Giovanni Bellini.PIETÀ.Brera, Milan.(Photo, Brogi.)
Close by, at Padua, Giotto had left a rendering of the last subject, so full of passionate sorrow that it is hardly possible that it should not, if onlyhalf consciously, have stimulated the artistic sensibilities of the most sensitive of painters; but Bellini’s pathos shrinks from all exaggeration. He conceives grief with the tenderest insight. His interest in the subject was so intense that he never left the execution to others, and though not a single one bears his signature, yet each is entirely by his own hand. Besides the Pietà at Milan, which is perhaps the best known, there is one in the Correr Museum, another in the Doge’s Palace, and yet others at Rimini and at Berlin. The version he adopts, which places the Body of Christ within the sarcophagus, was a favourite in North Italy. Donatello uses it in a bas-relief (now in the Victoria and Albert Museum), but whether he brought or found the suggestion in Padua nothing exists to show. Jacopo has left sketches in which the whole group is within the tomb, and this rendering is followed by Carpaccio, Crivelli, Marco Zoppo, and others. It is never found in trecento art, and is probably traceable to the Paduan impulse to make use of classic remains.
Giovanni Bellini’s Pietàs fall into two groups. In one, the Christ is placed between the Virgin and St. John, who are embodiments of the agony of bereavement. In the other, the dead Redeemer is supported by angels, who express the amazement and grief of immortal beings who see their Lord suffering an indignity from which they are immune.
Mary and St. Johninsidethe sarcophagus shows that they are conceived mystically; Mary as the Church, and St. John as the personification of Christian Philosophy—a significance frequently attached to these figures. Such a picture was designed to hang over the altar, at which the mystical sacrifice of the Mass was perpetually offered.
In his treatment of the Brera example Bellini has shaken off the Paduan tradition, and is forming his own style and giving free play to his own feeling. The winding roads and evening sky, barred with clouds, are the accessories he used in the “Agony in the Garden,” but the figures are treated much more boldly; the drapery falls in broad masses, and scarcely a trace is left of sculpturesque treatment. Careful as is the study of the nude, everything is subordinated to the emotion expressed by the three figures: the helpless, indifferent calm of the dead, the tender solicitude of the Mother, the wandering, dazed look of the despairing friend. Here there is nothing of beautiful or pathetic symbol; the group is intense with the common sorrow of all the world. Mary presses the corpse to her as if to impart her own life, and gazes with anguished yearning on the beloved face. Bellini seems to have passed to a more complex age in his analysis of suffering, yet here is none of the extravagance which the primitive masters share with the Caracci: his restraint is as admirable as his intensity.
In the Rimini version the tender concern and questioning surprise of the attendant angels contrast with the inert weight of the beautiful dead body they support. Their childish limbs and butterfly wings make a sinuous pattern against the lacquered black of the ground-work, and Mr. Roger Fry makes the interesting suggestion that the effect, reminiscent of Greek vase-painting, and the likeness of the Head of Christ to an old bronze, may, in a composition painted for Sigismondo Malatesta, be no mere accident, but a concession to the patron’s enthusiasm for classic art.
In 1470 Bellini received his first commission in the Scuola di San Marco. Gentile had been employed there since 1466 on the history of the Israelites in the desert. Bellini agreed to paint “The Deluge and the Ark of Noah” with all its attendant circumstances, but of these, except from Vasari’s descriptions, we can form no idea. These great pageant-pictures had become identified with the Bellini and their following, while the production of altarpieces was peculiarly the province of the Vivarini. Here Bellini effected a change, for sacred subjects best suited the restrained and simple perfection of his style, and afforded the most sympathetic opening for his idealistic spirit. For the next twenty years or more, however, he was unavoidably absorbed in public work, for we hear of his being given the direction of that which Gentile left unfinishedin the Ducal Palace when he went to the East in 1479. In 1492, Giovanni being ill, Gentile superintended the work for him, and in that year he was appointed to paint in the Hall of the Grand Council, at an annual salary of sixty ducats. Other commissions were turned out of thebottegahe had set up with his brother in 1471, and between that year and 1480 he went to Pesaro to paint the important altarpiece that still holds its place there. It is in some ways the greatest and most powerful thing that Bellini ever accomplished. The central figures and the attendant saints have a large gravity and carefully studied individuality. St. Jerome, absorbed in his theological books, an ascetic recluse, is admirably contrasted with the sympathetic, cultured St. Paul. The landscape, set in a marble frame, is a gem of beauty, and proves what an appeal nature was making to the painter. The predella, illustrating the principal scenes in the lives of the saints around the altar, is full of Oriental costumes. The horses are small Eastern horses, very unlike the ponderous Italian war-horse, and the whole is evidently inspired by the sketches which Gentile brought back on his return from Constantinople in 1481.
