The Venetian School of Painting Part 3

Brescia. Annunciation and Predelle.

Verona. Christ on Cross.

Venice. Academy: Madonna.

Museo Correr: Crucifixion.

London. British Museum: Sketch-book.

Paris. Madonna and Leonello d' Este: Sketch-book.

CHAPTER VII

CARLO CRIVELLI

We must turn aside from the main stream when we come to speak of Carlo Crivelli, who, important master as he was, occupies a place by himself.

A pupil of the Vivarini and perhaps, as we have noted, of Antonio Negroponte, Crivelli was profoundly influenced by the Paduans, from whom he learned that metallic, finished quality of paint which he carried to perfection. Crivelli shows intellect, individuality, even genius, in the way in which he grapples with his medium and produces his own reading, and the circ.u.mstances of his life were such as to throw him in upon himself and to preserve his originality. His little early "Madonna and Child" at Verona is linked with that of Negroponte by the elaborate festoons, strings of beads, and large-patterned brocades used in the surroundings, and has those ugly, foreshortened little _putti_, holding the instruments of the Pa.s.sion, of the type elaborated by Squarcione and Marco Zoppo, and which, in their improved state, we are accustomed to think of as Mantegnesque.

When Crivelli was thirty-eight years old, he was condemned to six months' imprisonment and to a fine of two hundred lire for an outrage on a neighbour's wife. Perhaps it was to escape from an unenviable reputation that he left Venice soon after and set up painting in the Marches, where he lived from 1468 to 1473. He then went on to Camerino in Umbria, where his great triptych, now in the Brera, was painted, and a few years later he was in Ascoli, with a commission for an Annunciation in the Cathedral. This is the picture now in the National Gallery, in which the Bishop holds a model of the Duomo. After 1490 he worked in little towns in the Marches, and is not mentioned after 1493.

He does not seem ever to have come back to Venice.

Shut up in the Marches, where there was little strong local talent, and where he could not keep up with the progress that was taking place in Venice, he was obliged himself to supply the artistic movement. He kept the Squarcionesque traditions to the end, but moulded them by his own love of rich and exuberant decoration. Moreover, he was of a very intense religious bias, and this finds a deeply touching and mystical expression, more especially in his Pietas. The love of gilded patterns and fanciful detail was deep-seated in all the Umbrian country. His altarpieces were intended as sumptuous additions to rich churches, and were consequently arranged, with many divisions, in the old Muranese manner. His great ancona, in the National Gallery, is a marvel of elaborate ornament and enamel-like painting. The Madonna is delicate, almost affected in her refinement. Her long fingers hold the Child's garment with the extreme of dainty precision, the croziers and rings of the saints and bishops are embossed with gold and real jewels. The flowers in the panel of "The Immaculate Conception," which hangs beside it, are twisted into heads of mythological beasts and grotesques or cherubs; but Crivelli has plenty of strength, and his male saints have vigorous, bony limbs and fierce fanatical eyes. It is, however, in his colour that he charms us most, and though he does not touch the real fount, he is of all the earlier school the most remarkable for subtle tender tones and lovely harmonies of olive-greens and faded rose and cream embossed with gold.

Crivelli continued executing one great ancona after another, limiting his progress to perfecting his technique, and his influence was most deeply felt by such Umbrian painters as Lorenzo di San Severino and Niccola Alunno. The honours paid him testify to the reputation he acquired. He was created a knight and presented with a golden laurel wreath. But though he never, that we can hear of, revisited his native State, he always adds _Venetus_ to the signature on his paintings, a fact which tells us that far from Venice and in provincial districts, her prestige was felt and gave his work an enhanced commercial value.

He had no after-influence upon the Venetian School, and in this respect is interesting as an example of the tenacity exercised by the Squarcionesque methods, when, unchecked by any counter-attraction, they came to act upon a very different temperament; for in his love of grace and beauty and of rich effects, and especially in his intensity of mystic feeling, Crivelli is a true Venetian and has no natural affinity with the cla.s.sic spirit of the Paduans.

