Art -- Italy -- Venice; Venice (Italy) -- Description and travel; Venice (Italy) -- History
Besides several paintings by the Vivarini in the Accademia there are in
Venice fine examples of Bartolomeo’s work, the St Augustine, in S.
Zanipolo; a Coronation of the Virgin by Giovanni Alemano and Antonio
Vivarini, with marked German traits, in S. Pantaleone; three
altar-pieces by the same two painters in S. Zaccaria; an early work
(1473) in three compartments by Bartolomeo, the Meeting of Joachim and
Anna, the Birth of the Virgin, and Mary as the Mater Misericordiæ in S.
Maria Formosa; a Virgin between St Andrew and St John (1478), in S.
Giovanni in Bragora, where are also two works by Alvise, one, the
Resurrection, a masterpiece. In the Frari are two altar-pieces by
Bartolomeo (1474 and 1478), and a fine example of Alvise’s work, St
Ambrose Enthroned, finished after his death in 1502 by his pupil
Basaiti. The beautiful Virgin and Child with two angels in the
Redentore, formerly attributed to Giovanni Bellini, is now generally
given to Alvise. The striking and noble figure of St Clare (No. 393) in
the Accademia is by this master, to whom modern criticism assigns a very
high place[70] in the history of Venetian painting. Many portraits
formerly ascribed to Antonello da Messina are now recognised as Alvise’s
work.
[Illustration: _Alinari, Florence_
PALAZZO LAYARD--PORTRAIT OF SULTAN MAHOMET II
BY GENTILE BELLINI]
But it is to the paintings of Gentile, and Giovanni, sons of Jacopo
Bellini, that the traveller will turn again and again with increasing
admiration and reverence. In 1421 Jacopo, who had worked under the
Umbrian masters in the Ducal Palace, went with Gentile da Fabriano to
Florence, and there for several years was his pupil in the very centre
of the renaissance of art. In 1430 he set up a workshop in Venice, and
about 1450, having moved with his two sons to Padua, came under the
powerful influence of Mantegna, who married his daughter Nicolosa.
Venice possesses but two examples of his work, No. 582 in the Accademia
and a Crucifixion in Room XV. of the Correr Museum. Only from the
master’s sketches in the British Museum and in the Louvre can an
adequate conception of his genius be obtained. Gentile, the elder of the
sons, whose name was given him in memory of Jacopo’s beloved master
Gentile da Fabriano, was born in 1429, Giovanni about 1430. Vasari tells
of the affectionate rivalry of the artist family; the father’s joy as
the growing excellence of his sons already eclipsed his own fame; the
sons, after separating each to his own workshop, holding one another,
and both, the father, in great reverence, each praising his brother’s
work and depreciating his own, seeking modestly to excel in kindness and
courtesy as well as in the practice of his art. In 1464 Gentile painted
the shutters of the organ in St Mark’s with the figures of Saints Mark,
Jerome, Theodore and Francis. They still exist, but almost ruined, in
the Office of Works. No. 570 in the Accademia, a faded painting, the
Apotheosis of the Patriarch S.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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