Old world masters in new world collections

“Luini’s female creations are so exquisite that for a long time people supposed that Leonardo alone was capable of conceiving them,” writes Marcel Reymond, “and permanently recording their loveliness; but now this injustice has come to an end and Luini’s art appears before us with sharply determined characteristics that prevent us from confounding it with Leonardo’s art; first of all, from the point of view of technique, it must be remembered that Leonardo works like a master born about 1450 and Luini like one born after 1470. With Luini the workmanship is less precise than with Leonardo, while the stroke is less restrained and the modelling freer.”

TITIAN’S SCHOOLMASTER.

In the National Gallery, London, there is a striking portrait of a Tailor—known as the Tagliapanni—standing behind his board, at half-length, with shears in his right hand and a piece of cloth in his left, looking inquiringly at the spectator. It is forceful, attractive, commands attention, and lives in the memory of all who have looked upon it. Moroni’s Tailor is one of the great portraits of the world. The merest glance at the picture represented here would tell you that it is by the same hand. The means of producing a striking effect are even simpler than in the London portrait.

The title is entirely fanciful, but it accords well with the subject, a pleasant, genial man with an intellectual countenance. He seems to be about sixty years of age and is dressed in black with white linen collar and a black cap. His beard is grey. He is sitting sideways in a chair that is often described to-day (and for no reason whatever) as a “Savonarola Chair,” resting his left arm on the arm of the chair and holding a book in his right. It would appear that he has just been interrupted in his reading—pleasantly, too, it would seem—and is keeping the page he has left off reading with one finger between the leaves. The hands are marvellously drawn and painted, as is also the ring on the left hand. Van Dyck admired this picture so much that he made a sketch of it in his Italian sketch-book (which is now at Chatsworth).

This portrait in oils on canvas (38 × 29½ inches) was long in the Borghese Gallery at Rome, and then at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century it was purchased by the Marquis of Stafford. From the Duke of Northumberland’s Collection, Stafford House, it passed to the present owner.

Moroni’s great fame, even in his own day, was as a portrait-painter; and it is said that when people from Bergamo and its vicinity went to Titian to have their portraits painted, he told them to go home and sit to their own countryman. Moroni was a pupil of Moretto at Brescia, was influenced by Lotto and Titian, and he, in his turn, influenced Van Dyck.

Moroni was born at Bondo in Bergamo between 1520 and 1525 and died at Bergamo in 1578.

VENETIAN

“It is evident,” wrote Taine, “that, while following a path of its own, Venetian Painting developed as in the rest of Italy. It issued here, as elsewhere, from missals and mosaics and was at first in sympathy with purely Christian emotion; then, by degrees, the feeling for beautiful human life introduced into the altar-frames vigorous and healthy bodies taken from contemporary types; and we wonder at the placid, expressions and religious physiognomies on the blooming faces in which the youthful blood circulates and sustains innate temperament. This is the confluence of two spirits and two ages: one, the Christian, which is fading away; the other, the Pagan, which is in the ascendant. In Venetian Art special traits are distinguished. The people are more closely copied from life and are less transformed by Classic or mystic sentiment, not so pure as at Perugia, not so noble as at Florence: they are addressed more to the senses than to the mind or the heart; they are more quickly recognized as men and give greater pleasure to the eye. Strong and lively tones color their muscles and their faces; living flesh is soft on their shoulders and on the thighs of little children; clear landscapes open into the distance to make the deeper tints of the figure stand out; saints gather around the Virgin in a variety of attitudes unknown to the other Primitive Schools with their uniform processions. At the height of its fervor and faith the national spirit, fond of diversity and joy, allows a smile to escape.”

Venice was slow in abandoning Byzantine tradition. Changes begin to be apparent in the Fourteenth Century. Walter Pater notes: “The beginnings of Venetian Painting link themselves to the last, stiff, half-barbaric splendors of Byzantine decoration and are but the introduction into the crust of marble and gold on the walls of the Duomo of Murano, or of St. Mark’s, of a little more of human expression. And throughout the course of its later development, always subordinate to architectural effect, the work of the Venetian School never escaped from the influence of its beginnings. Unassisted, and therefore, unperplexed by naturalism, religious mysticism, philosophical theories, it had no Giotto, no Fra Angelico, no Botticelli. Except from the stress of thought or sentiment, which taxed so severely the resources of the generations of Florentine artists, those earlier Venetian painters, down to Carpaccio and the Bellini, seem never for a moment to have been tempted even to lose sight of the scope of their art in its strictness, or to forget that painting must be before all things decorative, a thing for the eye, a space of color on the wall, only more dexterously blent than the marking of its precious stone, or the chance interchange of sun and shade upon it—this to begin and end with—whatever higher matter of thought, or poetry, or religious reverie, might play its part therein, between.”

