Fig. 211. Antonio Vivarini. St. Antony (polychromed wood statue) and Saints. 1464.—Vatican Gallery, Rome.
Fig. 212. Jacopo Bellini. Madonna.—Venice.
But we get the full stature of the man, not from the minor paintings which chance has spared, but from the two extraordinary sketch books respectively in the Louvre and the National Gallery. Here we trace his day by day exercises. Perspective is his constant concern. He piles up elaborate architecture with an extravagance which even his Veronese exemplars never ventured. The subject matter gets lost in the setting. The Annunciation becomes a mere episode in an architectural extravaganza. So does the Feast of Herod, Figure [213]. The buildings generally are of ornate Early Renaissance type. He loves to adorn them with swags and statues and low reliefs. Sometimes he sketches actual Roman sculptures and coins, medallions, and inscriptions. He makes strange, stern backgrounds for his outdoor scenes, with twisted stratified mountains and stately distant cities. He loves wild beasts; draws capital horses for St. George or for Perseus. He is a bit of a humanist, doing bacchanals, with mischievous satyrs. There are a few fine portraits and designs for Madonnas. Thus these sketches with the silver point and quill pen anticipate every mode of the next generation—the narrative style, the altar-piece, the pastoral mythology. One feels in the sketch books a nature rather alert and curious than thorough—a certain lack of concentration and real seriousness. But the sketches evince an inexhaustible fancy, and if they are ever published cheaply, they should rival in popularity the most loved picture-books of fairyland. Jacopo was not only a versatile but a travelled artist. Active for a time at the brilliant court of Lionello d’Este at Ferrara, he had also visited Florence and probably Rome. But his most important move as regards the history of art, was to Padua, about 1453. There the whole course of Venetian painting was shaped by the apparently casual fact that an austere young painter named Andrea Mantegna fell in love with Jacopo’s daughter, Niccolosia, and married her. Through that alliance, the most formidable of brothers-in-law became the artistic mentor of Gentile and Giovanni Bellini.
Fig. 213. Jacopo Bellini. The Feast of Herod (in upper right loggia).—From the Paris Sketch Book.
For a moment, indeed, Padua and Mantegna quite efface Venice in interest. For ten years before this lucky marriage, Padua had been the scene of intense artistic activity. Donatello, the most powerful realist sculptor of Florence, was at work on the bronze reliefs for the altar of Sant’ Antonio, and on the Gattamelata statue. He gave young Mantegna a strong impulse in the direction of constructive realism. Such Florentine realists as Paolo Uccello and Fra Filippo Lippi were also transient visitors at this time. And Padua, ever an academic city, saw the first systematic art school started by a shrewd and able master, Francesco Squarcione. Squarcione collected Roman marbles and bronzes, concerned himself with the new mysteries of perspective, foreshortening and precise anatomy. He made his students acquire a line with the resiliency of bronze. He made them copy minutely veined marbles and sculptured reliefs. He insisted that every picture should have garlands of laurel mixed with vegetables and fruits. The whole surface had to be brought to the lustrous surface of an enamel. Severe teaching usually attracts good pupils. So it was in Squarcione’s case; he had scores of pupils from all of the Venetic region and even from Dalmatia beyond the Adriatic. He was too sensible to paint much himself; it didn’t pay so successful a teacher. So the few pictures ascribed to him are either of small importance or of dubious authenticity. But his stamp is on all his pupils. What his teaching meant may be grasped in early Mantegna and even better in a painter who never emancipated himself—Carlo Crivelli, of Venice, “Eques Aureatus.”
Fig. 214. Carlo Crivelli. Madonna. Angels bearing Symbols of the Passion.—Verona.