The Venetian School of Painting Part 4

ALVISE VIVARINI

Contemporary with Giovanni Bellini were artists still firmly attached to the past, who were far from suspecting that he was to outstrip them.

One of Antonio de Murano's sons, Luigi or Alvise Vivarini, grew up to follow his father's profession, and was enrolled in the school of his uncle, Bartolommeo. The latter being an enthusiastic follower of Squarcione, Alvise was at first trained in Paduan principles. Jacopo Bellini's efforts had done something to counteract the hard, statuesque Paduan manner, and had rendered Mantegna's art more human and less stony, but Jacopo could not prevent Squarcionesque painters from importing into Venice the style which he disliked so much. Bartolommeo threw in his lot with the Paduans, and his school, especially when reinforced by Alvise, maintained its reputation as long as it only had to compete with local talent. The Vivarinis had now been firmly established in Venice for two generations, and were the best-known and most popular of her painters. Albert Durer, on his first visit, admired them more than the Bellini. When, however, Gentile and his brother set up in Venice, a hot rivalry arose between them and the old Muranese School. The Bellini had come with their father from Padua, with all its new and scientific fashions. They had all the prestige of relationship with Mantegna, and they shared the patronage of his powerful employers.

The striking historical compositions of Gentile were at once in demand by the great confraternities. Bartolommeo had never been very successful in his dealing with oil-painting, though he had dabbled in it for some years before Antonello da Messina came his way, but the perception with which the Bellini at once grasped the new technique gave them the victory. We have only to compare the formless contours of much of Bartolommeo Vivarini's work, the bladder-like flesh-painting of the Holy Child, with the clear luminous colour and firm delicate touch of Gentile, to see that the one man is leagues ahead of the other.

Alvise Vivarini had more natural affinity with his father than with his uncle. He never becomes so exaggerated in his forms as Bartolommeo. The expression of his faces is much deeper and more inward, and he has something of the devotional sweetness of early art. His first known work is an ancona of 1475 at Montefiorentino, in a lonely Franciscan monastery on the spurs of the Apennines. In the centre of the five panels the Madonna sits with her hands pressed palm to palm, in adoration of the Child asleep across her knees. The painter here follows the tradition of his father and uncle, especially in the Bologna altarpiece, in which they collaborated in 1450. Four saints stand on either side, framed in Gothic panels; it is all in the old way, and it is only by degrees that we see there is more sweetness in the expression, better modelling in the figures, and a slenderer, more graceful outline than the earlier anconae can show. Only five years after this ancona at Montefiorentino, with its stiff rows of isolated saints, we have the altarpiece in the Academy "of 1480," which was painted for a church in Treviso, and here a great change is immediately apparent. The antiquated division into panels has disappeared, nothing is left of the artificial, Squarcionesque decorations, the att.i.tudes are simple, and the scene is a united one. The Madonna's outstretched hand, the suggestion of "Ecce Agnus Dei," makes an appeal which draws the attention of all the saints to one point, and it is made plain that the one idea pervades the entire a.s.sembly. The curtain, which symbolises the sanctuary, still hangs behind the throne, but the gold background is abandoned. Alvise has not indeed, as yet, imagined any landscape or constructed an interior, but he lightens the effect by two arched windows which let in the sky. The forms are characteristic of his idea of drawing the human figure; they have the long thighs with the knees low down, which we are accustomed to find, and he constructs a very fine and sharply contrasted scheme of light and shade. There is no trace of the statuesque Paduan draperies. The Virgin's brocaded mantle is simply draped, and the robes of the saints hang in long straight folds. No doubt Alvise, though nominally the rival of the Bellini, has more affinity with them, particularly with Giovanni, than with the Paduan artists, and as time goes on it is evident that he paints with many glances at what they were doing. In the altarpiece in Berlin he constructs an elaborate cupola above the Virgin, such as Bellini was already using. His saints are full of movement. In the end he begins to att.i.tudinise and to display those artificial graces which were presently accentuated by Lotto.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Alvise Vivarini._ ALTARPIECE OF 1480.

