Gentile Bellini

“ The Venetian love of splendour was displaying itself by the encouragement and collection of objects of art, and both ancient and modern works were in increasing request. On Gentile Bellini’s and Carpaccio’s canvases we see the sort of people the Venetians were, shrewd, quiet, splendour-loving, but business-like, the young men fashionably dressed, fastidious connoisseurs, splendid patrons of art and of religion. ”

“ Their father, who was also an artist, came from Padua to Venice in the early part of the fifteenth century, bringing his two young sons, both of whom grew to be greater painters than the father. They opened a school, and Giorgione and Titian, who, you well know, are two supreme names in Venetian painting, were among their pupils. The Bellini paintings are the natural precursors of the glory of Venetian art. Even in these historical paintings by Gentile Bellini we feel the palpitating sunshine which floods and vivifies the rich colors of palaces and costumes. ”

“ The drawings of Titian and Giorgione are indeed the chief decorations of the place. Among the earlier of their famous men there is a sketch by Gentile Bellini, of a procession with lighted candles through a square with a central well. The great painter of sacred feasts and triumphal crowds has left one minor and separate study: a youth reclining, who leans against a tree, his head crowned with rich and rippling hair. Of such studies there are many by his greater brother; one in red chalk, a lank-haired aquiline head; a group of monks, one kneeling as reproved, with a face of stupid shame ”

“ There are perhaps comparatively few among them that would satisfy a conventional canon of beauty: their fascination lies in the rich combination of whimsical humour and strength, melancholy and wit; so eloquent are they, so quick with intelligence that we are little disposed to question their material perfection or imperfection. These citizens of Gentile Bellini, Mansueti and above all Carpaccio—since in him are realised a far greater variety of types—impress us profoundly as men of calm and steady purpose, who have lived, felt and prevailed. ”

“ Vice is absolutely necessary to the activity of a state.” This then is the Venice against which Goldoni stands out; and after all, the essential difference between the world reflected in his comedies and that world of Gentile Bellini and Carpaccio, which was Colleoni’s world, is a difference of horizon. There is an epic grandeur about Carpaccio’s world: heroes stride across it, with lesser men and lesser interests in their train. The small affairs of life are not neglected. ”

“ We may consider it in Carpaccio in relation to the significance of landscape in his compositions. It is his power of treating a scene atmospherically that supplies one chief charm of his work. It is never on a day of splendour that either he or Gentile Bellini depicts Venice; but constantly on a cold, colourless day of late autumn the waters of Carpaccio seem to live again for us as we have seen them through the perspective of his arches or in the background of a city picture. ”

“ At the time when Carpaccio and Gentile Bellini were painting those handsome youths in tight jackets, parti-coloured hose, and little round caps placed awry upon their shocks of well-combed hair, there lived in Venice two noblemen, Messer Pietro and Messer Paolo, whose palaces fronted each other on the Grand Canal. Messer Paolo was a widower, with one married daughter, and an only son of twenty years or thereabouts, named Gerardo. Messer Pietro's wife was still living; and this couple had but one child, a daughter, called Elena, of exceeding beauty, aged fourteen. ”

“ While Carpaccio has treated the historic scene in a poetic way, with quaint formality, Bellini's picture is full of truth and detail.
"But," he continued, "Gentile Bellini's work, as art, fades in importance before that of his brother, Giovanni, who gave himself almost wholly to religious painting. If you will try to shut your eyes for a few minutes to the other pictures about you, I would like to take you immediately to one of this artist's Madonna pictures. ”

“ Sophia with imperial honors; his armor was buried with him, and for nearly two centuries and a half his grave was unviolated, and Gentile Bellini had the proud satisfaction of bringing the cuirass, the sword, and the helmet which the great Doge had worn at the taking of Constantinople to Venice, and presenting them to the descendants of the grand old hero.
There is an inexpressible sadness in the death of the Doge under such a weight of sorrow and disappointment, and tortured by apprehensions of evil which were never realized. King John did not suspect the weakness of the Latins ”

“ Secure among the lagoons, Venice is aloof from the disturbances of the mainland cities, and though her inhabitants are proved warriors they are peaceable citizens. Many of the68 glories of Gentile Bellini’s Procession of the Cross would be present in the procession in which the Doge and the magnates of Venice formally conducted Alexander III to the city—patriarch, bishops, clergy, and finally the Pope himself, all in their festival robes. ”

“ Giorgione, Titian, Tintoretto and Paul Veronese. Beyond these four, Venetian Art has never gone, and although four hundred years have elapsed since they laughed and sang, enjoyed and worked, all we can do is wonder and admire. We can imitate, but we can not improve.
Gian Bellini lived to be ninety-two, working to the last, always a learner, always a teacher. His best work was done after his eightieth year. The cast-off shell of this great spirit was placed in the tomb with that of his brother Gentile, who had passed out but a few years before. Death did not divide them. ”

“ He was chosen by Giovanni Bellini, 1508, to value Giorgione’s frescoes on the façade of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, and died in 1512.
To Mansueti are due two of the Guild of St John pictures, rich in examples of Venetian costume and architecture, and two scenes from the life of St Mark painted for the guild of that name, now placed in the apse of Room XV. in the Accademia. He and his colleague Benedetto Diana, who painted one of the legends of the Holy Cross for the Guild of St John, were influenced by Gentile Bellini and Carpaccio. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We come upon it first in the work of Vittore Carpaccio, of which there is but a fragment here, the delicate little picture, the Finding of the True Cross (583 bis) ; while in two works attributed to Bissolo and Cima da Conegliano (584, 564 bis) , we see too the influence of Bellini.
328If Carpaccio was the greatest pupil of Gentile Bellini, in Giorgione we see the first of those marvellous painters who were taught their art by his brother Giovanni. Giorgio Barbarelli, called Giorgione, was born at Castelfranco, a little town in the hills not far from Padua, in 1478. ”