During the Fifteenth Century Venice began to be influenced by painters from other cities, particularly by Gentile da Fabriano (see page 74) and Pisanello (see page 99), who were sent for to decorate the Doge’s Palace. Gentile da Fabriano represented all the latest “modernistic” ideas of his day. Among the Venetians who were most profoundly influenced by him was Jacopo Bellini (who later went to Padua). Jacopo, in spite of his contact with Squarcione and Andrea Mantegna (who married his daughter), remained “Gothic” in essentials. Jacopo Bellini had one of the largest bottegas in Venice; and this bottega was continued by his gifted sons, Giovanni and Gentile.

Jacopo was a talented painter who had worked in Florence as well as Padua, but who really belongs to Venice.

The great rivals of the Bellini painters were the Vivarini on the Island of Murano. The Vivarini, the first of whom was Antonio da Murano (active 1440–1476 or 1484), who played a great part in the development of the Venetian School and whose work consisted of enormous altar-pieces of many compartments set in Gothic framework of very ornate character and profusely adorned with gold; Bartolommeo Vivarini, Antonio’s younger brother (1431?–1499?), in whose work the influence of the Paduan School of Squarcione is marked and also that of Antonello da Messina; and Antonio’s son, Alvise Vivarini (1447–1504), a pupil of his father and uncle, who was working in 1474 with Giovanni Bellini in the Scuola di San Girolamo in Venice and whose portraits show the influence of Antonello da Messina.

Carlo Crivelli (1430?–1493?), if not a Venetian by birth, which is most probable, is classed as belonging to the Venetian School. Crivelli was a fellow-pupil of Bartolommeo Vivarini under Antonio da Murano (Vivarini), and Squarcione. Like Mantegna, Crivelli kept to tempera painting; Crivelli stands alone for his wonderful decorative qualities (see page 125 and page 128).

Antonello da Messina (1430–1479) was a contemporary of Crivelli and is particularly distinguished for introducing into Italy the Flemish system of painting with oils. In his pictures the influence of the Bellini is apparent (see page 124).

Giovanni Bellini (1428–30–1516), one of the greatest painters of the Fifteenth Century, was trained by his father, Jacopo Bellini. Next he followed in the footsteps of Squarcione and Andrea Mantegna; but he changed his style, as well as his technique, gradually abandoning tempera for the new practice in oils, which he was one of the first to master. In some respects Giovanni Bellini was influenced by his own pupil, Giorgione (see page 118). Gentile Bellini (1426–9–1507), was named, it is interesting to note, for Gentile da Fabriano, his father’s master and friend. Gentile, trained by his father, Jacopo, was called upon to paint the organ-shutters at St. Mark’s with colossal figures of St. Mark, St. Theodore, St. Jerome, and St. Francis; was knighted by Frederic III in 1469; and was employed to restore the frescoes of Gentile da Fabriano in the Hall of the Grand Council in the Doge’s Palace, a commission which carried with it the honor of painting the portrait of every new Doge. Sent for by the Sultan of Constantinople, Mohammed II, to paint his portrait, Gentile sailed for Constantinople in 1479 and returned in 1480 with the title of Bey. Gentile then joined his brother, Giovanni, who was working on the Fabriano frescoes. The Bellini brothers also painted on canvas a series of pictures portraying the legend of Frederic Barbarossa and Pope Alexander III, which perished in the fire of 1577. Gentile’s Procession of Corpus Christi of 1496 has been pronounced “the most important extant work of the Venetian School previous to the advent of Titian.”

The bottegas of the Bellini and Vivarini naturally produced a host of able painters, among whom were Marco Basaiti (active 1500–1521); Lazzaro Bastiani (active 1449–1512); Cima da Conegliano (1460?–1517?); and Jacopo Bassano (1510?–1592). Vittore Carpaccio (1450?–1526?), was a follower of Gentile Bellini; and the stories he told in paint, such as the series depicting the Life of Saint Ursula, belong to the great works of Venice.