_Venice._ (_Photo, Anderson._)]

In 1488 the two Bellini had for some time been employed in the Sala del Gran Consiglio by the Council of Ten. Alvise, with his busy school, had hoped, but hitherto in vain, to be invited to enter into compet.i.tion with them. At length he wrote the following letter:--

TO THE MOST SERENE THE PRINCE AND THE MOST EXCELLENT SIGNORIA--I am Alvise of Murano, a faithful servant of your Serenity and of this most ill.u.s.trious State. I have long been anxious to exercise my skill before your Sublimity and prove that continued study and labour on my part have not been useless. Therefore offer, as a humble subject, in honour and praise of that celebrated city, to devote myself, without return of payment or reward, to the duty of producing a canvas in the Sala del Gran Consiio, according to the method at present in use by the two brothers Bellinii, and I ask no more for the said canvas than that I should be allowed the expenses of the cloth and colours as well as the wages of the journeymen, in the manner that has been granted to the said Bellinii. When I have done I shall leave to your Serenity of his goodness to give me in his wisdom the price which shall be adjudged to be just, honest, and appropriate, in return for the labour, which I shall be enabled, I trust, to continue to the universal satisfaction of your Serenity and of all the excellent Government, to the grace of which I most heartily commend myself.

The "method at present in use" was presumably the oil-painting established by Antonello, which was now being made use of to replace the decorations in fresco and tempera which Guariento, Pisanello, and Gentile da Fabriano had executed, and which were constantly decaying and suffering from the sea air and the dampness of the climate. The Council accepted Alvise's offer with little delay, and he was told to paint a picture for a s.p.a.ce hitherto occupied by one of Pisanello's, and was given a salary of sixty ducats a year, something less than that drawn by Giovanni Bellini. Unfortunately his work, scenes from the history of Barbarossa, perished in the great fire of 1577.

Venice is rich in works which show us what sort of painter was at the head of the Muranese School at the time when it rivalled that of the Bellini. Alvise has two reading saints on either side of the altarpiece of 1480, and of these the Baptist is one of his best figures, "admirably expressive of tension and of brooding thought." It is large and free in stroke, and particularly advanced in the treatment of the foliage. Close by hangs a character-study of St. Clare; type of a strenuous, fanatical old woman, one which belongs not only to the period, but will be recognised by every student of human nature. Formidable and even cruel is her unflinching gaze; she is such a figure as might have stood for Scott's Prioress, and looks as little likely to show mercy to an erring member of her order. In contrast, there is the exquisite little "Madonna and Child" with the two baby angels, still shown as a Bellini in the sacristy of the Church of the Redentore. It is the most absolutely simple and direct picture of the kind painted in Venice. The baby life is more perfect than anything that Gian. Bellini produced, and if much less intellectual than his Madonnas, there is all the tender charm of the primitives, combined with a freedom of drapery and a softness of form which could not be surpa.s.sed. The two little angels are more mundane in spirit than those of the school of Bellini; they have nothing of the mystical quality, though we are reminded of Bellini, and the painting is an exercise in his manner. In the sacristy of San Giobbe is an early Annunciation, which is now definitely a.s.signed to Alvise. It has the old tender sentiment, and the carnations of its draperies are of a lovely tint. The priests of S. Giovanni in Bragora were great patrons of the school of the Vivarini, for here, besides several works by Bartolommeo and his a.s.sistants, is a little Madonna in a side chapel, which may be compared with the Redentore picture. The Mother sits inside a room, with the Child lying across her knees in the same pose. The two arched openings in the background of the 1480 altarpiece have become windows, through which we look out on a charming landscape of lake and mountain. In the same church a "Resurrection" is not to be overlooked.

