George Hay

“ Latter-day historians grope painfully and conscientiously after the scanty records of great painters, searching the voluminous writings of men who have little to say, and very little authority for saying anything about the great personalities of the art world of their time. It is not surprising, under these circumstances, that despite much search the record of many lives that must have been fascinating cannot be found. ”

“ The spirit of study is abroad, to-day men will devote more time to the life story of a comparatively obscure artist than they would have given fifty years ago to half-a-dozen painters of European reputation. It is not easy, one might almost say it is not possible, to tell succinctly the story of men who have left no clear record and were not regarded by their contemporaries as fit and proper subjects for a biography. ”

“ We learn more of the man from his work than we can hope to learn from any written record and, as the taste for studying pictures grows, so all the internal evidence of a man’s thought and ways of life accumulates and the message that underlies canvas and stands revealed in colour and line to the trained eye, is translated for the benefit of a curious generation. ”

“ It was the appeal of the clericals to a people who could neither write nor read, but although a State may erect boundaries and may devote itself to the enjoyment of prosperity, those who care for the claims of art cannot escape [42] altogether from the forces that are at work in surrounding cities. One of the chief forces at work in Northern Italy was the revival of learning that seems to have marched side by side with the discovery of personal beauty. The Church had kept beauty in the background, the Renaissance brought it to the canvas of every artist. ”

“ To him, as to Fra Angelico, faith was a real and living thing, and like the great monk who died at ripe age while he was yet a boy, Gian Bellini became a lover of the world in its most picturesque aspect, accepting without hesitation the traditional explanation of its creation. ”

“ It is not easy to say how far a great painter reflects his time and how far he influences it. Tradition and surroundings must needs count for much, but their exact value is not easy to estimate. Indeed the influence of a man is often strongest upon the generations that succeed to his own, for no hints are left of the doubts and difficulties that beset the master. The attitude of the Venetians towards art in the fifteenth century, when Gian Bellini started his work, differed from that of the Florentines by reason of the splendid isolation of Venice. ”

“ From the standpoint of the biographer, it is to be regretted that more of the great Italian artists of the fifteenth century were not associated with the Church. In the days of the most interesting activity of painters and sculptors, the capacity to write [10] was rarely met beyond the monasteries and few people took the trouble to record any impression of notable men in the early years of their career. We are apt to forget that, for one artist whose name is preserved to us to-day, there are a score of men whose work has perished, whose very names are forgotten. ”

“ Happily the effort pleases our own generation, and as there are many great men who flourished in the fifteenth century and have left their pictures to be their sole [15] monument, there is no lack of work. Naturally in this curious and inquisitive age there are some who would rather discover a well authenticated story about an artist’s life than an unexpected masterpiece from his hand, but then the appeal of letters is always more widespread than that of paint. ”

“ Students of Gian Bellini’s life and work can see that only a part of the father’s teaching fell upon fruitful soil. Jacopo Bellini, as we have seen, was a man in whom the early religious spirit that the Renaissance did much to cloud over was of small account, but the pagan revival that found so many adherents in Florence and Venice, towards the close of the fifteenth century, left young Gian Bellini almost untouched. We shall see that the commissions offered by wealthy patrons, who had no love for sacred subjects, were either rejected, or were accepted and not fulfilled. ”

“ His knowledge of anatomy is decidedly small, he lacks confidence in himself, and yet it is not difficult to recognise that the painter is moving into a new country, that his presentation of sacred subjects is developing on lines that must add considerably to their artistic value and to the permanence of their appeal. [57]
An amusing story is told of the way in which young Bellini acquired his knowledge of oil painting. He is said to have assumed the dress of a Venetian nobleman, and to have gone to the studio of a popular artist of the time, under pretext of having his portrait painted. ”

“ Vasari tells us that the meeting between the brothers on Gentile’s return to Venice was most affectionate.
[1] Mohammed said: “If ye must make pictures, make them of trees and things without souls. Verily every painter is condemned to hell fire.”
This journey to Constantinople would [66] seem to have added to the reputation of the house of Bellini, and to have increased the demand for portraits by both brothers. This, in its way, would doubtless have led to the multiplying of school pieces. History has very little to tell of the progress of the brothers during the years that followed. ”

“ In the vast and unexplored region of Italian archives there may be some facts that research will bring to light, but at present we know very little, and can only be grateful that the story of his life is not shrouded altogether in the mist that obscures so much of the personal history of eminent Venetians in the fifteenth century. ”

“ It is always pleasant to endeavour to supply a want, but it is only fair to remember that in writing about people whose life story was not preserved by their contemporaries, the path is strewn with pitfalls.
PLATE II.—THE DOGE LOREDANO This picture, which is of bust length and life size, is one of the ten examples of Giovanni Bellini in the National Gallery, and is perhaps the most important example of the artist as a portrait painter. ”

“ Vasari tells us that Jacopo Bellini painted his pictures not on wood, but on canvas. “In Venice,” he writes naïvely, “they do not paint on panel, or if they do use it occasionally they take no other wood but that of the fir, which is most abundant in that city, being brought along the river Adige in large quantities from Germany. ”

“ Her wars had less effect than her commercial victories upon those of her citizens who turned their thoughts towards art, the stress and strife beyond her boundaries left her artists comparatively untouched. ”

“ In the autumn of that year Titian brought another petition to the Council, asking once more for the first vacant broker’s patent, and mentioning the fact that Bellini’s days could not be long in the land. Just about this time the Venetian authorities seem to have held an inquiry into the progress of the work that was being done in the Hall of the Great Council, only to find that the amount of money they had spent should have secured them a far larger amount of work than had been [76] accomplished. ”