Giorgione (1477–1510) is the next important name. Little or nothing is known of his life, except that he was born of humble parents at Castelfranco. By 1500 his reputation was established, for he was then painting important works. Among these was a picture for the Hall of Audience in the Doge’s Palace and some fresco decorations for the exterior of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, the bank of the German merchants in Venice. Giorgione was a pupil and follower of the Bellini and had much influence upon Giovanni Bellini. Giorgione died of the Plague in his thirty-fourth year. Giorgione stands alone for his romantic and lyrical qualities and for his penetrating charm. He is notable, too, for having introduced music into his pictures, or rather persons who are playing upon instruments.

Apart from his delightful qualities Giorgione is of the greatest importance in the evolution of painting. Walter Pater writes: “Giorgione is the inventor of genre, of those easily movable pictures which serve for uses, neither of devotion nor of allegorical, or historical teaching—little groups of real men and women, amid congruous furniture or landscape—morsels of actual life, conversation, or music, or play, refined upon or idealized, till they come to seem like glimpses of life from afar. Those spaces of more cunningly blent color, obediently filling their place, hitherto, in a mere architectural scheme, Giorgione detaches from the wall; he frames them by the hands of some skillful carver, so that people may move them readily and take with them where they go, like a poem in manuscript, or a musical instrument, to be used, at will, as a means of self-education, stimulus or solace, coming like an animated presence, into one’s cabinet, to enrich the air as with some choice aroma, and, like persons, live with us, for a day or a lifetime. Of all art like this, art which has played so large a part in men’s culture since that time, Giorgione is the initiator.”

Titian, or rather Tiziano Vecello (1477?–1576), fellow-pupil of Giorgione, of Gentile and Giovanni Bellini and assistant to Giorgione in decorating the Fondaco dei Tedeschi (which established a new era in Italian painting), was the leading painter of his day (see page 140).

Bartolommeo Veneto, of Veneziano (1480–1555), pupil of Giovanni Bellini, became a famous portrait-painter. (See page 148.)

Tintoretto, the magnificent Venetian, was nicknamed “Il Furioso,” because of his great technical powers that include astonishing display of foreshortening and many curious effects in light and color, as well as in form. Ruskin says Tintoretto (or Tintoret, call him as you please) made “figures lovely in themselves, content that they should deserve not demand, your attention.”

Playing with a full orchestra of color and understanding how to produce the most luminous effects of light, the great Venetian filled Venice with marvellous pictures. Tintoretto was equal to the immense work he undertook and his noble brush never left anything that was unworthy of it. Tintoretto, whose real name was Jacopo Robusti (1518–1594), was apprenticed to Titian and was influenced by Titian, Palma Vecchio, Michelangelo, and Parmigiano (of the School of Palma and follower of Correggio).

“There is one only—the last and greatest of the Venetians of the Renaissance—who could sound all the notes of tragedy and pathos as well as notes of joy. Tintoretto, the supreme Venetian, the greatest exponent of the essential spirit of Venice, is the son of a wider kingdom than hers and of a greater age than the Renaissance. Unsurpassed as a designer and colorist, he is endowed throughout with the peculiar gifts of Venice; but during those years of passionate study, in which he was winning here and there the secrets of his art, hungry for knowledge, careless of gain, and bargaining only for material in which to realize his conceptions,—during those years in which he lived alone in continual meditation on some fresh labor, he was probing the deep and passionate things of humanity as no Venetian artist had ever probed them before. The streets and churches of the city seem to echo still to the steps of this genius at once so robust, so tender, so profound, and so joyous.”[15]

Paolo Veronese, or rather Paolo Caliari (1528–1588), a native of Verona, whence his name, is one of the most delightful of painters. J. Buisson considers Veronese of all the painters of Italy “the one whose work best serves to particularize the art of painting” and this able French critic goes on to say that “Veronese painted the Venetian Beautiful as the Greeks sculptured the Hellenic Beautiful” and that “Paul Veronese is of all the colorists, without a single exception, the one who has most unity. He is the most ethereal of the colorists. He is the painter of the air, both out-of-doors and in-doors. His values are impeccable and his shadows are at once transparent and full of color, without any artifice, such as Rubens’s exaggerated reflections, or the excessive sacrifices, which in Rembrandt are almost equivalent to a monotone in those parts that are lacking in light. His lights are broad and steady although modelled without any gleams, but of so shining a quality that they are positively radiant. Happy artist! He had the eye of the most perfect colorist ever known, able to perceive at the same time the different qualities of light and color and their variations in intensity and values and he possessed the gift to reveal them with marvellous art to ordinary mortals. Optics applied to his pictures show no law that he did not know and practice. Moreover, around his perfect visions of color are grouped other qualities, such as imagination, taste, rhythm, elegance, nobility, and magnificence in decoration. His hand is the equal of his eye. The rapidity of his brush may be compared only to that of Velasquez and to that of Rubens.”