PRINc.i.p.aL WORKS

Venice. SS. Jerome and Augustine.

Ascoli. Duomo: Altarpiece and Pieta.

Berlin. Madonna and six Saints.

London. Pieta; The Blessed Ferretti; Madonna and Saints; Annunciation; Ancona in thirteen compartments; The Immaculate Conception.

Mr. Benson: Madonna.

Sir Francis Cook: Madonna enthroned.

Mond Collection: SS. Peter and Paul.

Lord Northbrook: Madonna; Resurrection; Saints; Crucifixion; Madonna; Madonna and Saints.

Milan. Brera: SS. James, Bernardino, and Pellegrino; SS. Anthony Abbot, Jerome, and Andrew.

Poldi-Pezzoli: S. Francis in Adoration.

Rome. Vatican: Pieta.

CHAPTER VIII

GENTILE BELLINI AND ANTONELLO DA MESSINA

What, then, is the position which art has achieved in Venice a decade after the middle of the fourteenth century, and how does she compare with the Florentine School? The Florentines, Fra Angelico, Andrea del Castagno, and Pesellino were lately dead. Antonio Pollaiuolo was in his prime, Fra Lippo was fifty-four, Paolo Uccello was sixty-three. But though the progress in the north had been slower, art both in Padua and Venice was now in vigorous progress. Bartolommeo Vivarini was still painting and gathering round him a numerous band of followers; Mantegna was thirty, had just completed the frescoes in the Eremitani Chapel and the famous altarpiece in S. Zeno; and Gentile and Giovanni Bellini were two and four years his seniors.

Francesco Negro, writing in the early years of the sixteenth century, speaks of Gentile as the elder son of Jacopo Bellini. Giovanni is thought to have been an illegitimate son, as Jacopo's widow only mentions Gentile and another son, Niccolo, in her will. There is every reason to believe that, as was natural, the two brothers were the pupils and a.s.sistants of their father. A "Madonna" in the Mond Collection, the earliest known of Gentile's works, shows him imitating his father's style; but when his sister, Niccolosia, married Mantegna in 1453, it is not surprising to find him following Mantegna's methods for a time, and a fresco of St. Mark in the Scuola di San Marco, an important commission which he received in 1466, is taken direct from Mantegna's fresco at Padua.

As the Bellini matured, they abandoned the Squarcionesque tradition and evolved a style of their own; Gentile as much as his even more famous brother. Gentile is the first chronicler of the men and manners of his time. In 1460 he settled in Venice, and was appointed to paint the organ doors in St. Mark's. These large saints, especially the St. Mark, still recall the Paduan period. They have festoons of grapes and apples hung from the architectural ornaments, and the cast of drapery, showing the form beneath, reminds us of Mantegna's figures. But Gentile soon becomes an ill.u.s.trator and portrait painter. Much of his work was done in the Scuola of St. Mark, where his father had painted, and this was destroyed by fire in 1485. Early, too, is the fine austere portrait of Lorenzo Giustiniani, in the Academy. In 1479 an emissary from the Sultan Mehemet arrived in Venice and requested the Signoria to recommend a good painter and a man clever at portraits. Gentile was chosen, and departed in September for Constantinople. He painted many subjects for the private apartments of the Sultan, as well as the famous portrait now in the possession of Lady Layard. It would be difficult for a historic portrait to show more insight into character. The face is cold, weary, and sensual, with all the over-refined look of an old race and a long civilisation, and has a melancholy note in its distant and satiated gaze. The Sultan showed Gentile every mark of favour, loaded him with presents, and bestowed on him the t.i.tle of Bey. He returned home in 1493, bringing with him many sketches of Eastern personages and the picture, now in the Louvre, representing the reception of a Venetian Emba.s.sy by the Grand Vizier. Some five years before Gentile's commission to Constantinople Antonello da Messina had arrived in Venice, and the spread and popularisation of oil-painting had hastened the casting off of outworn ecclesiastical methods and brought the painters nearer to the truth of life. Antonello did not actually introduce oils to the notice of Venetian painters, for Bartolommeo Vivarini was already using them in 1473, but he was well known by reputation before he arrived, and having probably come into contact with Flemish painters in Naples, he had had better opportunities of seizing upon the new technique, and was able to establish it both in Milan and in Venice. A large number of Venetians were at this time resident in Messina: the families of Lombardo, Gradenigo, Contarini, Bembo, Morosini, and Foscarini were among those who had members settled there. Many of these were patrons of art, and probably paved the way to Antonello's reception in Venice. At first all the traits of Antonello's early work are Flemish: the full mantles, white linen caps and tuckers, the straight sharp folds and long wings of the angels have much of Van Eyck, but when he gets to Venice in 1475, its colour and life fascinate him, and a great change comes over his work. His portraits show that he grasped a new intensity of life, and let us into the character of the men he saw around him. His "Condottiere," in the Louvre, declares the artist's recognition of that truculent and formidable being, full of aristocratic disdain, the product of a daring, unscrupulous life. The "Portrait of a Humanist,"

