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Life |
Early career |
Giovanni Bellini was born in Venice. The painter Jacopo Bellini had long been considered Giovanni's father, but the art historian Daniel Wallace Maze has advanced the theory that in fact, Jacopo was his much elder brother. Nonetheless, Giovanni was brought up in Jacopo's house. He always lived and worked in the closest fraternal relationship with his elder brother, Gentile. His paintings from the early period are all executed in the old tempera method: the scene is softened by a new and beautiful effect of romantic sunrise colour (as, for example, in the St. Jerome in the Desert). |
In a changed and more personal manner, he drew Dead Christ paintings (in these days one of the master's most frequent themes e.g. Dead Christ Supported by the Madonna and St. John, or Pietà), with less harshness of contour, a broader treatment of forms and draperies and less force of religious feeling. Giovanni's early works have often been linked both compositionally and stylistically to those of Andrea Mantegna, his brother-in-law. |
In 1470 Giovanni received his first appointment to work along with his elder brother, Gentile, and other artists in the Scuola di San Marco, where among other subjects he was commissioned to paint a Deluge with Noah's Ark. None of the master's works of this kind, whether painted for the various schools or confraternities or for the ducal palace, has survived. |
Maturity |
To the decade following 1470 must probably be assigned the Transfiguration now in the Capodimonte Museum of Naples, repeating with greatly ripened powers and in a much serener spirit the subject of his early effort at Venice. |
Also likely from this period is the great altarpiece of the Coronation of the Virgin at Pesaro, which would seem to be his earliest effort in a form of art previously almost monopolized in Venice by the rival school of the Vivarini. |
As is the case with a number of his brother, Gentile's public works of the period, many of Giovanni's great public works are now lost. The still more famous altarpiece painted in tempera for a chapel in the church of S. Giovanni e Paolo, where it perished along with Titian's Peter Martyr and Tintoretto's Crucifixion in the disastrous fire of 1867. |
After 1479–1480 much of Giovanni's time and energy must also have been taken up by his duties as conservator of the paintings in the great hall of the Doge's Palace. The importance of this commission can be measured by the payment Giovanni received: he was awarded, first the reversion of a broker's place in the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, and afterwards, as a substitute, a fixed annual pension of eighty ducats. Besides repairing and renewing the works of his predecessors, he was commissioned to paint a number of new subjects, six or seven in all, in further illustration of the part played by Venice in the wars of Frederick Barbarossa and the pope. These works, executed with much interruption and delay, were the object of universal admiration while they lasted, but not a trace of them survived the fire of 1577; neither have any other examples of his historical and processional compositions come down, enabling us to compare his manner in such subjects with that of his brother Gentile. |
Of the other, the religious class of his work, including both altarpieces with many figures and simple Madonnas, a considerable number have been preserved. They show him gradually throwing off the last restraints of the Quattrocento manner; gradually acquiring a complete mastery of the new oil medium introduced in Venice by Antonello da Messina about 1473, and mastering with its help all, or nearly all, the secrets of the perfect fusion of colours and atmospheric gradation of tones. The old intensity of pathetic and devout feeling gradually fades away and gives place to a noble, if more worldly, serenity and charm. The enthroned Virgin and Child (such as the one at left) become tranquil and commanding in their sweetness; the personages of the attendant saints gain in power, presence and individuality; enchanting groups of singing and viol-playing angels symbolize and complete the harmony of the scene. The full splendour of Venetian colour invests alike the figures, their architectural framework, the landscape and the sky. |
High Renaissance |
An interval of some years, no doubt chiefly occupied with work in the Hall of the Great Council, seems to separate the San Giobbe Altarpiece, and that of the church of San Zaccaria at Venice. Formally, the works are very similar, so a comparison between them serves to illustrate the shift in Bellini's work over the last decade of the fifteenth century. Both paintings are of the Holy Conversation (sacred conversation between the Madonna and Saints) type. Both show the Madonna seated on a throne (thought to allude to the throne of Solomon), between classicizing columns. Both place the holy figures beneath a golden mosaicked half dome that recalls the Byzantine architecture in the basilica of St. Mark. |
