284. MADONNA AND CHILD.
Bartolommeo Vivarini (Venetian: painted 1450-1499).
Bartolommeo Vivarini of Murano was the younger brother of Antonio (see 768), with whom he began to work in partnership in 1450—as is shown by the inscription on the great altar-piece by the two brothers, now in the Pinacoteca of Bologna. Bartolommeo appears to have studied at Padua, and the influence of Squarcione is manifest in the painter's striving after correctness of form. "The ornate character of his altar-pieces, with gold heightening, garlands of fruit and flowers and fluttering fillets, is also borrowed from the Paduans, and lends festal pomp and solemnity to the whole."
Of Bartolommeo Vivarini it is recorded that he painted (in 1473) the first oil picture that was exhibited in Venice. This one, however, is in tempera. "The figures in Bartolommeo's pictures are still hard in outline,—thin (except the Madonna's throat, which always in Venice, is strong as a pillar), and much marked in sinew and bone (studied from life, mind you, not by dissection); exquisitely delicate and careful in pure colour;—in character portraits of holy men and women, such as then were. There is no idealism here whatever. Monks and nuns had indeed faces and mien like these saints, when they desired to have the saints painted for them" (Guide to the Venetian Academy, p. 6).