“ Viewing Venice in her greater days, it is impossible to make that separation between the artist and the man of action so deadly to action and to art. The portraits of3 the Venetian masters, supreme among the portraits of the world, could only have been produced by men who beyond the divine perception of form and colour were endowed with a profound understanding and divination of human character. The pictures of Gentile Bellini, of Carpaccio, of Mansueti, are a gallery of portraits of stern, strong, capable, self-confident men ”

“ During the few years of their stay at Venice, Gentile and Pisanello must not only have instructed Bellini in their art, but their influence on Antonio Vivarini of Murano also seems to me undeniable.... Taking him all in all, I consider that Giovanni Bellini was the [Pg 403] greatest painter in North Italy in the fifteenth century, though undoubtedly Pisano was in the first half of the century as great a painter as was Bellini in the second half" (German Galleries, p. 357; Roman Galleries, p. 267) . ”

“ BELLINI, the name of a family of craftsmen in Venice, three members of which fill a great place in the history of the Venetian school of painting in the 15th century and the first years of the 16th.
I. Jacopo Bellini (c. 1400-1470-71) was the son of a tinsmith or pewterer, Nicoletto Bellini, by his wife Franceschina. When the accomplished Umbrian master Gentile da Fabriano came to practise at Venice, where art was backward, several young men of the city took service under him as pupils. Among these were Giovanni and Antonio of Murano and Jacopo Bellini. ”

“ Room XV., 43, Basaiti, Virgin and Child with donor. 35, Jac. Bellini, Crucifixion. Room XVI., 2, Alvise Vivarini, St Anthony of Padua. 5, Carpaccio, [113] Two Courtezans with their pets: the stilted shoes then worn by ladies are seen in this picture. [114] Four early works by Giov. Bellini, (6) a Transfiguration, (3) a Pietà with a forged signature of Dürer; (8) a Crucifixion, and (II) Christ mourned by Three Angels. Portraits of Doge Giov. Mocenigo (16) by Gentile Bellini and (19) a Bellini school painting of Doge Franc. Foscari. ”

“ But it is to the paintings of Gentile, and Giovanni, sons of Jacopo Bellini, that the traveller will turn again and again with increasing admiration and reverence. In 1421 Jacopo, who had worked under the Umbrian masters in the Ducal Palace, went with Gentile da Fabriano to Florence, and there for several years was his pupil in the very centre of the renaissance of art. In 1430 he set up a workshop in Venice, and about 1450, having moved with his two sons to Padua, came under the powerful influence of Mantegna, who married his daughter Nicolosa. ”

“ As with the Florentine artists, so with these Venetian painters, we must leave many names unnoticed just now, and learn first to know those which shine out clearest among the many bright stars of fame.
In the beginning of the fifteenth century, four hundred years ago, when Fra Filippo Lippi was painting in Florence, there lived in Venice a certain Jacopo Bellini, who was a painter, and who had two sons called Gentile and Giovanni. The father taught his boys with great care, and gave them the best training he could, for he was anxious that his sons should become great painters. ”

“ Bartolommeo had never been very successful in his dealing with oil-painting, though he had dabbled in it for some years before Antonello da Messina came his way, but the perception with which the Bellini at once grasped the new technique gave them the victory. We have only to compare the formless contours of much of Bartolommeo Vivarini’s work, the bladder-like flesh-painting of the Holy Child, with the clear luminous colour and firm delicate touch of Gentile, to see that the one man is leagues ahead of the other. ”

“ There remain a superb nude study of Venus by Lorenzo di Credi, No. 3452—one of the pictures which escaped Savonarola's bonfire of vanities, and No. 1305, a Virgin and Child with various Saints by Domenico Veneziano (1400-1461) , who taught Gentile da Fabriano, the teacher of Jacopo Bellini. This picture is a complete contrast to the Uccello: for that is all tapestry, richness, and belligerence, and this is so pale and gentle, with its lovely light green, a rare colour in this gallery. ”

“ Thus deprived of his brother Gentile, whom he had most tenderly loved, Giovanni, although very old, still continued to work a little, the better to pass his time, and having taken to execute portraits from the life, he introduced the custom into Venice, that whoever had attained to a certain degree of eminence should cause his likeness to be portrayed, either by himself or by some other master. Wherefore, in all Venetian houses, there are numerous portraits, and in many of those belonging to nobles, may be seen the fathers and grandfathers of the possessors, up to the fourth generation ”

“ The first painters to make any success in Venice were the Vivarini of Murano. The next were Giovanni Bellini and Gentile his brother, who arrived from Padua about 1460, the one to paint altar-pieces in the Tuscan manner (for there is little doubt that the sweet simplicity and gentle radiance of the Giotto frescoes in the chapel of the Madonna dell'Arena, which the Paduans had the privilege of seeing for two or three generations before Squarcione was born, had greater influence than either Jacopo Bellini or Mantegna) ”

“ Bellini's face, like his whole physique, had that physical freshness, that blooming sensuousness, that rose-colour which makes on me a disagreeable impression—on me, I say, because I like much better that which is death-like and of marble. [11] It was not till a later time, when I began to know Bellini, that I felt a liking for him. This came from observing that his character was perfectly noble and good. His soul is certainly pure, and has remained unspotted by contact with vile things. ”

“ I have loved every melody in it for years, and it was happiness to listen to the exquisite modulations as they flowed out of one another, endless ripples on a river deep, wide and strewed with blossoms. I never have known any one more to be loved than Bellini. No wonder the Italians make pilgrimages to his grave. In him thought and feeling flow always in one tide; he never divides himself. He is as melancholy as he is sweet ”