This great period, Taine sums up as follows:

“The more we consider the ideal figures of Venetian Art, the more we feel the breath of an heroic age behind us. Those great, toga-draped, old men with the bald foreheads are the Patrician Kings of the Archipelago, Moorish Sultans, who, trailing their silken simars, received tribute and ordered executions. The superb women in sweeping robes, bedizened and jewelled, are Empress-daughters of the Republic, like that Caterina Cornaro from whom Venice received Cyprus. There are the muscles of fighters in the bronzed breasts of the sailors and captains; their bodies, reddened by the sun and the wind, have dashed against the athletic bodies of Janizaries; their turbans, their pelisses, their furs, their sword-hilts constellated with precious stones—all the magnificence of Asia is mingled on their bodies with the floating draperies of Classic times and the nudities of Pagan tradition.”

Sebastian del Piombo (1485?–1547), pupil of Giovanni Bellini and Giorgione, preferred oil to fresco and this led to a famous quarrel between him and Michelangelo. Palma Vecchio (1480–1528), standing first in the second rank of Bellini-Giorgione followers, is another important painter. Lorenzo Lotto (1480–1556), pupil of Alvise Vivarini, painted with Raphael in the Vatican in 1508–9 and naturally fell under Raphael’s spell. Lotto spent much time in Bergamo; was touched by Correggio’s spirit; and, after 1529, was affected by Titian.

Paris Bordone (1500–1571), a gorgeous colorist, pupil and follower of Giorgione and Titian (and slightly touched by Palma Vecchio), was famous for his portraits, mythological pictures, and for that masterpiece entitled The Fisherman Presenting the Ring of St. Mark to the Doge (now in the Accademia at Venice).

“These Venetian artists of the Renaissance,” says d’Annunzio, “create in a medium that is itself a joyous mystery—in color, the ornament of the world, in color which seems to be the striving of the spirit to become light. And the entirely new musical understanding they have of color acts in such a way that their creation transcends the narrow limits of the symbols it represents and assumes the lofty, revealing faculty of an infinite harmony.”

To the Eighteenth Century belongs Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696–1769), famous as a designer and colorist, influenced by Veronese, and a decorator of palaces and villas in Venice, Genoa, Milan, Würzburg, and Madrid, where he died. Tiepolo married Guardi’s sister in 1715.

Canaletto, or Giovanni Antonio da Canale (1697–1768), son of Bernardo da Canale, a scene-painter, is famous for his views of Venice and for being the teacher of Guardi.

Francesco Guardi (1712–1793), a native Venetian, but of Austrian stock, a follower of his master Canaletto, was also celebrated for his Venetian views (see page 153).

“Venice herself” writes Berenson, “had not grown less beautiful in her decline. Indeed, the building which occupies the very centre of the picture Venice leaves in the mind—the Salute—was not built until the Seventeenth Century. This was the picture that the Venetian himself loved to have painted for him and that the stranger wanted to carry away. Canale painted Venice with a feeling for space and atmosphere, with a mastery over the delicate effects of mist peculiar to the city, that make his view of the Salute, the Grand Canal, and the Piazzetta still seem more like Venice than all the pictures that have been painted since. Later in the century Canale was followed by Guardi, who executed smaller views with more of an eye for the picturesque, and for what may be called instantaneous effects, thus anticipating both the Romantic and the Impressionist painters of our own century.”

To the Eighteenth Century also belongs Pietro Longhi (1702–1785?), influenced by Guardi, but called “The Goldini of painters,” because of his bright comedies of manners, somewhat in the genre of Watteau, Pater, and Lancret.