It was executed in 1498, and some of the grace and beauty of the sixteenth century has crept into it. Against the pink flush of dawn stands the swaying figure of the risen Christ, and below appear the heads of the two guards, looking up, surprised and joyful. It is perhaps the very earliest example of that soft and sensuous feeling, that rhapsody of sensation which was presently to sweep like a flood over the art of Venice. "What a time must the dawn of the sixteenth century have been when a man of seventy, and not the most vigorous and advanced of his age, had the freshness and youthful courage to greet it; nay, actually to depict its magic and glamour as Alvise does in the 'Resurrection'! Giorgione is here antic.i.p.ated in the roundness and softness of the figures, and in the effect of light. t.i.tian's a.s.sunta is foreshadowed in the fervour of the guards' expressions." Alvise, if he never thoroughly mastered the structure of the nude, and if his forms keep throughout some touch of the archaic, some awkwardness in the thickness of the figures, with their round heads, long thighs, and uncertain proportions, is yet extraordinarily refined and tender in sentiment, his line has a natural flow and beauty, and the heads of his Madonnas and saints cannot be surpa.s.sed in loveliness.

His death came when the n.o.ble altarpiece to St. Ambrogio in the Frari was still unfinished, and it was completed by his a.s.sistant, Marco Basaiti. The execution is heavy and probably of Basaiti, but the venerable doctor is a grand figure, and the two young soldier saints on his right and left hand are striking examples of the beauty we claim for him. The architectural plan is very elaborate, but altogether successful. The group is set beneath an arched vault supported by columns and cornices. Overhead, behind a bal.u.s.trade, is placed a coronation of the Virgin. The many figures are grouped so as not to interfere with each other, and the sword of St. George, the crozier of St. Gregory, and the crook of St. Ambrose break up the composition and give length and line. The faces of the saints are extremely beautiful, and the two angels making music below compare well with those of the Bellinesque School.

The portraits Alvise has left add to his reputation, and remind us of those of Antonello da Messina, particularly in the vital expression of the eyes, though they are without Antonello's intense force. The "Bernardo di Salla" and the "Man feeding a Hawk," though some critics still ascribe them to Savoldo, have features which make their attribution to Alvise almost certainly correct. Indeed, the resemblance of Bernardo to the Madonna in the 1480 altarpiece cannot escape the most unscientific observer. There is the same inflated nostril, the peculiarly curved mouth, and vivacious eyes.

Among the followers of Alvise, Marco Basaiti, Bartolommeo Montagna, and Lorenzo Lotto are the most distinguished. Others less direct are Giovanni Buonconsiglio and Frances...o...b..nsignori, while Cima da Conegliano was for a short time his greatest pupil. We shall return to these later.

PRINc.i.p.aL WORKS

Berlin. Madonna enthroned, with six Saints.

London. Portrait of Youth.

Milan. Bonomi-Cereda Collection: Portrait of a Man.

Naples. Madonna with SS. Francis and Bernardino.

Paris. Portrait of Bernardo di Salla.

Venice. Academy: Seven panels of single Saints; Madonna and six Saints, 1480.

Frari: S. Ambrose enthroned.

S. Giovanni in Bragora: Madonna adoring Child; Resurrection and Predelle.

Redentore: Sacristy: Madonna and Child, with Angels.

Vienna. Madonna.

Windsor. Man feeding a Hawk.

CHAPTER X

CARPACCIO

Vittore Carpaccio was Gentile Bellini's most faithful pupil. He and his master stand apart in having, before the arrival of the Venetian School proper, captured an aspect and a charm inspired by the natural beauty of the City of the Sea. Gentile, as we have seen, paints her historic appearance, and Carpaccio gives us something of the delight we feel to-day in her translucent waters and her ample, sea-washed s.p.a.ces flooded with limpid light. While others were absorbed in a.s.similating extraneous influences, he goes on his own way, painting, indeed, the scenes that were asked for, but painting them in his own manner and with his own enjoyment.

Pageant-pictures had been the demand of the Venetian State from very early days. The first use of painting had been that made by the Church to glorify religion, and very soon the State had followed, using it to enhance the love which Venetians bore to their city, and to bring home to them the consciousness of its greatness and glory. Pageants and processions were an integral part of Venetian life. The people looked on at them, often as they occurred, with more pride and sense of proprietorship than a Londoner does at a coronation procession or at the King going in state to open Parliament. The Venetian loved splendour and beauty and the story of the city's great achievements, and nothing provided so welcome a subject for the decoration of the great public halls as portrayals of the events which had made Venice famous. Artists had been employed to produce these as early as the end of the fourteenth century, and those of the Bellini and Alvise Vivarini (which perished in the great fire) were a rendering on modern lines of the same subjects, satisfying the more advanced feeling for truth and beauty.