Looking from one to another of the cycle of Madonna pictures which Bellini produced, and of which so many hang side by side in the Academy, we are able to note how his conception varied. In one of the earliest the Childlies across its Mother’s knee, in the attitude borrowed from his father and the Vivarini, from whom, too, he takes the uplifted hands, placed palm to palm. The earlier pictures are of the gentle and adoring type, but his later Madonnas are stately Venetian ladies. He gives us a queenly woman, with full throat and stately poise, in the Madonna degli Alberi, in which the two little trees are symbols of the Old and New Testament; or, again, he paints a lovely intellectual face with chiselled and refined features, and sad dark eyes, and contrasts it dramatically with the bluff St. George in armour; and there is another Madonna between St. Francis and St. Catherine, a picture which has a curious effect of artificial light.
GIOVANNI BELLINI(continued)
In 1497 the Maggior Consiglio of the Venetian Republic appointed Bellini superintendent of the Great Hall, and conferred on him the honourable title of State Painter. In this capacity he was the overseer of all public works of painting, and was expected to devote a part of his time to the decoration of the Hall. Sansovino enumerates nine of his historical paintings, which had been painted before the State appointment, all having reference to the visit of Pope Alexander; but though he must have been much engrossed, he seems to have suspended the work from time to time, for between 1485 and 1488 he painted the large altarpiece in the Frari, that at San Pietro in Murano, and the one in the Academy, which was painted for San Giobbe. Of these three, the last shows the greatest advance and is fullest of experiment. The Madonna is a grand ecclesiastical figure. It has been said with truth that it is a picture which must have afforded great support and dignity to the Church. TheInfant has an expression of omniscience, and the Mother gazes out of the picture, extending invitation and encouragement to the advancing worshippers. The religious feeling is less profound; the artist has been more absorbed in the contrast between the beautiful, youthful body of St. Sebastian and that of St. Giobbe, older but not emaciated, and with the exquisite surface that his now complete mastery of oil-painting enabled him to produce. This technique has evidently been a great delight, and is here carried to perfection; the skin of St. Sebastian gleams with a gloss like the coat of a horse in high condition. Everything that architecture, sculpture, and rich material can supply is borrowed to enhance the grandeur of the group; but the line of sight is still close to the bottom of the picture, and if it were not for the exquisite grace with which the angels are placed, the Madonna would have a broad, clumsy effect. The Madonna of the Frari is the most splendid in colour of all his works. As he paints the rich light of a golden interior and the fused and splendid colours, he seems to pass out of his own time and gives a foretaste of the glory that is to follow. The Murano altarpiece is quite a different conception; instead of the seclusion of the sanctuary, it is a smiling,plein airscene: the Mother benign, the Child soft and playful, the old Doge Barbarigo and the patron saints kneeling among bright birds, and agarden and mediæval townlet filling up the background, for which, by the way, he uses the same sketch as in the Pesaro picture. It says much for his versatility that he could within a short time produce three such different versions.
Among Bellini’s most fascinating achievements in the last years of the fifteenth century are his allegorical paintings, known to us by the “Pélerinage de l’Âme” in the Uffizi and the little series in the Academy. The meaning of the first has been unravelled by Dr. Ludwig from a mediæval poem by Guillaume de Guilleville, a Cistercian monk who wrote about 1335, and it is interesting to see the hold it has taken on Bellini’s mystic spirit. The paved space, set within the marble rail, signifies, as in the “Salvator Mundi,” the Paradise where souls await the Resurrection. The new-born souls cluster round the Tree of Life and shake its boughs. The poem says:
There is no pilgrim who is not sometimes sadWho has not those who wound his heart,And to whom it is not often necessaryTo play and be solacedAnd be soothed like a childWith something comforting.Know that those playingThere in order to allay their sorrowHave found beneath that treeAn apple that great comfort givesTo those that play with it.[2]
Giovanni Bellini.AN ALLEGORY.Florence.(Photo, Anderson.)