In the later work, Bellini depicts the Virgin surrounded by (from left): St. Peter holding his keys and the Book of Wisdom; the virginal St. Catherine and St. Lucy closest to the Virgin, each holding a martyr's palm and her implement of torture (Catherine a breaking wheel, and Lucy a dish with her eyes); St. Jerome, with a book symbolizing his work on the Vulgate. |
Stylistically, the lighting in the San Zaccaria piece has become so soft and diffuse that it makes that in the San Giobbe appear almost raking in contrast. Giovanni's use of the oil medium had matured, and the holy figures seem to be swathed in a still, rarefied air. The San Zaccaria is considered perhaps the most beautiful and imposing of all Giovanni's altarpieces, and is dated 1505, the year following that of Giorgione's Madonna of Castelfranco. |
Other late altarpieces with saints include that of the church of San Francesco della Vigna at Venice, 1507; that of La Corona at Vicenza, a Baptism of Christ in a landscape, 1510; and that of San Giovanni Crisostomo at Venice of 1513. |
Of Giovanni's activity in the interval between the altarpieces of San Giobbe and San Zaccaria, there are a few minor works left, although the great mass of his output perished with the fire of the Doge's Palace in 1577. The last ten or twelve years of the master's life saw him besieged with more commissions than he could well complete. Already in the years 1501–1504 the marchioness Isabella Gonzaga of Mantua had experienced great difficulty in obtaining delivery from him of a painting of the Madonna and Saints (now lost) for which part payment had been made in advance. |
In 1505 she endeavoured through Cardinal Bembo to obtain from him another painting, this time of a secular or mythological character. What the subject of this piece was, or whether it was delivered, we do not know. |
Albrecht Dürer, visiting Venice for a second time in 1506, describes Giovanni Bellini as still the best painter in the city, and as full of all courtesy and generosity toward foreign brethren of the brush. |
In 1507 Bellini's brother Gentile died, and Giovanni completed the painting of the Preaching of St. Mark which his brother had left unfinished; a task on the fulfilment of which the bequest by the elder brother to the younger of Jacopo's sketch-book had been made conditional. |
In 1513 Giovanni's position as sole master (since the death of Gentile and of Alvise Vivarini) in charge of the paintings in the Hall of the Great Council was threatened by one of his former pupils. Young Titian desired a share of the same undertaking, to be paid for on the same terms. Titian's application was granted, then after a year rescinded, and then after another year or two granted again; and the aged master must no doubt have undergone some annoyance from his sometime pupil's proceedings. In 1514 Giovanni undertook to paint The Feast of the Gods for the duke Alfonso I of Ferrara. |
Bellini died on 29 November 1516 (a date is given by Marin Sanudo on his diary). He was interred in the Basilica di San Giovanni e Paolo, a traditional burial place of the doges. |
Assessment |
Both in the artistic and worldly sense, the career of Bellini was, on the whole, very prosperous. His long career began with Quattrocento styles, but matured into the progressive post-Giorgione Renaissance styles. He lived to see his own school far outshine that of his rivals, the Vivarini of Murano; he embodied, with 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, equalled or even surpassed their master. Bellini outlived Giorgione by five years; Titian, as we have seen, challenged him, claiming an equal place beside his teacher. Other pupils of the Bellini studio included Girolamo Galizzi da Santacroce, Vittore Belliniano, Rocco Marconi, Andrea Previtali and possibly Bernardino Licinio. |
Bellini was essential to the development of the Italian Renaissance for his incorporation of aesthetics from Northern Europe. Significantly influenced by Antonello da Messina and contemporary trends such as oil painting, Bellini introduced the pala, or single-panel altarpieces, to Venetian society with his work Coronation of the Virgin. Certain details in this piece, such as breaks in the modelling of figures and shadows, imply that Bellini was still working to master the use of oil. This painting also differs from previous coronation scenes as it appears as a "window" to a natural scene, and excludes the typical accompanying paradise hosts. The simple scenery allows viewers to relate with more ease to the scene itself than before, reflecting Alberti's humanist and inventio concepts. He also used the disguised symbolism integral to the Northern Renaissance. Bellini was able to master the Antonello style of oil painting and surface texture and to use this skill to create a refined and distinctly Venetian approach to painting. He blends this new technique with Venetian and Byzantine traditions (previously influencing art in the city) of iconography and colour to create a spiritual theme not found in Antonello's pieces. The realism of oil painting coupled with the religious traditions of Venice were unique elements to Bellini's style, which set him apart as one of the most innovative painters in the Venetian Renaissance. As demonstrated in such works as St. Francis in Ecstasy (c. 1480) and the San Giobbe Altarpiece (c. 1478), Bellini makes use of religious symbolism through natural elements, such as grapevines and rocks. Yet his most important contribution to art lies in his experimentation with the use of colour and atmosphere in oil painting. |