Besides the Church and the public Government, we have already seen the "Schools," as they were called, becoming important employers. These schools were the great organised confraternities in the cause of charity and mutual help, which sprang up in Venice in the fifteenth century.

That of St. Mark was naturally the foremost, but others were banded each under their patron saint. Each attracted numbers of rich patrons, for it was the fashion to belong to the confraternities. Riches and endowments rolled in, and halls for meeting and for transacting business were built, and were adorned with pictures setting forth the legends of their patron saints. We have already seen Gentile Bellini employed in the schools of San Marco and San Giovanni, and now the schools of St.

Ursula and St. George gave commissions to Carpaccio, or perhaps it would be more correct to say that Gentile, having become pre-eminent in this art, provided employment for his pupil and a.s.sistant, and that by degrees Carpaccio became a _maestro_ on his own account.

A host of second-rate painters were plying side by side, disciples first of one master, then drawn off to become followers of a second; a.s.similating the influence first of one workshop and then of another.

Carpaccio has been lately identified as a pupil of Lazzaro Bastiani, who had a school in Venice, and the recent attribution to this painter of the "Doge before the Madonna," in the National Gallery, gives some countenance to the contention that he was held to be of great excellence in his time.

Though some historians advance the suggestion that Carpaccio was a native of Capo d'Istria, there is little proof that he was not, like his father Pietro, born a Venetian. He seems to have worked in Venice all his life, his first work being dated 1490 and his last 1520. In 1527 his wife, Laura, declared herself a widow.

The narrative art needed by the confraternities was supplied in perfection by Carpaccio, and one of his earliest independent commissions was the important one of decorating the School of St.

Ursula. Devotion to St. Ursula was a monopoly of the school. No one else had a right to collect offerings in her name or to put up an image to her. The legend afforded an opportunity for painting varied and dramatic scenes, of which Carpaccio takes full advantage, and the cycle is one of the freshest and most characteristic things that has come down to us from the quattrocento. Problems are not conspicuous. The mediocre masters who have educated the painter have made little impression on him. He is entirely occupied in delight in his subject and in telling his story. The story of St. Ursula, told briefly, is that she was the daughter of the King of Brittany. The King of England sends his amba.s.sadors to beg her hand for his son, Hereo. Ursula discusses the proposal with her father, and makes the conditions that Hereo, who is a heathen, shall be baptized, and that the betrothed couple must before marriage visit the Pope and the sacred shrines. After taking leave of their parents, the Prince and Princess depart on their expedition, but Ursula has had a vision in her sleep in which an angel has announced her martyrdom. She is accompanied on her journey by 11,000 virgins, and they are received by Pope Cyriacus in Rome. The Pope then makes the return journey with them as far as Cologne, where, however, they are a.s.saulted and ma.s.sacred by the Huns, after which Ursula is accorded a splendid funeral, and is canonised. The thirteen scenes in which the story is told are arranged on nine canvases, and the painter has not executed them in the chronological order, some of the latest events being the least complete in artistic skill. Professor Leonello Venturi a.s.signs the following dates to the list:

1. The amba.s.sadors of the King of England meet those of the King of Brittany to ask for the hand of Ursula. Probably painted from 1496-98.

2. (On same canvas) Ursula discusses the proposal with her father. 1496-98.

3. The King of Brittany dismisses the amba.s.sadors. 1496-98.

4. The amba.s.sadors return to the King of England. 1496-98.

5. An angel appears to Ursula in her sleep. 1492.

6, 7, 8. The betrothed couple take leave of their respective parents, and the Prince meets Ursula. 1495.

9. The betrothed couple and the 11,000 virgins meet the Pope.

1492.

10. They arrive at Cologne. 1490.

11, 12. The ma.s.sacre by the Huns. The Funeral. 1495.

13. The saint appears in glory, with the palm of martyrdom, venerated by the 11,000 virgins and received in heaven by the Eternal Father. 1491.

