellini

Both in the artistic and in the worldly sense, the career of Bellini was, on the whole, very prosperous. His long career began with Quattrocento styles but matured into the progressive post-Giorgione Renaissance styles. He lived to see his own school far outshine that of his rivals, the Vivarini of Murano. He embodied, with growing and maturing power, all the devotional gravity Venice in his time; and he saw his influence propagated by a host of pupils, two of whom at least, Giorgione and Titian, equalled or even surpassed their master. Giorgione he outlived by five years. Titian, on the other hand, challenged Bellini and rose to the same status and power in the art world. Other pupils of the Bellini studio included Girolamo Galizzi da Santacroce, Vittore Belliniano, Rocco Marconi, Andrea Previtali and possibly Bernardino Licinio.

St. Francis in Ecstasy, 1480; oil and tempera on panel; Frick Collection, New York.

In the historical perspective, Bellini was essential to the development of the Italian Renaissance for his incorporation of aesthetics from Northern Europe. Significantly influenced by Antonello da Messina, Piero della Francesca, Andrea Mantegna, and other contemporary trends of the time, such as oil painting. Bellini introduced the pala, or single-panel altarpieces, to Venetian society with his work Coronation of the Virgin. Certain details in this piece, such as breaks in the modeling of figures and shadows, imply that Bellini was still working to master the use of oil. Bellini's scenery in this piece generates a more accommodating engagement with viewers than before, most likely a reflection of Alberti's humanist and inventio concepts. Bellini mastered the Antonello style of oil painting and surface texture and use this new skill to create a refined and distinctly Venetian approach to painting. He blends this new technique with Venetian and Byzantine traditions of iconography and color to create a spiritual theme not found in Antonello's pieces. The realism of oil painting coupled with the religious traditions of Venice were unique elements to Bellini's style which set him apart as one the most innovative to Venetian Renaissance painting. As demonstrated in such works as St. Francis in Ecstasy (c. 1480) and the San Giobbe Altarpiece (c. 1478), Bellini makes use of religious symbolism through natural elements, such as grapevines and rocks. Yet his most important contribution to art lies in his experimentation with the use of color and atmosphere in oil painting.

The Bellini (cocktail) is named in his honor.