Under Bellini, painting lost the conventions that had been regarded as correct or inevitable in Squarcione’s studio, and Gian’s pictures bear the same relation to those of the Paduan, and his pupil, as Newman’s writing bears to bad eighteenth-century English prose. But despite all developments in the technique of his art, Gian Bellini’s painting remained quite constant to the mood that St. Bernardino had induced. Doubtless, had his gifts been of another kind, he would have entered the Church, he would have dreamed dreams and seen visions that would not have found such world-wide expression while, being an artist, inheriting artistic traditions from his father, living in the centre of the small world of Venetian and Paduan painters, he expressed his beautiful emotions in fashion that has not weakened its claim upon us in more than four hundred years. The glamour of Venetian life, the extraordinary beauty of the city that was his home, the splendour and the pageants that were part of a Venetian life, the intensity of the colour that surrounded him on all sides—some of it belonging to Venice by right, and even more, brought to her shores by the ceaseless traffic of the sea—all these things developed and deepened the emotion that was to find so exquisite an expression from his brush. To him, as to Fra Angelico, faith was a real and living thing, and like the great monk who died at ripe age while he was yet a boy, Gian Bellini became a lover of the world in its most picturesque aspect, accepting without hesitation the traditional explanation of its creation.
Naturally enough his appeal to the artist is founded upon a dozen considerations, mostly technical, his appeal to the layman is direct and spontaneous. A countryman who has never seen a studio can respond to the exquisite beauty of Bellini’s Virgins and Children, can feel the charm of the sunshine that fills the air and lights sea and land, can recognise the infinite glamour of the roads that wind away into the mysterious distance of the background, can enjoy the rich, almost sensuous, colouring. Perhaps had Bellini taken the vows, a great part of these beauties would have been lost, the infinite variety of lovely women and children could hardly have been secured. As a Venetian, and a pleasure lover, he could not have responded, as Fra Angelico did, to the restricted life and rigid discipline of a religious order.
It was not easy for Gian Bellini to devote himself entirely to sacred subjects if he wished to earn a living by his brush, because his father had stood outside the Church. In those days, too, the best churchwork was in the hands of one family, the Vivarini, whose monopoly was hardly likely to be disturbed by an artist who could show no better credentials than a connection, legitimate or illegitimate, with a painter whose feeling was distinctly pagan. Jacopo Bellini, for all that he was a most admired artist, had no claims upon the Church, and does not seem to have received many commissions from it. Various wealthy societies in Venice had been accustomed to employ him to decorate their halls with work that, as we have said before, has been lost, and their guilds or scuole would doubtless have given Gian all the work he wished to do had he been satisfied to do it.
He could not choose for himself. St. Bernardino had chosen for him in those years when his mind was most impressionable. Gian Bellini’s hand was doubtless to be seen in Padua where he assisted his father, and his earliest independent work is to be found in the Casa Correr at Venice, where one finds a “Transfiguration,” a “Crucifixion,” and two “Pietas.” He painted portraits, one from our own National Gallery is to be seen here. This is a picture of the Doge, Leonardo Loredano, who held office from 1501 to 1521.
The early pictures reveal Bellini at the parting of the ways. His figures have many of the defects of the School of Padua. His knowledge of anatomy is decidedly small, he lacks confidence in himself, and yet it is not difficult to recognise that the painter is moving into a new country, that his presentation of sacred subjects is developing on lines that must add considerably to their artistic value and to the permanence of their appeal.
An amusing story is told of the way in which young Bellini acquired his knowledge of oil painting. He is said to have assumed the dress of a Venetian nobleman, and to have gone to the studio of a popular artist of the time, under pretext of having his portrait painted. While the artist, one Antonello of Messina, was busily engaged upon his portrait, Bellini is said to have watched the process very carefully and to have secured the much needed lesson. It is more than likely that the story is untrue, but it has obtained a large measure of credence.
His first big altar-piece is said to have been done for the altar of St. Catherine of Sienna, and after one or two other church paintings had been accomplished, Giovanni was commissioned to decorate the great Council Hall of Venice with historical paintings. But it is well to remember that altar painting never ceased to interest him, his greatest achievements having been accomplished for churches. There are few things in art more beautiful than Gian Bellini’s altar-pieces. Ruskin has paid a special tribute to the “Virgin and Four Saints” in the church dedicated to St. Zaccaria, father of the Baptist. He says that the Zaccaria altar-piece, and the one in the Frari, by the same master, are the two finest pictures in the world. Of the big works, however, nothing remains, Gentile being the only one of the family who is represented to-day by pictures painted on a very large scale. Vasari tells us that Gian painted four pictures in fulfilment of a commission, one representing the Pope Alexander III. receiving Frederic Barbarossa after the abjuration of the Schism of 1177, the next showing the Pope saying Mass in San Marco, another representing his Holiness in the act of presenting a canopy to the Doge, and the last in which the Pontiff is presented with eight standards and eight silver trumpets by clergy assembled outside the gates of Rome. These subjects or some of them had been painted by one Gueriento of Verona when Marco Corner was Doge. Petrarch had written the inscriptions for them, but they had faded, and in later years Tintoretto painted his “Paradiso” over the damaged frescoes. There is a story to the effect that Giovanni and Gentile Bellini had promised the councillors that their pictures should last two hundred years; as a matter of fact, they would seem to have been destroyed by fire within half that period.
This picture shows the centre figures of a very famous painting by Bellini in the Academy at Venice in which the Madonna and Child are seen between St. Catherine and St. Mary Magdalen. The faces most delightfully painted are full of spiritual grace and the colouring is exquisite.
