Giovanni Bellini and Giorgione: From Padua to Venice

The following is a review of Roger Fry's, "Giovanni Bellini", a study first published in London in 1899. It was republished in New York in 1995 with an introduction by David Alan Brown of Washington's National Gallery. Cited pages are in parenthesis)

Giovanni Bellini: Agony in the Garden

Giovanni Bellini’s “Agony in the Garden” represented a major turning point in his career. In his classic 1899 study, "Giovanni Bellini" Roger Fry asserted that the “Agony and the Garden” marked the transition from Bellini’s early “Paduan” style to the “Venetian” style that would characterize the remainder of his long career.

Although the Bellini family was Venetian, Giovanni’s early work had been done in Padua as an assistant to his father, Jacopo, on their work in a chapel in the Santo, the church dedicated to St. Anthony. Working in the Santo at the same time was Squarcione, the famous teacher who was reputed to have trained over 100 painters including Andrea Mantegna, who would eventually marry into the Bellini family. Squarcione and his school were the leading exponents of what Fry characterized as a distinct Paduan style.

For Fry the “Paduan style” involved a system of linear design that was based on a complexity of outlined forms, and that utilized an old Paduan tempera technique “in which light and shade were put on by small hatched strokes with the point of the brush….” (35) Andrea Mantegna, who never departed from the Paduan style, did a version of the “Agony in the Garden” at about the same time as Giovanni, and Fry argued that the contrast between the two was becoming evident.

Andrea Mantegna: Agony in the Garden

Bellini, in fact, shows in his version of the subject how little the Paduan mannerisms were really congenial to him, for he does not carry their system of linear design consistently throughout the whole picture. The broad unbroken spaces of the hill on which Christ kneels, and of the distant valley, and the more flowing drapery of the S. Peter, all break with the linear convention which he still adopts in the figure of Christ, and to some extent in the hill to the right. (26)

In summary Fry stated that “Bellini shows already that perception of the emotional value of passing effects of atmosphere, which is often supposed to be a peculiarity of the art of this century…he has broken with literal accuracy…”(27)

The change in Bellini’s technique also represented a change in substance and feeling that even moved Giovanni away from his father’s own style. It involved a religious transformation influenced by the preaching of the famed Bernardino of Siena.

The outward change, at all events, from the mundane art of Jacopo’s sketches, which often treated religious subjects with surprising levity, is sufficiently striking. The reaction of Giovanni’s generation was not only towards a new technique, it was a reaction of feeling as well; a revulsion from the premature paganism which had sprung up in the courts of Rimini and Ferrara….it may have received greater impetus from the revivalist propaganda of S. Bernardino. In 1443…S. Bernardino preached the Lenten course at Padua. It was the climax of a lifetime spent in itinerant preaching. He had never before had such an amazing success; and his sermons, preached in the open air, were attended not only by the whole of the population, but by the magistrates representing the sovereign state of Venice, the professors, lecturers, and students of the University. (28)

After his great success in Padua, Bernardino went on to Venice where he received equal acclaim. Fry noted that “he counted among his friends the Doge Foscari, the Blessed Lorenzo Giustiniani, the first patriarch of Venice, and most of the leading senators and distinguished men of the day.”  In Fry’s opinion this visit “may well have been a contributory cause of the more religious attitude to life expressed by Giovanni’s generation.”

It certainly showed a marked influence on Giovanni Bellini and his work. Fry saw the change in Bellini’s famous “Pieta” now in the Brera in Milan.

Giovanni Bellini: Pieta

For here at last Bellini has shaken of the uncongenial intricacy of Paduan design; he has begun to find his own personal scheme, in which form is defined rather by the opposition of broad, scarcely modeled planes, than by multiplicity of contours. (31)

Bellini returned to Venice after 1460 and the following decade marked a “climax” in his life.

At last truly himself, free from all outside influence, he expresses with an intensity which never infringes on the claims of pure beauty, the profoundest sentiment of Christianity, pity, and love….at this period Bellini’s works are confined to two subjects—the Virgin and Child, and the Pieta. (32)

The transition would become complete in 1472 with the arrival of Antonello da Messina in Venice. Antonello brought a new technique “which admitted of a perfect fusion of tones.”