in the Castello in Milan, is cla.s.sic in its deepest sense; and in the Trivulzio College at Milan an older man looks at us out of sly, expressive eyes, with characteristic eyebrows and kindly, half-cynical mouth. It was not wonderful that these portraits, combined with the new medium, worked upon Gentile's imagination and determined his bent.

The first examples of great canvases, ill.u.s.trating and celebrating their own pageants, must have mightily pleased the Venetians. Scenes in the style of the reception of the Venetian amba.s.sadors were called for on all hands, and when the excellence of Gentile's portraits was recognised, he became the model for all Venice. When his own and his father's and brother's paintings perished by fire in 1485, he offered to replace them "quicker than was humanly possible" and at a very low price. Giovanni, who had been engaged on the external decorations, was ill at the time, but the Signoria was so pleased with the offer that it was decided to let no one touch the work till the two brothers were able to finish it. Gentile still painted religious altarpieces with the Virgin and Child enthroned with saints, but most of his time was devoted to the production of his great canvases. Some of these have disappeared, but the "Procession" and "Miracle of the Cross," commissioned by the school of S. Giovanni Evangelista, are now in the Academy, and the third canvas, executed for the same school, "St. Mark preaching at Alexandria," which was unfinished at the time of his death, and was completed by his brother, is in the Brera.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Gentile Bellini._ PROCESSION OF THE HOLY CROSS.

_Venice._ (_Photo, Anderson._)]

These great compositions of crowds bring back for us the Venice of Gentile's day as no verbal description can do. There is no especial richness of colour; the light is that of broad day in the Piazza and among the luminous waterways of the city. We can see the scene any day now in the wide square, making allowance for the difference of costume. The groups are set about in the ample s.p.a.ce, with the wonderful cathedral as a background. St. Mark's has been painted hundreds of times, but no one has ever given such a good idea of it as Gentile--of its stateliness and beauty, of its wealth of detail; and he does so without detracting from the general effect, for St. Mark's, though the keynote of the whole composition, is kept subservient, and is part of the stage on which the scene is enacted. The procession pa.s.ses along, carrying the relics, attended by the waxlights and the banners. Behind the reliquary kneels the merchant, Jacopo Sal, pet.i.tioning for the recovery of his wounded son. Then come the musicians; the spectators crowd round, they strain forward to see the chief part of the cortege, as a crowd naturally does. Some watch with reverence, others smile or have a negligent air. The faces of the candle-bearers are very like those we may see to-day in a great Church procession: some absorbed in their task, or uplifted by inner thoughts; others looking curiously and sceptically at the crowd. Gentile tries in his crowds to bring together all the types of life in Venice, all the officials and the ecclesiastical world, the young and old. With a few strokes he creates the individual and also the type;--the careless rover; the responsible magistrate; the shrewd, practical man of business; the young men, full of their own plans, but pausing to look on at one of the great religious sights of their city. In the "Finding of the Cross" he produces the effect of the whole city _en fete_. It was a sight which often met his eyes. The Doge made no fewer than thirty-six processions annually to various churches of the city, and on fourteen of these occasions he was accompanied by the whole of the n.o.bles dressed in their State robes.