This may be an allusion to sacramental comfort. St. Peter and St. Paul guard the door, beside which the Madonna and a saint sit in holy conversation. A very beautiful figure on the left, wrapped in a black shawl, requires explanation, and it has been suggested that it is the donor, a woman who may have lost husband and children, and who, still in life, is introduced, watching the happiness of the souls in Paradise. SS. Giobbe and Sebastian, who might have stepped out of the San Giobbe altarpiece, are obviously the patron saints of the family, and St. Catherine, at the Virgin’s side, may be the donor’s own saint. This picture, with its delicious landscape bathed in atmospheric light, is a forerunner of those Giorgionesque compositions of “pure and unquestioning delight in the sensuous charm of rare and beautiful things” in which the artistic nature is even more engrossed than with the intellectual conception, and within its small space Bellini seems to have enshrined all his artistic creed. The allegories in the Academy are also full of meaning. They are decorative works, and were probably painted for some small cabinet. They seem too small for a cassone. They are ruined by over-painting, but still full of grace and fancy. The figure in the classic chariot, bearing fruit, in the encounter between Luxury and Industry, is drawn from Jacopo’s triumphant Bacchus. Fortune floats in her barque, holding the globe, and the soulswho gather round her are some full of triumphant success, others clinging to her for comfort, while several are sinking, overwhelmed in the dark waters. “Prudence,” the only example of a female nude in Bellini’s works, holds a looking-glass. Hypocrisy or Calumny is torn writhing from his refuge. The Summa Virtus is an ugly representation of all the virtues; a waddling deformity with eyes bound holds the scales of justice; the pitcher in its hand means prudence, and the gold upon its feet symbolises charity. The landscape, both of this and of the “Fortune,” resembles that which he was painting in his larger works at the end of the century. Soon after 1501 Bellini entered into relations with Isabela d’Este, Marchioness of Gonzaga. That distinguished collector and connoisseur writes through her agent to get the promise of a picture, “a story or fable of antiquity,” to be placed in position with the allegories which Mantegna had contributed to her “Paradiso.” Bellini agreed to supply this, and received twenty-five ducats on account. He seems, however, to have felt that he would be at a disadvantage in competing with Mantegna on his own ground, and asks to be allowed to choose his subject. Isabela was unwillingly obliged to content herself with a sacred picture, and a “Nativity” was selected. She is at once full of suggestions, desiring to add a St. John Baptist, whom Bellini demurs at introducing except as a child, but inApril 1504 the commission is still unaccomplished, and Isabela angrily demands the return of her money. This brings a letter of humble apology from Bellini, and presently the picture is forwarded. Lorenzo of Pavia writes that it is quite beautiful, and that “though Giovanni has behaved as badly as possible, yet the bad must be taken with the good.” The joy of its acquisition appeased Isabela, who at once began to lay plans to get a further work out of Bellini, and in 1505 Bembo wrote to her that he would take a fresh commission always providing he might fix the subject. From the catalogue of her Mantovan pictures we gather that the picture “sul asse” (on panel) represented the “B.V., il Putto, S. Giovanni Battista, S. Giovanni Evangelista, S. Girolamo, and Santa Caterina.”
The great altarpieces which remain strike us less by their research, their preoccupation with new problems of paint or grouping, than by their intense delight in beauty. Bellini was now nearly eighty years old, and in 1504 the young Giorgione had proclaimed a revolution in art with his Castelfranco Madonna. In composition and detail the Madonna of San Zaccaria is in some degree a protest against the Arcadian, innovating fashion of approaching a religious scene, of which the Church had long since decided on the treatment, yet Bellini cannot escape the indirect suggestion of the new manner. The same leaven was at workin him which was transforming the men of a younger generation. In this altarpiece, in the Baptism at Vicenza, in others, perhaps, which have perished, and above all in the hermit saint in S. Giovanni Crisostomo he is linked in feeling and in treatment with the later Venetian School.