This technique consisted in part in the superposition of thin layers of opaque colour mixed with oils. From this time onward, all the most advanced artists of Venice succeeded in obtaining fusion, and dispensed with hatching, except in rare cases…(35-6)

By the 1480s Bellini had succeeded in the perfection of “that treatment of form as enveloped in atmosphere,” that became one of “the chief distinctions of cinquecento painting in Venice” and which led inexorably to Giorgione.  (41)

The group of pictures we have just considered closed the second stage of Bellini’s artistic career. During this period his aim was to obtain perfectly modulated transitions of tone within a precise contour. In the S. Giobbe altarpiece…a new idea begins to be felt—the conception of enveloping the forms in atmosphere by means of a subtle variation of the quality of the limiting contours of the figures. (43)

S. Giobbe Altarpiece

Reading Fry one is led to conclude that rather than a revolutionary departure from Bellini’s work, the work of Giorgione was based on the principles and technique that Giovanni Bellini had developed over his lifetime. In Fry’s words Giovanni kept alive his father’s tradition that involved “free composition” and “lyrical fancy,” a tradition “of which Giorgione was so soon to find the highest possible expression.”  (47)

In addition, recent studies have shown a close affinity between the techniques used by Giovanni and Giorgione. Fry’s description of Giovanni’s mature style could well apply to Giorgione.

For the atmospheric quality is obtained here largely by the use of oil glazes upon a tempera ground; it is by these that the shimmer of vibrating air is communicated to the whole, by these that the contours, on which the design is still built, are broken down, so that the eye is no longer arrested, as in earlier art, by the impassable barriers they present. (48)

In the first decade of the sixteenth century, at the very height of the Renaissance, Giovanni Bellini, the elderly master who had begun his career in Padua half a century before, and Giorgione, the young master from Castelfranco, were working in Venice. We cannot be sure of their relationship but there certainly seems to have been a close affinity of style. Roger Fry compared Giorgione’s Castelfranco altarpiece with Bellini’s  S. Zaccaria altarpiece.

S. Zaccaria altarpiece

Between this altarpiece, dated 1505, and those of the ninth decade of the previous century, Giorgione’s genius had matured; and the revolution in art, which Bellini had so long prepared, was proclaimed by his Castelfranco Madonna of 1504. In that work Bellini’s great pupil had shown that the new command of atmospheric tone and rich chiaroscuro were consistent with, and even demanded an entirely new simplification of design, and a new feeling for large and spacious disposition of masses. (52)

Giorgione: Castelfranco Altarpiece

Both paintings were done at about the same time but even today it is hard to say who influenced whom. Both are sacred subjects where the traditional “sacra conversazione” has been raised to a new level. ###

Giorgione's Apprenticeship at Padua?

In my interpretation of Giorgione’s "Tempest" as the "Rest on the Flight into Egypt", I argued that the city in the background represented Judea from where the Holy Family had fled to escape the massace of the Innocents. However, on another level I also agreed with those scholars who have argued that the city in the background of the painting is Padua. On a metaphorical level the city could represent Padua under siege in 1509 during the war of the League of Cambrai. In my paper, I wrote:

There is a faint emblem of Padua's Carrara family on one of the buildings, and the domed building (which could be Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock) could be Padua's Carmine. There is no agreement on a date for the painting, but in the spring of 1509 the forces of the League of Cambrai inflicted a disastrous defeat on Venice at the battle of Agnadello. As a result the Republic lost all of its possessions on the mainland, which it had worked so hard to acquire over the preceding hundred years. Padua, its crown jewel, fell but then was retaken two months later only to be besieged over the summer by the forces of the enemy. Just as in Giorgione's painting storm clouds were raging over Padua, 25 miles in the distance.

Could Giorgione have had first hand knowledge of Padua? Other than the Tempest there is no document linking him with the city, but during his short career, he could easily have traveled by canal to the city with its famed churches and outstanding university. I would like to speculate, and it is only speculation, that Giorgione might have served his apprenticeship in Padua.

Two years ago when my wife and I were in Venice on the occasion of the 500^th anniversary of Giorgione’s death, we took a commuter rail trip to Castelfranco Veneto, Giorgione’s hometown. It was a short easy trip of about one hour by modern rail. But how would Giorgione have gotten from Castelfranco to Venice in the late fifteenth century? I would like to propose a journey that as yet is still only a product of an informed imagination.

