Vincenzo Bellini

“ Be it never so well given, it is long-winded.
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Vincenzo Bellini
(1802-1835)
BELLINI, born in Catania, Sicily, November 3, 1802, is the composer of "La Sonnambula," one of the most popular works of the old type of Italian opera still found in the repertoire. "I Puritani," another work by him, was given for the opening of two New York opera houses, Palmo's in 1844, and Hammerstein's Manhattan, in 1903. But it maintains itself only precariously. "Norma" is given still more rarely, although it contains "Casta diva," one of the most famous solos for soprano in the entire Italian repertory. ”

“ Monteverde was given five years' time, and the price increased not a little from what was proposed to me. My best wishes to the artist are that he may be well inspired and make an excellent work; [452] that the good Catanese may have reason to be satisfied with their way of proceeding; and that the monument to Vincenzo Bellini may in its lines recall the passionate phrases of melody of the divine master. ”

“ One day the giant, Lablache, entered his apartment. Vincenzo lay on the sofa, pale and listless, and only noticed his visitor by fixing upon him his half closed eyes. Lablache cried like a trumpet, opening his immense mouth: ‘Holloa! there! what are you lying here for, like an idle lout of a lazzaroni on the Molo, wearying yourself to death with doing nothing? Up, Bellini—up and to work! Paris, France, all Europe, is full of expectation of what you are to bring forth after your Norma, which your adversaries silenced. Bellini! ”

“ Pisaroni, Lablache, and David. Donizetti at this time wrote the opera of "Anna Bolena," with the special view of suiting the dominant qualities of Pasta, Rubini, and Galli. The following season Pasta sang at Milan, at a salary of 40,000 francs for twenty representations, and was obliged to divide the admiration of the public with Mali-bran, who was rapidly rising to the brilliant rank which she afterward held against all comers. Vincenzo Bellini now wrote for Pasta his charming opera of "La Sonnambula," and it was produced with Rubini, Mariano, and Mme. ”

“ If Cima possessed originality, Vincenzo of Treviso, called Catena, gained an immense reputation by his industry and his power of imitating and adopting the manner of Bellini’s School. In those days men did not trouble themselves much as to whether they were original or not. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He is very old and is yet the best in painting."
In his long life Bellini saw all the changes and helped in their making. He is the most varied and flexible painter of his time, both in manner and matter. None could be more deeply religious than he, none more tender, none more simple, none more happy. In manner he was equally diverse, and could paint like a Paduan, a Tuscan, a Fleming, a Venetian, and a modern Frenchman. I doubt if he ever was really great as we use the word of Leonardo, Titian, Tintoretto, Mantegna ”

“ Both in the artistic and in the worldly sense, the career of Giovanni Bellini was upon the whole the most serenely and unbrokenly prosperous, from youth to extreme old age, which fell to the lot of any artist of the early Renaissance. He lived to see his own school far outshine that of his rivals, the Vivarini of Murano; he embodied, with ever 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, surpassed their master. ”

“ On Gentile's return from the East, he was pensioned by his State, and lived on painting, till he was eighty years of age, dying in 1501.
Gian Bellini is said to have obtained by a piece of deceit, which is not in keeping with his manly and honourable character, the secret, naturally coveted by a Venetian, of mixing colours with resin and oil. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is one of those things that sum up the genius of a painter, the experience of a life, the teaching of a school. It seems painted with molten gems, which have only been clarified by time, and is as solemn as it is gorgeous and as simple as it is deep. Giovanni Bellini is more or less everywhere in Venice, and, wherever he is, almost certain to be first—first, I mean, in his own line: paints little else than the Madonna and the saints; he has not Carpaccio’s care for human life at large, nor the Tintoret’s nor the of the Veronese. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Bellini's simplicity allies him to Giotto traditions; but there was no simplicity about Giorgione, Titian, and Tintoretto. They were sophisticated, and the two last were also the painters of a wealthy and commanding Republic. One can believe that Bellini, wherever he was, even in the Doges' Palace, carried a little enclosed portion of the Kingdom of God within him: but one does not think of those others in that way. He makes his Madonnas so much more real and protective too. Note the strong large hands which hold the Child in his every picture. ”

“ Gian Bellini is considered to have been less gifted with imagination than some of his great brother artists; but he has proved himself a man of high moral sense, and while he stopped short at the boundary between the seen and the unseen, it is certain he must still have painted with much of 'the divine patience' and devout consecration of all his powers, and of every part of his work, which are the attributes of the earliest Italian painters. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Painting had in his lifetime reached a point where the difficulties of technique no longer stood in the way of the expression of profound emotion. No one can look at Bellini's pictures of the Dead Christ upheld by the Virgin or angels without being put into a mood of deep contrition, nor at his earlier Madonnas without a thrill of awe and reverence. And Giovanni Bellini does not stand alone. His contemporaries, Gentile Bellini, the Vivarini, Crivelli, and Cima da Conegliano all began by painting in the same spirit, and produced almost the same effect. ”

“ When the life-work of the Conegliano master has been more closely studied in connection with that of his contemporaries, it will probably appear that he owes very much less to Bellini than it has been the fashion to assume. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Arriving at Paris in 1833, he first studied the taste of the inhabitants of that great city, and then went to London to direct the arrangement in a scene of one of his works ; and on his return to Paris in 1834, he wrote "I Puritani" for the Italian Theatre of that city. The good fortune with which Bellini had even to this time been blessed still smiled upon him, on this occasion, in affording him the most satisfactory combination of singers that could be made- Rubini, Tamburini, Lablache and Mlle. Grisi, each in their sphere, possessing talents of the highest order. ”

“ During the moments of delirium which preceded his death, he was constantly speaking of Lablache, Tamburini and Grisi; and one of his last recognisable impressions was that he was present at a brilliant representation of his last opera at the Salle Favart.' Bellini died on Sept. 23, 1835, in the 33rd [App. p.542 "34th"] year of his age—not the greatest, but by far the youngest, of many admirable composers (as Purcell, Mozart, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Hérold) who scarcely lived to accomplish half the allotted years of man. ”

“ And he was Titian's master.
The National Gallery is rich indeed in Bellini's work. We have no fewer than ten pictures that are certainly his, and others that might be; and practically the whole range of his gifts is illustrated among them. There may not be anything as fine as the S. Zaccaria or Frari altar-pieces, or anything as exquisite as the Allegories in the Accademia and the Uffizi ”

“ A cautious judge will not be apt to pronounce any work his, which displays much of ideal beauty; Bellini having, for the most part, repeated in his feminine figures an expression of countenance, partaking in some degree of an apish character. Nor will he be easily led to ascribe to him pictures which display a minute care and finish, approaching to the miniature style, inasmuch as he embodied and coloured his conceptions with a free and fearless hand. ”

“ I think that from thirty to forty years is believed to be the fatal limit of such lives. How often I have teased poor Bellini with this, and prophesied that he in his quality as genius must die as soon as he should attain the dangerous age. ”

“ This teaches us that obedience to our superiors is its own reward. But the lesson was wholly lost on Gentile Bellini, for he did not even remain to examine the severed head for art’s sake. The thought that it might be his turn next was supreme, and he leaped through a window, taking the sash with him. Making his way to the docks he found a sailing vessel loading with fruit, bound for Venice. A small purse of gold made the matter easy: the captain of the boat secreted him, and in four days he was safely back [Pg 122] in Saint Mark’s giving thanks to God for his deliverance. ”