THE VENETIAN SCHOOL
THE conquest of Byzantium during the Fourth Crusade by Doge Enrico Dandolo in 1204, an epoch-making event in the history of Venice and Venetian art, strengthened the intercourse between the East and the City of the Lagoons. At the same time it riveted the fetters of Byzantinism on to the nascent art of Venice, to which it also imparted a sense of intense Oriental colour.
The frescoes painted in Tuscany on the lines of Giottesque tradition and the environment under which its painters worked, in time gave to the Florentines a sense of line and form which produced a school of idealists: on the other hand, the colour-impressions created on the mind of the Venetian painter by the relics from the East and the brilliant mosaics which he saw around him resulted eventually in the formation of a school of colourists with a realistic tendency.
It will cause little surprise that the Louvre contains no polyptych by the very early Venetians, Niccolò Semitecolo (fl. 1351–1400), Jacobello del Fiore (died 1439), and Michele Giambono (fl. 1420–1462). The Gallery possesses, however, a fourteenth-century Venetian arched panel of the Madonna and Child (No. 1541) which is attributed to Stefano Veneziano.
In the early fifteenth century the dominating influence exerted on the painters of Venice was that of Jacopo Bellini (1400?–1470), whose sons, Gentile and Giovanni, and son-in-law, Andrea Mantegna, were to shape the destinies of the school throughout the Renaissance. Jacopo’s drawing is seen in its full maturity in the Sketch-book of about 1450 which belongs to the Louvre but is not publicly exhibited. Another Sketch-book by him of about 1430 is one of the treasured possessions of the British Museum. Jacopo had in early life been the pupil of Gentile da Fabriano, who, together with Alegretto Nuzi, stands at the head of the Umbrian school, and of Antonio Pisanello (1397–1455), the medallist-painter who played such an important part in the art of Verona. Both Gentile da Fabriano and Pisanello worked for a time at Venice. Under the circumstances, therefore, it is not surprising to find that a Madonna and Child with a Donor (No. 1159a, formerly No. 1279 and No. 171), which is now justly ascribed in the Catalogue to Jacopo Bellini, was long assigned officially to Gentile Bellini, although held by some critics to have been painted in the school of Pisanello. The name of the Donor in this picture is given in the Catalogue as Leonello d’Este and on the frame as Pandolfo Malatesta; it would, however, seem to be the portrait of Sigismondo Malatesta.
Four small triptychs (Nos. 1280–83) from the Campana collection still pass officially under the ambiguous designation of “School of Gentile da Fabriano”; they may, however, without much doubt be ascribed to Antonio Vivarini, who remained outside the Bellini sphere of influence, and died about 1470.