The Brenta

Perhaps escorted by some family member, he walked the 14 kilometers to nearby Cittadella, and then boarded a barge downriver on the Brenta. Travel along inland waterways was common. On the way he would have passed the large Contarini estate at Piazzola sul Brenta. The Contarinis were one of the great patrician merchant families in Venice and although the magnificent villa that still exists today was only constructed in 1546, they had taken possession of the huge estate almost a hundred years before. We know that Taddeo Contarini, one of the scions of the family, owned Giorgione’s “Three Philosophers” as well as a lost painting that has been known as the “Discovery of Paris”.

Giorgione: Three Philosophers

A few kilometers downriver Padua would certainly be a likely spot to disembark. The city’s relation to Venice was similar to the relationship of Oxford and Cambridge to London. It has been said that although Venice conquered Padua, Padua and its famed university had conquered Venice. There was no university in Venice but patrician families ordinarily sent their young scholars to Padua to study. I’m not saying that Giorgione studied at the university but I am saying that he was just as likely to apprentice in Padua as in Venice.

Why go to the “Big Apple” of Venice when there was plenty of opportunity for a young man to apprentice in Padua? In mid-century the artist  Squarcione had established his school in Padua. Andrea Mantegna was his most famous pupil and even Giovanni Bellini was influenced by the Paduan style. Padua was also the home of Giotto's work in the famed Scrovegni chapel, a veritable school for many of the great artists of the Renaissance.

Scholars have often assumed that Giorgione apprenticed in the Bellini workshop but in his biography of Giovanni Bellini, Vasari only reported as hearsay that Giorgione served an apprenticeship under Giovanni. In the  biography of Giorgione Vasari only said that the young painter from Castelfranco quickly surpassed the dry and arid style of Giovanni Bellini and his brother, Gentile.

Padua could lay claim to being the home of Venetian humanism but it was also a major artistic center. Below find a list of works seen in Padua by Marcantonio Michiel in the early part of the sixteenth century.*

In the Church called “Chiesa del Santo.”

In the “Chiesa del Santo,” above the main altar, the four bronze figures in high relief surrounding Our Lady, and Our Lady herself, are by Donatello,…(3)

The design for the six figures of saints in the Sacristy were prepared by Francesco Squarcione, though the actual work was executed by the Canozzi….the many pictures executed for this church by that talented Paduan artist (5 note)

The Coronation of Our Lady, a fresco on the first pillar at the left, on entering the church and above the altar of Our Lady, is by Fra Filippo. (7. n.1) (1434) 

 “the altarpiece is by Giacomo Bellini and Giovanni and Gentile, his sons, as shown by the signatures.” (7)

Above the portal of the church the picture representing St. Francis and St. Bernardino kneeling and upholding the monogram of Jesus is by Mantegna, as shown by his signature. [12. n. 3. Early work 1452]

In the School of the Third Order in the churchyard of the Basilica “del Santo—,” Montagna, and Titian painted there… (13)

Note 1. The first floor of this building is decorated with sixteen frescoes, representing the life and miracles of St. Anthony by Montagna, Titian, and Campagnola.

Church of San Francesco

The main altarpiece was made byBartolommeo and Antonio (Vivarini) of Murano, brothers, in 1451, and it contains in the center niche St. Francis;… (16)

In the House of Messer Pietro Bembo.

The small picture on two panels representing on the one side St. John the Baptist dressed, seated, with a lamb, in a landscape; and on the other side, Our Lady with the Child, also in a landscape, was painted by John Memlinc, probably about the year 1470. (21)

Note 2. In the Royal Gallery of Munich, there is a small panel representing St. John, seated, with the lamb, in a landscape, which is ascribed to Memlinc…

The picture, on canvas, representing St. Sebastian, over life size, fastened to a column and shot at with arrows, is by Mantegna. (24)

The two miniatures, on vellum, are by Giulio Campagnola: one represents a woman, nude, lying down with her back turned, and is from a picture by Giorgione:…

*The Anonimo: Notes on Pictures and Works of Art in Italy Made by an Anonymous Writer in the Sixteenth Century, translated by Paolo Mussi, edited by George C. Williamson, London, 1903.