“Longhi painted for the picture-loving Venetians,” says Berenson, “their own lives in all their ordinary domestic and fashionable phases. In the hair-dressing scenes we hear the gossip of the periwigged barber; in the dressmaking scenes the chatter of the maid; in the dancing-school, the pleasant music of the violin. There is no tragic note anywhere. Everybody dresses, dances, makes bows, takes coffee, as if there were nothing else in the world that wanted doing. A tone of high courtesy, of great refinement, coupled with an all-pervading cheerfulness, distinguishes Longhi’s pictures from the works of Hogarth, at once so brutal and so full of presage of change.”

MADONNA AND CHILD.

The Virgin, slightly under life-size, stands behind a stone parapet, three-quarter face to left, apparently in a reverie with half-closed eyelids. She wears a red and gold brocade gown and a blue mantle carried up over her head and falling in a straight line, but for one small plait, to her left arm. The Holy Child is seated upon a green cushion on the parapet and is wrapped in a brick-red shawl. With His left arm around His mother’s neck and right hand in her bosom, He gazes straight ahead. The flesh-tones are pale with clear, light-brown shadows and the rose-leaf lips and cylindrical fingers with filbert-shaped nails are to be noticed and admired.

This oil painting on panel (23 × 16 inches), comes from the Benson Collection. Antonello da Messina, also known as Antonello di Giovanni degli Antoni, holds a very important place in the development of Painting, because it is owing to him that the Flemish system of painting in oil was adopted in Italy, although Italian painters had been previously acquainted with the process, for they knew the works of the Van Eycks and Roger van der Weyden. It is supposed that Antonello, who was born in Messina in 1430, visited Flanders. It is certain, however, that Antonello was travelling in Italy in 1457–1460 and he may have met Roger van der Weyden, who visited Italy in 1450. Antonello da Messina was certainly in Venice in 1475–1476. He died in 1479, leaving a son, Jacobello, or Jacopo degli Antoni, and a nephew, Antonello di Saliba, both of whom were painters. It seems that Antonello da Messina and the Bellini exchanged many ideas and were of great mutual benefit. It is supposed that Antonello da Messina encouraged Giovanni Bellini to try painting in oils. St. Jerome in his Study in the National Gallery, London, shows the new character that Antonello brought into the Italian painting of his day.

MADONNA AND CHILD.

Before analysing this delightful picture, let us read an appreciation of a most fascinating and not too well-understood painter by Cosmo Monkhouse: “Carlo Crivelli is a Venetian artist of whom we know little but what can be gathered from pictures. He is supposed to have been born about 1430 and his dated works range from 1468 to 1493. He was a Venetian by birth and from his mode it would appear certain that he studied under Squarcione at Padua and probably also under Vivarini at Venice. But he perfected a style and one marked by so many peculiarities that despite all affinities which may be traced with other masters he stands out clear and distinct by himself.

“In the first place, he is unique as a colorist. He belongs, indeed, to the old mosaic and illumination school of color, not to the school of ‘great schemes,’ in which the masses are blent into one great harmony. The masses, or patches, of color are isolated and produce a pleasant variegation without fusion. His color is thin, also, as of a superficial tinting, not affecting the substance. His flesh is hard and opaque, his flowers leathery, his fruit, though finely drawn and beautifully colored, of a stony texture, his draperies anything but soft. It is only in hard smooth things, like pottery and glass, that you get the true consistency as well as the true color. Yet his color is exquisite of its kind, brilliant and transparent like enamel, and the different tints in themselves are lovely and varied. Such reds and greens and lilacs and salmon-pinks and a hundred other combinations of the primaries are scarcely to be matched in the work of any other artist. Nor has anyone been more skillful in the use of gold in connection with color.

“There is scarcely any need to call attention to Crivelli’s special gift as a designer of decoration. Almost every square inch of his canvas attests the inexhaustible richness of his invention—an invention fed no doubt from the rich products of Oriental looms of which Venice was the emporium.

“Crivelli wrought only for the Church and appears to have spent most of his life at Ascoli, but neither restriction of subject and feeling, nor provincial residence, could fetter his genius. There is, indeed, no artist of more striking individuality than Carlo Crivelli, no one who had more complete mastery over his means of expression, or attained more nearly to his ideal. This ideal was not the ‘beau ideal’—that is to say, the perfection of physical beauty—it was an ideal of character, the embodiment of the essential qualities of his subject. One cannot help regarding Crivelli as a man of knowledge and intellect, of charming manners, refined almost to fastidiousness, delighting in all things dainty and beautiful, a lover of animals and of his kind.”