In 1822, German artist and composer Therese Emilie Henriette Winkel copied Bellini's work Christ Blessing for an altarpiece for the Brockwitz church in Dresden, Germany, which is still preserved today. |
Spanish Museums own a scarce, but high-quality, presence of his works. The Prado Museum owns a Virgin and child between two Saints, with the collaboration of the workshop. The Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum preserves a Nunc Dimittis, and The Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando holds a Saviour. |
References |
Further reading |
Roger Fry, Giovanni Bellini (At the Sign of the Unicorn, 1899; Ursus Press, 1995). |
Rona Goffen, Giovanni Bellini (Yale University Press, 1989). |
Ronda Kasl, ed., Giovanni Bellini and the Art of Devotion (Indianapolis Museum of Art, 2004) |
Oskar Batschmann, Giovanni Bellini (London, Reaktion Books, 2008). |
Antonio Mazzotta, Giovanni Bellini's Dudley Madonna (Paul Holberton publishing, 2012) |
Carolyn C. Wilson (ed.), Examining Giovanni Bellini: An Art "More Human and More Divine" (Brepols, 2015). (ISBN 978-2-503-53570-8)[1] |
Giorgio Vasari, Carlo Ridolfi, Marco Boschini, Isabella d'Este, Lives of Giovanni Bellini, Frank Dabell, trans., Davide Gasparotto, ed. (J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 2018) |
Peter Humfrey, Giovanni Bellini: An Introduction (Marsilio Editori, 2021). (ISBN 978-8829709434) |
External links |
Giovanni Bellini biography, style and critical reception |
Giovanni Bellini in "A World History of Art" |
The National Gallery |
Web Gallery of Art |
Biblical art by Bellini |
National Gallery of Art |
Masters in Art online |
Carl Brandon Strehlke, "Virgin and Child by Giovanni Bellini (cat. 165)" in The John G. Johnson Collection: A History and Selected Works, a Philadelphia Museum of Art free digital publication. |
Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione (baptized 23 March 1609 – 5 May 1664) was an Italian Baroque painter, printmaker and draftsman, of the Genoese school. He is best known now for his etchings, and as the inventor of the printmaking technique of monotyping. He was known as Il Grechetto in Italy and in France as Le Benédette. |
He painted portraits, history paintings and landscapes, but came to specialize in rural scenes with more animals than human figures. Noah's ark and the animals entering the Ark was a favourite subject of his, and he devised a number of other new subjects from the early parts of the Old Testament with the patriarchs and their animals. |
Biography |
Castiglione was born in Genoa. The biographer of Genoese painters, Raffaele Soprani says his parents had him placed in the studio of Giovanni Battista Paggi. Wittkower describes him as a "passionate student" of Anthony van Dyck, who arrived in 1621, and Peter Paul Rubens, who stayed in the city in the first decade of the 17th century and whose paintings were readily accessible there. He may have trained under the Genoese Bernardo Strozzi. He lived in Rome from 1634 to about 1645, then returned to Genoa. He also traveled to Florence and Naples. He was back in Rome in 1647, before moving in 1651 to be a court artist in Mantua for Duke Carlo II and his wife Isabella Chiara de Austria. He died in Mantua. |
He had various brushes with the law in his lifetime. The Queen's Gallery in London, where an exhibition of his work was held in 2013, made the following statement: "Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione was also a violent and impetuous man, who was repeatedly in court for assault, allegedly attempted to throw his sister off a roof and was forced to leave Rome, probably after committing murder. |
The turbulence that characterised his life overshadowed his artistic brilliance, and Castiglione struggled to achieve recognition in his lifetime. Much of what is known about the artist is derived not from fulfilled commissions, but from court documents." |
Works |
Castiglione was a brilliant draftsman and pioneered the development of the oil sketch (often using a mixture of mediums) as a finished work - previously they had been used only for working studies for another finished piece, for example by Rubens. He returned to the same subjects over and over again, as both paintings and etchings, but with significantly different compositions each time. |
He also executed some sixty etchings, arguably the most famous of which is The Genius of Castiglione, published by Giovanni Giacomo de Rossi in 1648. Diogenes searching for a Man is another of the principal of these; others are about religious themes. Some are moralistic stories such as that of the blind leading the blind[1] Archived 2020-04-06 at the Wayback Machine. The etchings are remarkable for light and shade, and have even earned for Castiglione the name of a second Rembrandt. He was exposed to Rembrandt's etching by 1630. |