The new device, which he adopts quite naturally, of raising the line of sight, sets the figures in increased depth. For the first time he gives height and majesty to the young Mother by carrying the draperies down over the steps. He realises to the full the contrast between the young, fragile heads of his girl-saints and the dark, venerable countenances of the old men. The head of S. Lucy, detaching itself like a flower upon its stem, reminds us of the type which we saw in his Watcher in the sacred allegory of the Uffizi. The arched, dome-like niche opens on a distance bathed in golden light. Bellini keeps the traditions of the old hieratic art, but he has grasped a new perfection of feeling and atmosphere. Who the saints are matters little; it is the collective enjoyment of a company of congenial people that pleases us so much. The “Baptism” in S. Corona, at Vicenza, painted sixteen years later than Cima’s in S. Giovanni in Bragora, is in frank imitation of the younger man. Christ and the Baptist, traditional figures, are drawn without much zest, in a weak, conventional way, but the artist’s true interest comes out in thebeauty of face and gesture of the group of women holding the garments, and above all in the sombre gloom of the distance, which replaces Cima’s charming landscape, and which keys the whole picture to the significance of a portent. In the enthronement of the old hermit, S. Chrysostom himself, painted in 1513, Bellini keeps his love for the golden dome, but he lets us look through its arch, at rolling mountain solitudes, with mists rising between their folds. The geranium robe of the saint, an exquisite, vivid bit of colouring, is caught by the golden sunset rays, the fine ascetic head stands out against the evening sky, and in the faces of the two saints who stand on either side of the aged visionary Bellini has gone back to all his old intensity of religious feeling, a feeling which he seemed for a time to have exchanged for a more pagan tone.
In 1507, at Gentile’s death, Giovanni undertook, at his brother’s dying request, to finish the “Preaching of St. Mark,” receiving as a recompense that coveted sketch-book of his father’s, from which he had adopted so many suggestions, and which, though he was the eldest, had been inherited by the legitimate son.
In the preceding year Albert Dürer had visited Venice for the second time, and Bellini had received him with great cordiality. Dürer writes, “Bellini is very old, but is still the best painter in Venice”; and adds, “The things Iadmired on my last visit, I now do not value at all.” Implying that he was able now to see how superior Bellini was to the hitherto more highly esteemed Vivarini.
At the very end of Bellini’s life, in 1514, the Duke of Ferrara paid him eighty-five ducats for a painting of “Bacchanals,” now at Alnwick Castle; which may be looked upon as an open confession by one who had always considered himself as a painter of distinctively religious works, that such a gay scene of feasting afforded opportunities which he could not resist, for beauty of attitude and colour; but the gods, sitting at their banquet in a sunny glade, are almost fully draped, and there is little of theabandonwhich was affected by later painters. The picture was left unfinished, and was later given to Titian to complete. In his capacity as State Painter to the Republic, it was Bellini’s duty to execute the official portraits of the Doges. During his long life he saw eleven reigns, and during four he held the State appointment. Besides the official, he painted private portraits of the Doges, and that of Doge Loredano, in the National Gallery, is one of the most perfect presentments of the quattrocento. This portrait, painted by one old man of another, shows no weakening in touch or characterisation. It is as brilliant and vigorous as it is direct and simple. The face is quiet and unexaggerated; there is no unnatural fire and feeling, but an airof accustomed dignity and thought, while the technique has all the perfection of the painter’s prime.
In 1516 Giovanni was buried in the Church of SS. Giovanni and Paolo, by the side of his brother Gentile. To the last he was popular and famous, overwhelmed with attentions from the most distinguished personages of the city. Though he had begun life when art showed such a different aspect, he was by nature so imbued with that temperament, which at the time of his death was beginning to assert itself in the younger school, that he was able to assimilate a really astonishing share of the new manner. He is guided by feeling more than by intellect. All the time he is working out problems, he is dominated by the emotion of his subject, but his emotion, his pathos, are invariably tempered and restrained by the calm moderation of the quattrocento. The golden mean still has command of Bellini, and never allows his feelings, however poignant, to degenerate into sentimentality or violence.
PRINCIPAL WORKS
Bergamo.Lochis: Madonna (E.).Morelli: Two Madonnas.Berlin.Pietà (L.); Dead Christ.Florence.Uffizi: Allegory; The Souls in Paradise (L.).London.Portrait of Doge (L.); Madonna (L.); Agony in Garden (E.); Salvator Mundi (E.).Milan.Brera: Pietà (E.); Madonna; Madonna, 1510.Mond Collection.Dead Christ; Madonna (E.).Murano.S. Pietro: Madonna with Saints and Doge Barbarigo, 1488.Naples.Sala Grande: Transfiguration.Pesaro.S. Francesco: Altarpiece.Rimini.Dead Christ (E.).Venice.Academy: Three Madonnas; Five small allegorical paintings (L.); Madonna with SS. Catherine and Magdalene; Madonna with SS. Paul and George; Madonna with five Saints.Museo Correr: Crucifixion (E.); Transfiguration (E.); Dead Christ; Dead Christ with Angels.Palazzo Ducale, Sala di Tre: Pietà (E.).Frari: Triptych; Madonna and Saints, 1488.S. Giovanni Crisostomo: S. Chrysostom with SS. Jerome and Augustine, 1513.S. Maria dell’ Orto: Madonna (E.).S. Zaccaria: Madonna and Saints, 1505.Vicenza.S. Corona: Baptism, 1510.