This picture, an oil painting on panel (38 × 17 inches), came from the Benson Collection, having been previously in the Collection of Mr. G. H. Marland (sold in 1863), and in the Collection of Mr. William Graham (sold in 1886). The Virgin, a small full-length figure, is seated on a red and white marble throne, wearing a pale-red robe and a gold brocade mantle lined with green carried up over the head, which is adorned with a white veil. The Holy Child, standing on her lap, has on a gold dress and a white sash. Behind these two figures there is a hanging of pale-red, watered silk and behind the throne again there is a gold hanging with the pomegranate pattern. The Holy Child turns to the right in the act of blessing. On the step of the throne, which has a conspicuous crack, two pears[16] are lying; and they have attracted a fly. The step is inscribed: “Carolvs Crivellvs Venetvs Pinsit, 1472.”

“The effect is archaic and almost Byzantine,” G. McNeil Rushforth writes in his Carlo Crivelli (London, 1900), “but its merits are very great.” “Though on a comparatively small scale the decorative effect is superb. The Child’s head is heavy and inferior to that of the Virgin, but the action is lively and realistic. The great charm, however, of the picture is the Virgin. Her features are not beautiful and the drawing of the hands might be criticized. But if ever grace and dignity were conceived and executed by Crivelli, they are here. Preëminently does this Virgin possess all that we understand by distinction. Taken separately, the turn of the head and the action of the fingers might be called affected. But they do not offend as parts of the whole, so perfectly has the artist defined the ideal that was before his mind. A curious feature in the picture is the treatment of the drapery. The folds of the brocaded mantle are more elaborate than anything which Crivelli had yet attempted, and they are expressed by clear-cut lines without any shadow.”

MADONNA AND CHILD.

This beautiful picture belongs to Crivelli’s greatest period, when the artist had reached the height of his powers, had attained perfect command of the problems of composition, and had gained the technique to represent those materials he delighted in,—such as brocades, marbles, and garlands of fruit, which he always combined with such decorative beauty. Roger Fry says of this picture: “It has, in a supreme degree, the delicacy and the almost metallic incisiveness of Crivelli’s contour as well as the firmness and brilliance of his painting. The Madonna supporting the Child upon her right arm, is seated in one of those sumptuous Renaissance thrones, which Crivelli loved to elaborate with every conceivable ingenuity of invention. Though the forms are intended to be Classic, it is evident from the proportions of the mouldings and something in the character of the detail that Crivelli is still essentially an old Venetian artist, one who uses Classical conventions with a Gothic exuberance.

“This is a work of Crivelli’s prime. Indeed, it would be hard to name another design in which he shows quite such mastery as he does here. There is hardly another work in which the sequence of lines is so suave, its flow so uninterrupted, or in which the movements of the figures harmonize so perfectly. It is already almost a cinque-cento work as regards the amplitude of its forms and the breadth of its divisions. One notes, for instance, that the fruits hanging on the throne are even more enlarged and more massed than usual, so that the quantities of relief support and carry out the relief of the figures in a remarkable manner. Much of the earlier intensity of feeling has undoubtedly gone. This has none of the strange, brooding pathos of the early Madonnas, nor has it the sharp individual accent of their faces. The works with which it appears to be most akin are the Vatican Madonna and the Triptych in the Brera, both of 1482.”

THE VIRGIN AND CHILD WITH ST. LUCY, ST. CATHERINE, ST. PETER AND ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST.

This is the type of group picture known as a “Holy Conversation” and represents the Virgin and Child with Saints. It seems to have been painted when Bellini was between seventy-two and seventy-seven years of age and between the years 1500 and 1505.

The figures are three-quarter length and under life-size and the picture, which is an oil painting on canvas, measures 38 × 60 inches. The Virgin is seated in the centre with a dark-grey curtain behind her and a marble balustrade in front of her. She wears a rose-colored tunic and a blue mantle lined with a changeable green and yellow silk. The Holy Child leans back against her right arm. On her right stands St. Catherine with a rope of pearls twisted in her hair and St. Lucy, on her left, wearing a myrtle wreath and holding a tall standing-cup of Venetian glass. St. John the Baptist, wearing a green mantle, stands on the right, looking downward with bended head; and St. Peter, in orange-brown cloak with book and key, stands on the left. A very decorative effect is derived from the palm-branches, which curve upwards into the top corners of the picture. A range of distant hills appears in the background and on the cartellino on the balustrade is the signature in script, “Ioannes Bellinus.”

