Giovanni Bellini , One Of The Most Influential Venetian
Artists. 15,
saints christopher, jerome and louis of toulouse.
Dating to 1513, Bellini’s Saints Christopher, Jerome and Louis of Toulouse is housed today in
the church of San Giovanni Crisostomo, Venice. The painting was completed late in Bellini’s
career, when he had adopted the use of Giorgione’s tonalism in his works.
Having been commissioned in 1494 by the Venetian merchant Giorgio Diletti,
it still remains unknown today why it took some twenty years to complete the painting.
The composition of the panel is structured as a Holy Conversation typical of the Venetian
tradition, largely evolved by Bellini’s own designs over the years, with an arch
opening to a landscape in the background, accompanied by three figures of saints.
Instead of the usual throne with the Virgin, we are confronted with Saint Jerome — a popular
choice for the artist — portrayed as a hermit, on a rock, reading the Bible.
As a doctor of the Church, Jerome represents the highest point of spiritual life,
that of mystical exaltation and revealed science. Beside him the fig-tree symbolises that he
has been chosen by the Lord to understand its supreme law.
Below, separated by a parapet with a cartouche bearing a signature,
we can also see Saint Christopher and a bishop. The latter figure had been originally identified
as Saint Augustine based on text of the book (De civitate Dei), which was later
revealed to be apocryphal, as it is not placed on the front cover.
In recent times, the identification of lilies on the cloak — emblems
of the House of Anjou — the figure is now believed to be Saint Louis of Toulouse.
16, the feast of the gods.
One of Bellini’s few mythological pictures, The Feast of the Gods features substantial additions
to the landscape by Dosso Dossi and Titian, who added all the landscape to the left and centre.
Completed in 1514, it was Bellini’s last major work, which is housed today in the
National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. The painting is signed by an inscription on
the fictive paper attached to the wooden tub at lower right: “joannes bellinus venus / p MDXIIIII”
(“Giovanni Bellini of Venice, painted 1514”) and his payment that year is recorded.
The depicted scene is based on a story from Ovid and the canvas was commissioned as the
earliest of a cycle of paintings on mythological subjects produced for Alfonso, I d’Este, the Duke
of Ferrara, for his camerino d’alabastro (chamber of alabaster) in the Castello Estense, Ferrara.
The subjects had been chosen by 1511, by the Renaissance humanist Mario Equicola,
then working for the Duke’s sister Isabella d’Este, and instructions, apparently including
some sketches, were sent to the artists. Later commissions for the chamber were four large
Titian paintings (one now lost), and ten smaller works by Dosso Dossi, probably placed above them.
The three surviving works by Titian painted for the room are Bacchus and Ariadne (National
Gallery, London), The Bacchanal of the Andrians and The Worship of Venus (both Prado, Madrid).
It had been suggested that Bellini made a preliminary set of alterations before or soon
after 1514 to make the painting more compatible with Ovid’s original Latin text, having previously
been working from an Italian Ovidio volgarizzato version, and that at this point Bellini changed
most of the characters to gods, rather than people from Thebes, giving lower necklines to the women.
But this view was based on a misunderstanding of the early x-rays taken in 1956.
It is now thought that the figures are as originally painted by Bellini.
The painting concerns the myth of the attempted rape of Lotis.
According to legend, the nymph was the daughter of Neptune or Nereus.
When Lotis attends a festival in honour of Liber, Priapus attempts to rape her while she is asleep;
she is awakened by a sudden cry of Silenus’ ass and escapes,
leaving Priapus in embarrassment as everyone else awakes and realises his intentions.
The story is portrayed at the edges of the composition, in a somewhat undramatic fashion,
a moment shortly before the key incident, with Silenus and his ass on the left and Priapus
and Lotis on the right, with everyone except for Lotis still wide awake.
The Feast of the Gods is a considerable departure from Bellini’s usual subject
matter of religious scenes and portraits; interestingly, the artist was over eighty
years old when he began work on the painting. He had previously been reluctant to portray
mythological stories, avoiding a commission from Isabella d’Este, Alfonso’s sister, in
1501–04 — she had to be content with a Nativity at a lower price than she had offered for a storia.
He was perhaps unwilling to compete with his brother-in-law,
Andrea Mantegna, who specialised in classical subjects.
After the death of Mantegna in 1506, he may have felt more inclined towards mythological subjects,
now that he would not be posing as a professional rival to his friend.
The canvas remained in the room for which it was painted until 1598, when it was confiscated
and taken to Rome by Cardinal Ippolito Aldobrandini as Papal Legate.
The Feast of the Gods left the Aldobrandini family in 1796–97, then passing to the Camuccini family.
The painting left Italy for England in 1853 and was bought by the 4th Duke of Northumberland,
before being sold in 1916 by the 7th Duke to the London dealer Thomas Agnew and Sons.
It was bought in 1922 by the estate of the American magnate Peter A. B. Widener (d. 1915)
and in 1942 entered the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC with the rest of his collection.
Since The Feast of the Gods came to Washington it has travelled to Venice in 1990,
London and Madrid in 2003 (reuniting all four large works in the cycle,
with three of the Dossi works), and Vienna in 2006.
17, naked young woman in front of the mirror.
One of the greatest treasures of Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum, this 1515 canvas
demonstrates the almost ninety-year-old artist’s success in adopting a new depth of
sensibility in his work at the end of his career. The sumptuous celebration of pearlescent skin,
admired both by the viewer and the girl herself, is counterbalanced by the
shimmering folds of the rich red garment. Yet again Bellini employs a framing device
at the bottom of the canvas, as used in the very beginning of his career, but this time
the subject of the piece actually sits upon it, as it serves as a bench, with an intricate covering,
creating a further sense of spatial depth between us, the girl and the rest of the chamber.
The sense of depth is increased by the use of a plain dark green background on the right,
juxtaposed to a far reaching view on the left,
with blue sky and mountains, matching the blue in the decorative scarf worn by the girl.
She studies her face closely, absorbed with her own beauty,
offering a touching comment on youthful vanity, all the more compelling for its senior author.
The sense of reality is called into question again by a second mirror, this time on the back wall,
reflecting the rear of the girl’s head and the fine pearls used to decorate and braid her hair.
Unlike the religious subjects of his early years, this late canvas seems to commemorate
the joys of youthful beauty and the splendour of riches – aspects of life that the ageing artist
evidently held dear, perhaps as he reflected back on his long and prosperous life.
Indeed, in the worldly sense, the career of Bellini was very prosperous.
His long career began with Quattrocento styles,
but matured into the progressive post-Giorgione Renaissance innovations.
He lived to see his own school far outshine that of his rivals, the Vivarini of Murano.
His works embodied, with growing and maturing power, all the devotional gravity and much also of
the worldly splendour of the Venice of 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.
Other pupils of the Bellini studio included Girolamo Galizzi da Santacroce,
Vittore Belliniano, Rocco Marconi, Andrea Previtali and possibly Bernardino Licinio.
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, who had spent time in Flanders, Bellini made the
use of oil painting prevalent, encouraging his fellow artists to turn away from tempera painting,
and his works are noteworthy for their disguised symbolism integral to the Northern Renaissance.
Bellini popularised the 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 colour and atmosphere in oil painting.