CIMA DA CONEGLIANO AND OTHER FOLLOWERS OF BELLINI
The rising tide of feeling, the growing sense of the joy of life and the apprehension of pure beauty, which was strengthening in the people and leading up to the great period of Venetian art, flooded round Bellini and recognised its expression in him. He was more popular and had a larger following among the artists of his day than either Gentile or Carpaccio with their frankly mundane talent. Whatever Giovanni’s State works may have been, his religious paintings are the ones which are copied and adapted and studied by the younger band of artists, and this because of their beauty and notwithstanding their conventional subjects. Gentile’s pageant-pictures have still something cold and colourless, with a touch of the archaic, while Giovanni’s religious altarpieces evince a new freedom of handling, a modern conception of beautiful women, a use of that colour which was soon to reign triumphant. As far as it went indeed, its triumph was alreadyassured; as Giovanni advanced towards old age, it was no longer of any use for the young masters of the day to paint in any way save the one he had made popular, and one artist after another who had begun in the school of Alvise Vivarini ended as the disciple of Giovanni Bellini.
It was the habit of Bellini to trust much to his assistants, and as everything that went out of his workshop was signed by his name, even if it only represented the use of one of his designs, or a few words of advice, and was “passed” by the master, it is no wonder that European collections were flooded with works, among which only lately the names of Catena, Previtali, Pennacchi, Marco Belli, Bissolo, Basaiti, Rondinelli, and others begin to be disentangled.
Only one of his followers stands out as a strong and original master, not quite of the first class, but developing his own individuality while he draws in much of what both Alvise and Bellini had to give. Cima da Conegliano, whose real name was Giovanni Battista, always signs himselfConeglianensis: the title of Cima, “the Rock,” by which he is now so widely known, having first been mentioned in the seventeenth century by Boschini, and perhaps given him by that writer himself. He was a son of the mountains, who, though he came early to Venice, and lived there most of his life, never loses something of their wild freshness, and tothe end delights in bringing them into his backgrounds. He lived with his mother at Conegliano, the beautiful town of the Trevisan marches, until 1484, when he was twenty-five, and then came down to Vicenza, where he fell under the tuition of Bartolommeo Montagna, a Vicentine painter, who had been studying both with Alvise and Bellini. Cima’s “Madonna with Saints,” painted for the Church of St. Bartolommeo, Vicenza, in 1489, shows him still using the old method of tempera, in a careful, cold, painstaking style, yet already showing his own taste. The composition has something of Alvise, yet that something has been learned through the agency of Montagna, for the figures have the latter’s severity and austere character and the colour is clearer and more crude than Alvise’s. It is no light resemblance, and he must have been long with Montagna. In the type of the Christ in Montagna’s Pietà at Monte Berico, in the fondness for airy porticoes, in the architecture and main features of his “Madonna enthroned” in the Museo Civico at Vicenza, we see characteristics which Cima followed, though he interpreted them in his own way. He turns the heavy arches and domes that Alvise loved, into airy pergolas, decked with vines. He gives increasing importance to high skies and to atmospheric distances. When he got to Venice in 1492, he began to paint in oils, and undertook the panel of S. JohnBaptist with attendant saints, still in the Church of S. Madonna dell’ Orto. The work of this is rather angular and tentative, but true and fresh, and he comes to his best soon after, in the “Baptism” in S. Giovanni in Bragora, which Bellini, sixteen years later, paid him the compliment of copying. It was quite unusual to choose such a subject for the High Altar, and could only be justified by devotion to the Baptist, who was Cima’s own name-saint as well as that of the Church. Cima is here at his very highest; the composition is not derived from any one else, but is all the conception of an ingenuous soul, full of intuition and insight. The Christ is particularly fine and simple, unexaggerated in pose and type; the arm of the Baptist is too long, but the very fault serves to give him a refined, tentative look, which makes a sympathetic appeal. The attendant angels look on with an air of sweet interest. The distant mountains, the