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Percorsi e collezioni     | The Bellini Family The Bellini family provided some of the most important Venetian painters of the fifteenth century: the father, Jacopo Bellini, and his two sons, Gentile and Giovanni. After training under Gentile da Fabriano, who was in Venice from 1408 to 1414 to paint the history frescoes in the Chamber of the Great Council within the Doge’s Palace - Jacopo Bellini would then follow his master to Brescia and Florence; the latter city played an important role in exposing him to the climate of the Early Renaissance. The Crucifixion (cl. I, 29), of around 1450, is considered to be part of a predella from a polyptych (perhaps in the monastery of San Zaccaria) which also included the Adoration of the Magi and Christ’s Descent into Hell (now in the Ferrara Pinacoteca Nazionale and the Padua Museo Civico respectively). The composition here is traditional: in the centre is Christ on the Cross, to his right, Mary supported by the holy women (with a group of soldiers in the background), and to the left, a sorrowful St. John the Evangelist and the kneeling figure of Longinus recognising that this surely was the Son of God. The low horizon isolates the figure of Christ against the sky, lifting him above the actions and sorrow of those present. Jacopo’s elder son, Gentile, was the painter of the Portrait of Doge Giovanni Mocenigo (cl. I, 16), which though unfinished is one of the most important extant demonstrations of his skill as a portrait artist (a skill so renowned that, in 1479, Gentile was included as part of a Venetian diplomatic mission to Constantinople, where he painted the Portrait of Sultan Mehmet II which now hangs in the National Gallery, London). Though an easily recognisable likeness, this portrait - taken in profile - does not strive to render the physiological individuality of the sitter himself; it is the Doge - the very symbol of the Venetian Republic - who is being depicted. Jacopo’s younger son, Giovanni, would dominate the world of Venetian painting in the second half of the fifteenth century. Having trained under his father, he soon established himself as an independent artist, at the head of a very busy studio which would continue to be active until around 1515. Receptive to the lessons to be learnt from his brother-in-law, Andrea Mantegna, and influenced by the work of Antonello da Messina, Giovanni would develop a very refined - and in some ways, erudite - artistic language. The Crucifixion (cl. I, 28) of 1453-55 belongs to the early stages of the artist’s career. There is a sharp break between the minutely-detailed background landscape and the foreground occupied by the drama of Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross, here read as an historical event to be set within daily life. The influence of Mantegna is clear in the modelling of the figures, which achieve a certain monumentality in spite of the reduced size of the panel (the scale of the work suggests that it was painted as a private devotional image). Around the same time, the artist painted the Pietà (cl. I, 39), the atmospheric composition of which echoes that to be seen in a bronze bas-relief of the same subject that Donatello produced for the High Altar of the Basilica del Santo in Padua around 1447-48. The Transfiguration of Christ (cl. I, 27) can also be dated around the same time. Damaged in the upper section, this depiction of Christ on Mount Tabor was probably the altarpiece in one of two Venetian churches: San Salvatore or San Giobbe (sources record in both a Bellini painting of this subject). The Madonna and Child (cl. I, 1836) - also known as the Frizioni Madonna, after the owner who donated the work to the museum in 1919 - dates from around 1470-75. Though transfer from panel to canvas has damaged the painting, and the sky has been repainted, the work is fine example of Giovanni Bellini’s inventive creativity: no other work of the time depicted the Virgin in this way, with a purple gown, a pink mantle and a veil - only half covering her head - held in place by a brooch. The Christ Child she is holding seems lost in thought as he rests his feet on a parapet, which symbolises not only the sarcophagus in which He will be buried but also the altar on which His death and resurrection will be celebrated in the Mass. The two small paintings with Portrait of a Young Saint crowned with Laurel (cl. I, 10) and Doge Pietro Orseolo and Dogaressa Felicita Malipiero (cl. I, 71) are to be attributed to Giovanni’s studio; the latter is the sole extant fragment of the predella of a polyptych originally painted for the church of San Giovanni Battista on the Giudecca. All of these works by the Bellini family have undergone recent restoration; and X-ray examination carried out as part of that process revealed the presence of detailed preliminary sketches underneath each. Search engine  |
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