In about 1648 he invented the monotype, the only printmaking technique to be an Italian invention, making over twenty over the succeeding years. His most popular and influential prints were a series of exotic heads, mostly of vaguely Oriental males, but also of women. These were produced in great numbers. Among the subjects of his etchings are Diogenes with his lantern, Noah leading animals into Arc, St Joseph Asleep during Flight from Egypt, Circe surrounded by animals, Silenus at the fountain, Nativity, Resurrection of Lazarus, and The Genius of Castiglione. |
Castiglione was famous for his ability to paint animals, mostly farm animals, and they were often a dominant motif in his paintings. For example, in the painting of Jesus clearing the temple of Moneylenders, the religious event is a minor, background part of the painting, the stampede of animals is far more prominent than the scattering of bankers. Castiglione's attention to detail in the depiction of nature is regarded as proof of the influence of Scorza and the Flemish still life and animal painter Jan Roos who was a long-term resident of Genoa. It has been suggested that it was Jan Roos who convinced Castiglione to enliven his religious and mythological compositions with animal and still-life elements. |
In Mantua, he received his name of Grechetto, from the classic air of his pastoral depictions. In his later years, he was severely afflicted by gout. His brother Salvatore and his son Francesco excelled in the same subjects; and it is thought that many paintings which are ascribed to Benedetto are only copies after him, or perhaps originals by his son or brother. He also influenced Anton Maria Vassallo (c1640-60). Among those who engraved after him were Giovanni Lorenzo Bertolotto in Genoa, the Venetian Anton Maria Zanetti, Michele l'Asne, Louis de Chatillon, and Coreneille Coemans. |
His paintings are to be found in Rome, Venice, Naples, Florence, and more especially Genoa and Mantua. The Presepio (Nativity of Jesus) for the church of San Luca, Genoa, ranks among his most celebrated paintings, and the Louvre contains eight characteristic examples. He painted a SS. Mary Magdalene and Catharine for the church of the Madonna di Castello and St. James defeats the Moors for the Oratorio di San Giacomo della Marina, both in Genoa. |
Gallery |
Notes |
Sources |
Standring, Timothy J.; Clayton, Martin (2013). Castiglione: Lost Genius (PDF). London: Royal Collection Trust. ISBN 978-1-905686-77-3. |
Wittkower, Rudolf (1993). Pelican History of Art, Art and Architecture Italy, 1600-1750. Penguin Books. pp. 353–355. |
Jeutter, E. (2004). Zur Problematik der Rembrandt-Rezeption im Werk des Genuesen Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione (Genua 1609-1664 Mantua): eine Untersuchung zu seinem Stil und seinen Nachwirkungen im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert (in German). VDG. ISBN 978-3-89739-466-7. Retrieved 2017-08-04. |
Soprani, Raffaele; Ratti, Carlo Giuseppe (1768). Vite de' pittori, scultori ed architetti genovesi. Italica gens (in Italian). Forni. pp. 308–315. Retrieved 2017-08-04. |
External links |
Gallery of etchings |
Genoa : drawings and prints, 1530-1800, fully digitized text from The Metropolitan Museum of Art libraries (see index) |
Giovanni Biliverti (surname also written as Bilivelt and Bilivert or other variants; 25 August 1585 – 16 July 1644) was an Italian painter of the late-Mannerism and early-Baroque period, active mainly in his adoptive city of Florence, as well as Rome. |
Life and work |
He was born in Maastricht. His father, Jacques Bylivelt (born Jacob Janszoon Bijlevelt; also known as Giacomo Giovanni Biliverti), was a painter and goldsmith from Delft, who went to Florence, where he worked for Ferdinando I de' Medici. |
Biliverti began as an apprentice in the workshops of Alessandro Casolani, in Siena. After his father's death in 1603, he worked in the studios of Lodovico Cardi (known as "Cigoli"), in Rome, from 1604 until 1607. During that time, they worked on commissions from Pope Clement VIII. In 1609, he joined the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno, which was sponsored by the Medicis. |
In 1611, he created his first independent work, a martyrdom of Saint Callistus for the Benedictines. He was employed by Cosimo II de' Medici from 1611 until 1621, as a designer for the inlay technique known as "pietra dura". |
His Grateful Tobias and Chastity of Joseph (c. 1618) may be found in the Palatine Gallery of the Palazzo Pitti. In 1621, he painted a portrayal of Saint Helena discovering the Holy Cross, for the Basilica of Santa Croce. His Hagar in the Desert is displayed in the Hermitage Museum. His Christ and the Samaritan Woman is at the Belvedere. |
Late in life, he became blind. He died in Florence in 1644. His students included Cecco Bravo, Agostino Melissi, Baccio del Bianco, Giovanni Maria Morandi and Orazio Fidani. |
References |
Bryan, Michael (1886). Robert Edmund Graves (ed.). Dictionary of Painters and Engravers, Biographical and Critical. Vol. I: A-K. London: George Bell and Sons. p. 128. |
Further reading |
Hans Geisenheimer, "Biliverti, Giovanni (auch „Bilivelti“ und „Birivelti“, Giovanni-Antonio)", Thieme-Becker, Vol. 4, p. 28 |
Goffredo Hoogewerff: "Bilivert, Giovanni", In: Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Vol. 10, Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana, 1968 (Online @ Treccani). |
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