undulating country, the little town of Conegliano, identified by the castle on its great rock, orCima, are Arcadian in their sunny beauty. The clouds, as a critic has pointed out, are full of sun, not of rain. The landscape has not the sombre mystery of Titian’s, but is bright with the joyous delight of a lover of outdoor life. As Cima masters the new medium he becomes larger and simpler, and his forms lose much of their early angularity. A confraternity of his native town ordered the grandaltarpiece which is still in the Cathedral there, and in this he shows his connection with Venice; the architecture is partly taken from St. Mark’s, the lovely Madonna head recalls Bellini, and a group of Bellinesque angels play instruments at the foot of the throne. Cima is, however, never merged in Bellini. He keeps his own clearly defined, angular type; his peculiar, twisted curls are not the curls of Bellini’s saints, his treatment of surface is refined, enamel-like, perfectly finished, but it has nothing of the rich, broken treatment which Bellini’s natural feeling for colour was beginning to dictate. Cima’s pale golden figures have an almost metallic sharpness and precision, and though they are full of charm and refinement, they may be thought lacking in spontaneity and passion. To 1501 belongs the “Incredulity of St. Thomas,” now in the Academy, but painted for the Guild of Masons. It is a picture full of expression and dignity, broad in treatment if a little cold in its self-restraint. Cima seems to have not quite enough intellect, and not quite enough strong feeling. However, the little altarpiece of the Nativity, in the Church of the Carmine in Venice, has a richer, fuller touch, and this foreshadows the work he did when he went to Parma, where his transparent shadows grow broader and stronger, and his figures gain in ease and freedom. He never loses the delicate radiance of his lights, and his types andhis architecture alike convey something of a peculiarly refined, brilliant elegance.
Like all these men of great energy and prolific genius, Cima produced an astonishing number of panels and altarpieces, and no doubt had pupils on his own account, for a goodly list could be made of pictures in his style, but not by his own hand, which have been carried by collectors into widely-scattered places. His exquisite surface and finish and his marked originality make him a difficult master to imitate with any success. His latest work is dated 1508, but Ridolfi says he lived till 1517, and it seems probable that he returned to his beloved Conegliano and there passed his last years.
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. They worked away on traditional compositions, frankly introducing figures from their master’s cartoons, modifying a type here, making some little experiment or arrangement there, and, as a French critic puts it, leaving their own personality to “hatch out” in due time, if it existed, and when it was sufficiently ripened by real mastery of their art. It is here that Catena fails; beginning as a journeyman in the Sala del Gran Consiglio, at a salary of three ducats a month, he for long failed toacquire the absolute mastery of drawing which was possessed by the better disciples of the schools. But he is painstaking, determined to get on, and eager to satisfy the continually increasing demand for work. His draperies are confused and unmeaning, his faces round, with small features, inexpressive button mouths, and weak chins, and his flesh tints have little of the glow which is later the prerogative of every second-rate painter. Yet Catena succeeds, like many another careful mediocre man, in securing patronage, and as the sixteenth century opened he gained the distinction from Doge Loredano of a commission to paint the altarpiece for the Pregadi Chapel of the Sala di Tre, in the Ducal Palace. He adapts his group from that of Bellini in the Cathedral of Murano, bringing in a profile portrait of the kneeling Doge, of which he afterwards made numerous copies, one of which was for long assigned to Gentile and one to Giovanni Bellini.
That Catena is not without charm, we discern in such a composition as his “Martyrdom of St. Cristina,” in S. Maria Mater Domini, in which the saint, a solid, Bellinesque figure, kneels upon the water, in which she met her death, and is surrounded by little angels, holding up the millstone tied round her neck, and laden with other instruments of her martyrdom. Catena borrows right and left, and tries to follow every new indication of contemporarytaste. For instance, he remarks the growing admiration for colour, and hopes by painting gay, flat tints, in bright contrast, to produce the desired effect.
