768. ST. PETER AND ST. JEROME.
Antonio Vivarini (Venetian: died 1470).
Antonio da Murano, called also Antonio Vivarini, was the eldest of a family of painters, who played a part in the development of the Venetian School corresponding to that of Giotto and his circle in the Florentine School. The Venetian is, it will be seen, a century later than the Florentine (cf. Introduction). It was at the adjacent island of Murano (where most of the Venetian glass is now made, and which was once the resort of the wealthier Venetian citizens) that an independent school first developed itself, Antonio and his brother Bartolommeo (see 284) being natives of that place. The work of the Vivarini was to impart a distinctively artistic impulse to the conventional craftsmanship which previously prevailed in Venice in accordance with Byzantine traditions. Recently published documents (dated 1272) give a curious insight into the position and work of the earliest Venetian painters (see Richter's Lectures on the National Gallery, pp. 23-29). They were treated merely as artisans. They were engaged for the most part in work which would now be classed as industrial craftsmanship in painting arms and furniture. Paintings, in our sense of the word, were an unimportant and occasional branch of their work. The division of labour which in our own day is a frequent cause of industrial disputes (as, for instance, between builders and plasterers) was then in dispute between painters and gilders. A recorded case was settled as follows: "We judge it just to permit the gilder to use colour, and the painter to use gilding, when the one or the other plays a subordinate part in the finished work. A decision in the opposite sense would seem to us hard; for it would be inconvenient to decree that a work which can be done by one, must be done by two. Thus, though each litigant loses, each is compensated for his loss. The profession of the gilder is gilding, but painting is permitted as an accessory. In like manner painting is the profession of the painter, but gilding is permitted as an accessory." In this picture, St. Peter's key is, it will be seen, embossed in goldsmiths' fashion, and Bartolommeo's picture has a gold background. Antonio Vivarini first worked in partnership with a certain Zuan (Giovanni), who appears to have been a German by birth, and the visitor will notice between the work of the early Venetian School a certain affinity with the contemporary German work of the Cologne School. After 1450 the name of Johannes the German disappears from the inscriptions on Vivarini altar-pieces, and that of Bartolommeo takes its place.