Authority for dating the picture is derived from the fact that the features of St. Lucy reappear in the San Zaccaria altar-piece, which is dated 1505, and the features of St. John the Baptist occur in the Baptism of Christ in Santa Corona, Vicenza, supposed to have been begun in 1500.

The picture came from the Benson Collection, having been formerly in the Wynn Ellis Collection and in the Collection of Mr. William Graham.

The date of Giovanni Bellini’s birth is not known. He was working with his brother, Gentile, in his father’s studio in Padua and was painting in Venice in 1464, where he produced two pictures for the Scuola di San Girolamo. In 1475 he met Antonello da Messina, who came to Venice, and seems to have adopted then his method of painting in oil. In 1479, when Gentile Bellini went to Constantinople, Giovanni was appointed to carry on his work in the Doge’s Palace; and when Gentile returned the two brothers worked together. Giovanni was essentially a religious painter and his Madonnas stand among the finest ever created. Most of his portraits are lost; but one, the Doge Loredano (in the National Gallery, London), ranks as one of the finest of all known portraits. This dates from 1501, painted when Giovanni was over eighty! Giovanni died in 1516.

THE VIRGIN AND CHILD.

The Madonna at half-length turned towards the left, supports the Holy Child with both arms as He reclines in her lap against her right knee, which is raised. She is dressed in a blue mantle arranged to form a hood, with embroidered border. A graceful white veil, also embroidered, covers the head and falls below the neck.

The Holy Child gazes upward into his mother’s face and she, with eyes slightly veiled by drooping lids, looks tenderly downward towards him. The background is hilly, with a castle on the left. The picture, oil on a panel (28¾ × 23¾) is signed “Joannes Bellinus.”

This Bellini Madonna comes from the Collection of the Grand Dukes of Oldenburg, Oldenburg Castle, near Bremen, Germany, and was also formerly in the Collection of Count Montija in Madrid. Much has been written about Bellini’s Madonnas. They differ greatly from those painted by the Florentines; and the following sympathetic note tells us why:

“If we turn to the religious art of Venice, we shall be struck by a lack of anything like mystic rapture, or absorption in the sufferings of Christ. We have but two examples in Venice of Bellini’s portrayal of the facts of Christ’s mature life, but he has treated the theme of the Madonna and Child with a unique profundity. The mystery of life seems to be shadowed in the face of the Madonna; his saints and apostles, so striking in their individuality, so virile in their piety, have a significance beyond their perfect act of worship. No Venetian religious painter before Tintoretto equalled Bellini in solemnity and depth of conception; but in all we find the same pervading calm, the same absence of tumult, or the disturbing elements of pain or agony.”[17] Is it not the quietness of Bellini’s Madonnas that give them their peculiar charm?

MADONNA AND CHILD.

This picture came from the Collection of Prince Potenziani, of Rieti, Italy, and represents the Virgin standing behind a parapet and supporting the Holy Child who is standing upon it. Her mantle and tunic are decorated with a border of embroidery and over the mantle falls her heavy white veil which might be described as a hood, showing a little of her wavy hair. The face of the Virgin is a perfect oval, her eyes are set far apart, her nose is long and aquiline, and her mouth a little discontented. Her arm and wrist are beautifully modelled and so is the thumb of her right hand. This hand is noticeably wide. The left hand does not seem to match the right; it is coarser. The Holy Child is leaning against His mother’s left shoulder and looking out of the picture. He wears a little tunic over a white shirt with sleeves and a wide, blue sash with a striped pattern. A close-fitting cap is tied with ribbons under His chin. His right hand is lifted in blessing and His left is clasping the fingers of His mother’s right hand. On the right of the parapet a crystal ball is lying and on the left a capsicum-pod, and behind the Madonna’s head hangs a heavy swag of capsicum. The landscape in the background is noticeably fine. On the left, a road winds through trees to the gates of a city with high Gothic towers; on the right, a river flows past hills crowned with castles. Clouds fill the sky. The nimbi are quite unusual. This is evidently an early work and not a little of Mantegna’s influence is apparent in it.

THE FEAST OF THE GODS.

(Il Baccanale.)

