Spiritual landscape: Giovanni Bellini
The subject of Saint Francis in the desert was very popular during the fourteenth-century. Along with other saints such as Saint Anthony Abbot and Saint Jerome, Saint Francis (1181/2-1226) was represented alone experiencing a divine apparition or signal. In this case, he received stigmata or Christ’s wounds when crucified through a seraph or six-winged angel, as a signal of the chosen by God to spread His word.
The iconography of hermit saints allowed the artists to pay more attention to landscape, usually relegated to a mere background as ‘decorative’. However, Bellini stepped forward bestowing the landscape with an innovative role. With a remarkable sense of spatiality, the profusely detailed landscape occupies most of the panel with Saint Francis placed on the bottom part. This is the depiction of a naturalistic view of the divine. The viewer’s gaze lingers around the elements of the landscape as this is conceived as God’s creation. The picture would be still a Stigmata, but with the sun itself a substitute for the more conventional form of divine intervention. Bellini would have conceived the supernatural in wholly natural terms and identified sunlight with Godhead itself. The isolated spot in which the saint lives is contrasted with the city in the distant, stressing the importance of a place which stimulates the contemplation of the nature and its divine origin. For example, the donkey is not only the animal used by the saint to get here, but a reflection of Jesus’s donkey in his entrance to Jerusalem.
Moreover, Saint Francis’s mouth seems to be singing with his lungs expanded. He could be reciting his Canticle of created things, and ode to nature and, above all, to the Sun. Thus, the religious silence of the picture would find a solemn musical accompaniment. This importance of musical melody will be essential for the creation of a landscape able to transmit emotions and, as can be seen in the next works of this exhibition, will be in the very nature of the Arcadian utopia.
GIOVANNI BELLINI
Giovanni Bellini (c. 1430-1516) was part of the most prestigious families of artists in Venice. His father, Jacopo Bellini (1400-1470), influenced by the late Gothic fashions, very popular in the city, brought innovations such as the perspective and the use of drawing as a privileged medium to capture everyday life. By 1450 his workshop had already superseded that of another artist’s as the most prominent in Venice. Giovanni was apprenticed to him in this privileged place until 1460 approximately, when he becomes an autonomous painter.
Two events are crucial for the development of Bellini’s style. The first is his relationship with the Paduan painter Andrea Mantegna (1431-1506) when this marries his daughter. Both constantly beneficiate professionally of this connection, exchanging ideas and techniques. The second event is his contact with another painter who became his brother-in-law, Antonello da Messina (1430-1479) who worked briefly in Venice. Antonello’s painting technique increased Giovanni’s interest in oil painting who and ended up becoming one the best masters in its use.
Once the old Jacopo died, Bellini and his brother Gentile (1429-1509) ruled the influential workshop. Their fame was achieved such a grade within the Venetian territories and beyond that Gentile was sent to Constantinople to depict the Sultan Mehmet II, while Giovanni enjoyed an exceptional status in Venice painting for the most prestigious churches of the city and portraying the most illustrious personalities of the moment. His style combining the solid and precise forms inherited from Mantegna with an incredibly naturalistic anatomy and rendering of textures were in high demand.
At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the old Giovanni with around seventy years old was praised by the German artist Albert Dürer (1471-1528) as the best living artist when he visited the Serenissima. Under his teachings artists such as Giorgione (1482-1510), Titian (1488-1576) or Sebastiano del Piombo (1485-1547) trained their painting skills. Bellini died in 1516.
Bibliography
Brown, David A., Ferino-Pagden, Sylvia et alt., Bellini, Giorgione, Titian and the Renaissance of Venetian Painting [ex. cat.], Yale University Press, London, 2006.
Bätschmann, Oskar, Giovanni Bellini, Reaktion Books, London 2008.
