Fig. 235. Giovanni Bellini. Madonna with Saints.—Frari, Venice.
Fig. 235a.> Giovanni Bellini. Madonna of St. Job.—Venice.
We find him full-grown in the noble Madonna of St. Job, Figure [235a], made for the church of that name about 1484 and now in the Venice Academy. In this picture the new Venetian ideals of ardor and gravity unite harmoniously with the old ideal of material splendor. What playings of light and half-lights there are over mosaics, polished marbles and carvings! How admirably the strict symmetry of the group is relieved by varying the postures of the six saints and by contrasting the sober garb of the monkish saints with the superb nudity of Saints Job and Sebastian and the shimmering silks of the playing angels below. And the great picture, with all its monumentality, retains much of that old lyrical fire, which is gradually yielding to more sedate and reflective aims.
We shall find the two great Madonnas of 1488, for the Frari, Figure [235], and for St. Peter’s at Murano, conceived more impassively. For the city church, Bellini insisted on hieratic effect and incidental splendors, reverting to the form of the triptych and arranging it after Mantegna’s fashion with the frame and picture in one perspective. It is perhaps the grandest as it is the most formal of his altar-backs, consciously regal in the attitude of the Virgin, with saints as magisterial as so many Venetian senators. For the suburban church at Murano he set the Madonna low amid her paladins and opened up delicious landscape vistas at the sides. The thing, with all its dignity, is lyrical, and almost intimate. It anticipates the mood of the later open-air Sacred Conversations.
Fig. 236.—Giovanni Bellini. Madonna with St. Paul and St. George.—Venice.
In the nineties and the early years of the new century, masterpiece follows masterpiece, and we must proceed by selection. Giovanni invents a charming form of altar-piece for private chapels. These Madonnas and saints at half-length have already the mood of the later conversation pieces, and need only the less symmetrical scheme which Bellini’s pupil, Titian, will soon give them. For harmony one might prefer the Madonna with two female saints, or for robust contrast and vitality the Madonna with two burly military champions, Figure [236]. Both are in the Venetian Academy.