Every event of importance was seized on by the Venetian ladies as an opportunity for arraying themselves in the richest attire, cloth of gold and velvet, plumes and jewels. Gentile has ma.s.sed the ladies of Queen Catherine Cornaro's Court around their Queen upon the left side of the ca.n.a.l. The light from above streams upon the keeper of the School, who holds the sacred relic on high. All round are the old, irregular Venetian houses, and in the crowd he paints the variety of men he saw around him every day in Venice. Yet even in this animated scene he retains his old quattrocento calm. The groups are decorously a.s.sisting: only here and there he is drawn off to some small detail of reality, such as an oarsman dexterously turning his boat, or the maid letting the negro servant pa.s.s out to take a header into the ca.n.a.l. The spectators look on coolly at one more of the oft-seen, miraculous events. The committee, kneeling at the side, is a row of unforgettable portraits, grave, benign, sour, and austere, with bald head or flowing hair. In this composition he triumphs over all difficulties of perspective; our eye follows the ca.n.a.ls, and the boats pa.s.s away under the bridge in atmospheric light. All the joy of Venice is in that play of light on broad brick surfaces, light which is cast up from the water and dances and shimmers on the marble facades.

Gentile made his will in 1502, as well as others in 1505 and 1506. He left word that he was to be buried in SS. Giovanni e Paolo, and begged his brother Giovanni to finish the work in the Scuola, in return for which he is to receive their father's sketch-book. The unfinished piece is the "St. Mark preaching at Alexandria," and it shows Gentile still developing his capacity as a painter. It is pale in colour but brilliant in sunlight. The ma.s.s of white given by the head-dresses of the Turkish women is cleverly subdued so as not to detract from the effect of the sunlight. The thronged effect of the great square is studied with more than his usual care, and the faces have all the old individuality. The foremost figures in the crowd have a colour and richness which we may attribute to Giovanni's hand.

Gentile was always fully employed, and the detailed paintings of functions became very popular; but he was a far less modern painter than his brother, and, in fact, they represent two distinct artistic generations, though Gentile's work was so much the most elaborate and, as the quattrocento would have thought, the most ambitious.

Gentile is essentially the historic painter, yet his is a grave, sincere art, and he has an unerring instinct for the right incidents to include.

He cuts out all unseemly trivialities, his actors are stern, powerful men, the treatment is historic and contemporary, but not gossipy. We realise the look of the Venice of his day, in all its tide of human nature, but we also feel that he never forgot that he was chronicling the doings of a city of strong men, and that he must paint them, even in their hours of relaxation and emotion, so as to convey the real dignity and power which underlay all the events of the Republic.

We gather from his will and that of his wife that they had no children, which perhaps makes the more natural the affectionate terms upon which he remained all through his life with his brother. Their artistic sympathies must have differed widely. Gentile's love for historical research, for costume and for pageants, found no echo in the deeper idealism of Giovanni--indeed, his offer of the famous sketch-book, as an inducement to the latter to finish his last great work, seems to hint that it was an exercise out of his brother's line; but he knew that Giovanni was a great painter, and did not trust it, as we might have expected, to his a.s.sistants, Giovanni Mansueti and Girolamo da Santacroce.

PRINc.i.p.aL WORKS

_Gentile Bellini._

London. S. Peter Martyr; Portrait.

Milan. Brera: Preaching of St. Mark.

Venice. Doge Lorenzo Giustiniani; Miracle of True Cross; Procession of True Cross; Healing by True Cross.

Lady Layard. Portrait of Sultan.

_Antonello da Messina._

Antwerp. Crucifixion, 1475.

Berlin. Three Portraits.

London. The Saviour, 1465; Portrait; Crucifixion, 1477.

Messina. Madonna and Saints, 1473.

Paris. Condottiere.

Milan. Portrait of a Humanist.

Venice. Academy: Ecce h.o.m.o.

Vicenza. Christ at the Column.

CHAPTER IX