It is evident that he made many friends among the rich connoisseurs of the time, and that his importance was out of proportion to his real merit. Marcantonio Michele, writing an account of Raphael’s last days to a friend in Venice, and touching on Michelangelo’s illness, begs him to see that Catena takes care of himself, “as the times are unfavourable to great painters.” Catena had acquired and inherited considerable wealth; he came of a family of merchants, and resided in his own house in San Bartolommeo del Rialto. He lived in unmarried relations with Dona Maria Fustana, the daughter of a furrier, to whom he bequeaths in his will 300 ducats and all his personal effects. As a careful portrait-painter, with a talent for catching a likeness, he was in constant demand, and in some of his heads—that of a canon dressed in blue and red, at Vienna, and especially in one of a member of the Fugger family, now at Dresden—he attains real distinction. And in his last phase he does at length prove the power that lies behind long industry and perseverance. Suddenly the Giorgionesque influence strikes him, and turning to imbibe this new element, he produces that masterpiece which throws a glamour over all his mediocre performances;his “Warrior adoring the Infant Christ,” in the National Gallery, is a picture full of charm, rich and romantic in tone and spirit. The Virgin and the Child upon her knee are of his dull round-eyed type, the form and colours of her draperies are still unsatisfactory, but the knight in armour with his Eastern turban, the romantic young page, holding his horse, are pure Giorgionesque figures. Beautiful in themselves, set in a beautiful landscape glowing with light and air, the whole picture exemplifies what surprising excellence could be suddenly attained by even very inferior artists, who were constantly associating with greater men, at a moment when the whole air was, as it were, vibrating with genius.
Catena was very much addicted to making his will, and at least five testaments or codicils exist, one of them devising a sum of money for the benefit of the School of Painters in Venice, and another leaving to his executor, Prior Ignatius, the picture of a “St. Jerome in his Cell,” which may be the one in our national collection, which remained in Venice till 1862. It is painted in his gay tones, imitating Basaiti and Lotto, and brings in the partridge of which he made a sort of sign manual.
Cardinal Bembo writes in 1525 to Pietro Lippomano, to announce that, at his request, he is continuing his patronage of Catena:
Though I had done all that lay in my power forVincenzo Catena before I received your Lordship’s warm recommendation in his favour, I did not hesitate, on receipt of your letter, to add something to the first piece I had from him, and I did so because of my love and reverence for you, and I trust that he will return appropriate thanks to you for having remembered that you could command me.
Though I had done all that lay in my power forVincenzo Catena before I received your Lordship’s warm recommendation in his favour, I did not hesitate, on receipt of your letter, to add something to the first piece I had from him, and I did so because of my love and reverence for you, and I trust that he will return appropriate thanks to you for having remembered that you could command me.
Marco Basaiti was alternately a journeyman in different workshops and a master on his own account. For long the assistant and follower of Alvise Vivarini, we may judge that he was also his most trusted confidant, for to him was left the task of completing the splendid altarpiece to S. Ambrogio, in the Frari. His heavy hand is apparent in the execution, and the two saints, Sebastian and Jerome, in the foreground, have probably been added by him, for they have the air of interlopers, and do not come up to the rest of the company in form and conception. The Sebastian, with his hands behind his back and his loin cloth smartly tied, is quite sufficiently reminiscent of Bellini’s figure of 1473 to make us believe that Basaiti was at once transferring his allegiance to that reigning master. In his earlier phase he has the round heads and the dry precise manner of the Muranese. In his large picture in the Academy, the “Calling of the Sons of Zebedee,” he produces a large, important set piece, cold and lifeless, without one figure which arrests us, or lingers in the memory. “The Christ on the Mount”is more interesting as having been painted for San Giobbe, where Bellini’s great altarpiece was already hanging, and coming into competition with Bellini’s early rendering of the same scene. Painted some thirty years later, it is interesting to see what it has gained in “modernness.” The landscape and trees are well drawn and in good colour, and the saints, standing on either side of a high portico, have dignity. In the “Dead Christ,” in the Academy, he is following Bellini very closely in the flesh-tints and theputti. Theputti, looking thoughtfully at the dead, is amotifbeloved of Bellini, but Basaiti cannot give them Bellini’s pathos and significance; they are merely childish and seem to be amused.
