812. THE DEATH OF ST. PETER MARTYR.
Giovanni Bellini[188] (Venetian: 1426-1516). See 189.
"Peter Martyr was general of the Dominicans in 1252, a most powerful person in the Holy Inquisition, and a violent persecutor for what he deemed the true faith, which made him many inveterate enemies. There was one family in particular which he had treated with excessive cruelty, and their relations, who were in the army, were so enraged by Peter's barbarity that they resolved to revenge themselves.... Having been informed that he was to make a visit to a distant province in pursuit of some wretched heretics, who had been denounced to the inquisition, they lay in wait for him in a wood, through which they knew he must pass, in company with one person, a friar of his convent; here they attacked him, cleft his skull with a sabre, and left him dead on the spot" (Mrs. Jameson; Handbook to the Public Galleries, 1842, i. 70).
This picture, one of the painter's latest works, is interesting, first, for its skill in landscape. It is a true piece of local scenery that Bellini paints,—"all Italian in masses of intricate wood and foliage, in plain, mountain, and buildings, and glowing, not under direct sunshine, but with the soft suffusion of southern light" (Layard, i. 312). It is, says Ruskin, one of the six most beautiful landscapes in the earlier mediæval art, of the "purist" school, "being wholly felicitous and enjoyable." Every leaf is painted with loving care, and Bellini treats the incident in the foreground as "entirely cheerful and pleasing; it does not disturb or even surprise him, much less displease in the slightest degree." "You see in a moment the main characteristic of the school,—that it mattered not in the least to John, and that he doesn't expect it to matter to you, whether people are martyred or not, so long as one can make a pretty grey of their gown, and a nice white of their sleeves, and infinite decoration of forest leaves behind, and a divine picture at last out of all. Everything in the world was done and made only that it might be rightly painted—that is the true master's creed" (Verona and its Rivers, § 27, and Lectures on Landscape, pp. 22, 65, 73).[189] Notice, further, Bellini's compliance, as far as the subject admitted, with one of the conditions of the greatest art, "serenity in state or action." "You are to be interested in the living creatures; not in what is happening to them.... It is not possible, of course, always literally to observe this condition, that there shall be quiet action or none; but Bellini's treatment of violence in action you may see exemplified in a notable way in his "St. Peter Martyr." The soldier is indeed striking the sword down into his breast; but in the face of the Saint is only resignation and faintness of death, not pain—that of the executioner is impassive; and while a painter of the later schools would have covered breast and sword with blood, Bellini allows no stain of it; but pleases himself with most elaborate and exquisite painting of a soft crimson feather in the executioner's helmet" (Relation between Michael Angelo and Tintoret, p. 16).