“In the year 1514”—this is Vasari’s narrative—“Duke Alfonso of Ferrara had caused a little chamber to be decorated and had commissioned Dosso, the painter of Ferrara, to execute in certain compartments stories of Æneas, Mars, and Venus and, in a grotto, Vulcan with two smiths at the forge; and he desired that there should also be there pictures by the hand of Gian Bellini. Bellini painted on another wall a vat of red wine with some Bacchanale around it and Satyrs, musicians and other men and women all drunk with wine, and near them a nude and very beautiful Silenus riding on his ass, with figures about him that have their hands full of fruits and grapes; which work was in truth executed and colored with great diligence, inasmuch that it is one of the most beautiful pictures that Gian Bellini ever painted, although in the manner of the draperies there is a certain sharpness after the German manner (nothing, indeed, of any account) because he imitated a picture by the Fleming,[18] Albrecht Dürer, which had been brought in those days to Venice and placed in the Church of S. Bartolommeo, a rare work and full of most beautiful figures painted in oils. On that vat Gian Bellini wrote these words: ‘Joannes Bellinus Venetus P. 1514.’ That work he was not able to finish completely, because he was old, and Tiziano, as the most excellent of all the others, was sent for to the end that he might finish it.”

Titian’s work is to be found in the landscape-background,—which is an exact view of Titian’s own Cadore. This landscape, with its valley and rocky hill surmounted by a castle with towers, bathed in warm, luminous light, was the finest that had ever been painted up to that time. Bellini only lived two years after painting The Feast of the Gods. In 1515 he painted the so-called Venus of the Belvedere and he died in the following year.

“So easy is the passage from Bellini’s art to Titian’s, that the transition creates no contrast. The tone throughout is harmonized, and the art of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries meets and mingles in perfect fellowship,” Crowe and Cavalcaselle note.

This picture, an oil painting on canvas (67 × 74 inches) came from the Collection of the Duke of Northumberland at Alnwick Castle, England, having been previously in the Collection of Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini and in that of Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi, Rome.

These two villas, upon whose walls The Feast of the Gods hung for so many years, are very celebrated. The Villa Aldobrandini is one of the most notable residences near Rome. It is situated on the slope of a mountain overlooking Frascati and was built by Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini, who entrusted its decoration to the most eminent artists of his day, such as Jacopo della Porta, Domenichino, Giuseppe Gesari, and Giovanni Fontana. Here, too, were gathered the most precious relics of ancient art, while the gardens, adorned with vases, statues, colonnades, and sparkling fountains, made the exterior a place of marvellous beauty and charm. The view of mountains and sea suggested the name of Belvedere. The Villa belongs to-day to the Borghese family, who inherited it from the Aldobrandini.

The Villa Ludovisi, frequently called the Piombino Palace, is situated on the site of the ancient gardens of Sallust. This palace was erected in 1622 by Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi, nephew of Pope Gregory XV, who selected Domenichino for his architect and the famous Le Nôtre for his landscape-gardener. The property passed by inheritance to the Princess of Piombino (Buonocampagni-Ludovisi).

Art-lovers know the name in connection with the colossal and magnificent head of the Juno Ludovisi (Fifth Century, B. C.); and it will be remembered that the Juno Ludovisi and other antiques from the Villa Ludovisi formed the Museo Buonocompagni.

THE VIRGIN AND CHILD.

The Virgin, in profile, seated on a stone seat, has auburn hair—“Titian hair”—which is relieved against a dark-green curtain. Her robe is pale rose-color with slashes of white and her mantle of cobalt blue like the landscape, “which resembles the sea at midday.” She also wears a white veil. She is looking with great tenderness at the Holy Child, lying at full length on her lap and smiling at her.

The composition is most beautiful and the introduction of the trees gives perpendicular lines which contrast delightfully with the general horizontal effects.

Lionel Cust calls it a picture of great charm, as indeed it is, and says: “The Virgin leans tenderly over the Child lying upon her knees. This composition is treated in the same manner as the picture at Bergamo, the Virgin and Child with St. Bridgit and St. Ulphus, in the Prado at Madrid, and a few others. In all of these works the sentiment is that of Giorgione, even though the execution is of the hand of Titian; and one could not think of attaching another name than his to this picture and to that at Madrid. It will be noticed also that the two tree-trunks, so much in evidence at the back of the picture, constitute a leit-motiv, which Giorgione first employed and which Titian imitated.”