In 1515 Basaiti has entered upon a new phase. He has felt Giorgione’s influence, and is beginning to try what he can do, while still keeping close to Bellini, to develop a fuller touch, more animated figures, and a brilliant effect of landscape. He runs a film of vaporous colour over his hard outlines and makes his figures bright and misty, and though underneath they are still empty and monotonous, it is not surprising that many of his works for a time passed as those of Bellini. Though he is a clever imitator, “his figures are designed with less mastery, his drawing is a little less correct, his drapery less adapted to the under form. Light and shade are not so cleverly balanced,colours have the brightness, but not the true contrast required. In landscape he proceeds from a bleak aridity to extreme gaiety; he does not dwell on detail, but his masses have neither the sober tint nor the mysterious richness conspicuous in his teacher ... he is a clever instrument.” Both Previtali and Rondinelli were workers with Basaiti in Bellini’s studio. Previtali occasionally signed himself Andrea Cordeliaghi or Cordella, and has left many unsigned pictures. He copies Catena and Lotto, Palma and Montagna; but for a time his work went forth from Bellini’s workshop signed with Bellini’s name. In 1515, in a great altarpiece in San Spirito at Bergamo, he first takes the title of Previtali, compiling it in the cartello with the monogram already used as Cordeliaghi. There are traces of many other minor artists at this period, all essaying the same manner, copying one or other of the masters, taking hints from each other. The Venetian love of splendour was turning to the collection of works of art, and the work of second-class artists was evidently much in demand and obtained its meed of admiration. Bissolo was a fellow-labourer with Catena in the Hall of the Ducal Palace in 1492; he is soft and nerveless, but he copies Bellini, and has imbibed something of his tenderness of spirit.
It will be seen from this list how difficult it is to unravel the tale of the false Bellinis. Themaster’s own works speak for themselves with no uncertain voice, but away from these it is very difficult to pronounce as to whether he had given a design, or a few touches, or advice, and still more difficult to decide whether these were bestowed on Basaiti in his later manner, or on Previtali or Bissolo, or if the teaching was handed on by them in a still more diluted form to the lesser men who clustered round, much of whose work has survived and has been masquerading for centuries under more distinguished names. It is sometimes affirmed that the loss of originality in the endeavour to paint like greater men has been a symptom of decay in every school in the past. It is interesting to notice, therefore, that in every great age of painting there has always been an undercurrent of imitation, which has helped to form a stream of tradition, and which, as far as we can see, has done no harm to the stronger spirits of the time.
PRINCIPAL WORKS
Cima.
Berlin.Madonna with four Saints; Two Madonnas.Conegliano.Duomo: Madonna and Saints, 1493.Dresden.The Saviour; Presentation of Virgin.London.Two Madonnas; Incredulity of S. Thomas; S. Jerome.Milan.Brera: Six pictures of Saints; Madonna.Parma.Madonna with Saints; Another; Endymion; Apollo and Marsyas.Paris.Madonna with Saints.Venice.Academy: Madonna with SS. John and Paul; Pietà; Madonna with six Saints; Incredulity of S. Thomas; Tobias and the Angel.Carmine: Adoration of the Shepherds.S. Giovanni in Bragora: Baptism, 1494; SS. Helen and Constantine; Three Predelle; Finding of True Cross.SS. Giovanni and Paolo: Coronation of the Virgin.S. Maria dell’ Orto: S. John Baptist and SS. Paul, Jerome, Mark, and Peter.Lady Layard. Madonna with SS. Francis and Paul; Madonna with SS. Nicholas of Bari and John Baptist.Vicenza.Madonna with SS. Jerome and John, 1489.
Vincenzo Catena.
Bergamo.Carrara: Christ at Emmaus.Berlin.Portrait of Fugger; Madonna, Saints, and Donor (E.).Dresden.Holy Family (L.).London.Warrior adoring Infant Christ (L.); S. Jerome in his Study (L.); Adoration of Magi (L.).Mr. Benson: Holy Family.Lord Brownlow: Nativity.Mond Collection: Madonna, Saints, and Donors (E.).Paris.Venetian Ambassadors at Cairo.Venice.Ducal Palace: Madonna, Saints, and Doge Loredan (E.).Giovanelli Palace: Madonna and Saints.S. Maria Mater Domini: S. Cristina.S. Trovaso: Madonna.Vienna.Portrait of a Canon.
Marco Basaiti.
Bergamo.The Saviour, 1517; Two Portraits.Berlin.Pietà; Altarpiece; S. Sebastian; Madonna (E.).London.S. Jerome; Madonna.Milan.Ambrosiana: Risen Christ.Munich.Madonna, Saints, and Donor (E.).Murano.S. Pietro: Assumption.Padua.Portrait, 1521; Madonna with SS. Liberale and Peter.Venice.Academy: Saints; Dead Christ; Christ in the Garden, 1510; Calling of Children of Zebedee, 1510.Museo Correr: Madonna and Donor; Christ and Angels.Salute: S. Sebastian.Vienna.Calling of Children of Zebedee, 1515.
Andrea Previtali.