No. 10 is a small canvas, such as might naturally have been chosen for a first experiment. The heads are large with coa.r.s.e features, and the proportions of the figures are poor. The face of the saint in glory (No.

13), plump and without much expression, is of the type of Bastiani's saints. It may be a.s.sumed that such a great scheme of decoration would not have been entrusted to any one who was not already well known as an independent master, but perhaps Carpaccio, who would have been about thirty when the work was begun, was still princ.i.p.ally engrossed with the conventional, ecclesiastical subject. The heads of the virgins pressing round the saint appear to be portraits, and were very possibly those of the wives and daughters of members of the confraternity.

The improvement that takes place is so rapid that we can guess how congenial the painter found the task and how quickly he adapted his already trained talent. In No. 5 he takes delight in the opportunity for painting a little domestic scene,--the bedroom of a young Venetian girl, perhaps a sister of his own. The comfortable bed, the dainty furniture, are carefully drawn. The clear morning light streams into the room. The saint lies peacefully asleep, her hand under her head, her long eyelashes resting upon her cheek: the whole is an idyll, full of insight into girlish life. The tiny slippers made, no doubt, one of the details that caught his eye. The crown lying on the ledge of the bed is an arbitrary introduction, as naf as the angel. In the funeral scene the luminous light is diffused over all, the young saint lies upon her bier and is followed by priest and deacon, the crowd is composed with truth to nature, the draperies and garments are brought into harmony with the sky and background, and in all those that follow we find this quality of light. The landscape behind the ma.s.sacre has gained in natural character, the city is at some distance, houses and churches are half buried in woods; the setting is much more natural than are the quaint and elegant pages who occupy it, and who are drawing their crossbows and attacking the martyrs with leisurely nonchalance. The panel in which the betrothed couple meet shows a great advance, and this and the succeeding ones of the amba.s.sadors, which were painted between 1495 and 1498, must have crowned Carpaccio's reputation. He paints Venice in its most fascinating aspect; the enamelled beauty of its marbles, its sky and sea, its palaces and ships, the rich and picturesque dresses men wore in the streets, the barge glowing with rich velvets. He evinces a fairy-tale spirit which we may compare with the work of Pintoricchio.

His Prince, kneeling in a white and gold dress, with long fair curls, is a real fairy prince; Ursula, in her red dress and puffed sleeves, her rippling, flaxen hair and strings of pearls, is a princess of story.

Carpaccio's art is simple and garrulous in feeling, his conception is as unpa.s.sionate as the fancies of a child, but he has a true love for these gay crowds; Venice going upon her gallant way--her solid, worthy citizens, men of substance, shrewd and valuable, taking their pleasure seriously with a sense of responsibility. They throng the streets and cross over the bridges, every figure is full of freedom and vitality.

The arrival and dismissal of the amba.s.sadors are the best of all the scenes. In the middle of the great stage King Maurus of Brittany sits upon a Venetian terrace. In the colonnade to the left is gathered a group of Venetian personages, members of the Loredano family, which was a special patron of St. Ursula's Guild, and gave this panel. The types are all vividly realised and differentiated: the courtier looking critically at the arrivals; the frankly curious bourgeoisie; the man of fashion pa.s.sing with his nose in the air, disdaining to stare too closely; the fop with his dogs and their dwarf keeper. Far beyond stretch the lagoons; the sea and air of Venice clear and fresh. What is noticeable even now in an Italian crowd, the absence of women, was then most true to life, for except on special occasions they were not seen in the streets, but were kept in almost Oriental seclusion. The dismissal of the amba.s.sadors affords the opportunity for drawing an interior with the street visible through a doorway. A group at the side, of a man dictating a letter and the scribe taking down his words, writing laboriously, with his shoulders hunched and his head on one side, is excellent in its quiet reality. The same life-like vivacity is displayed in Ursula's consultation with her father. The old nurse crouched upon the steps is introduced to break the line and to throw back the main group. Carpaccio has already used such a figure in the funeral scene, and t.i.tian himself adopts his suggestion.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Carpaccio._ ARRIVAL OF THE AMBa.s.sADORS.

_Venice._ (_Photo, Anderson._)]