About the middle of the fifteenth century the Bellini family lived at Padua and came in contact with the classic-realistic art of Mantegna. In fact, Mantegna married Giovanni Bellini's sister, and there was a mingling of family as well as of art. There was an influence upon Mantegna of Venetian color, and upon the Bellinis of Paduan line. The latter showed in Giovanni Bellini's early work, which was rather hard, angular in drapery, and anatomical in the joints, hands, and feet; but as the century drew to a close this melted away into the growing splendor of Venetian color. Giovanni Bellini lived into the sixteenth century, but never quite attained the rank of a High Renaissance painter. He had religious feeling, earnestness, honesty, simplicity, character, force, knowledge; but not the full complement of brilliancy and painter's power. He went beyond all his contemporaries in technical strength and color-harmony, and was in fact the epoch-making man of early Venice. Some of his pictures, like the S. Zaccaria Madonna, will compare favorably with any work of any age, and his landscape backgrounds (see the St. Peter Martyr in the National Gallery, London) were rather wonderful for the period in which they were produced.
Of Bellini's contemporaries and followers there were many, and as a school there was a similarity of style, subject, and color-treatment carrying through them all, with individual peculiarities in each painter. After Giovanni Bellini comes Carpaccio (?-1522?), a younger contemporary, about whose history little is known. He worked with Gentile Bellini, and was undoubtedly influenced by Giovanni Bellini. In subject he was more romantic and chivalric than religious, though painting a number of altar-pieces. The legend was his delight, and his great success, as the St. Ursula and St. George pictures in Venice still indicate. He was remarkable for his knowledge of architecture, costumes, and Oriental settings, put forth in a realistic way, with much invention and technical ability in the handling of landscape, perspective, light, and color. There is a truthfulness of appearance—an out-of-doors feeling—about his work that is quite captivating. In addition, the spirit of his art was earnestness, honesty, and sincerity, and even the awkward bits of drawing which occasionally appeared in his work served to add to the general naive effect of the whole.
FIG. 37.—ANTONELLO DA MESSINA. UNKNOWN MAN. LOUVRE.
Cima da Conegliano (1460?-1517?) was probably a pupil of Giovanni Bellini, with some Carpaccio influence about him. He was the best of the immediate followers, none of whom came up to the master. They were trammelled somewhat by being educated in distemper work, and then midway in their careers changing to the oil medium, that medium having been introduced into Venice by Antonello da Messina in 1473. Cima's subjects were largely half-length madonnas, given with strong qualities of light-and-shade and color. He was not a great originator, though a man of ability. Catena (?-1531) had a wide reputation in his day, but it came more from a smooth finish and pretty accessories than from creative power. He imitated Bellini's style so well that a number of his pictures pass for works by the master even to this day. Later he followed Giorgione and Carpaccio. A man possessed of knowledge, he seemed to have no original propelling purpose behind him. That was largely the make-up of the other men of the school, Basaiti (1490-1521?), Previtali (1470?-1525?), Bissolo (14641528), Rondinelli (1440?-1500?), Diana (?-1500?), Mansueti (fl. 1500).
Antonello da Messina (1444?-1493), though Sicilian born, is properly classed with the Venetian school. He obtained a knowledge of Flemish methods probably from Flemish painters or pictures in Italy (he never was a pupil of Jan van Eyck, as Vasari relates, and probably never saw Flanders), and introduced the use of oil as a medium in the Venetian school. His early work was Flemish in character, and was very accurate and minute. His late work showed the influence of the Bellinis. His counter-influence upon Venetian portraiture has never been quite justly estimated. That fine, exact, yet powerful work, of which the Doge Loredano by Bellini, in the National Gallery, London, is a type, was perhaps brought about by an amalgamation of Flemish and Venetian methods, and Antonello was perhaps the means of bringing it about. He was an excellent, if precise, portrait-painter.
PRINCIPAL WORKS: Paduans—Andrea Mantegna, Eremitani Padua, Madonna of S. Xeno Verona, St. Sebastian Vienna Mus., St. George Venice Acad., Camera di Sposi Castello di Corte Mantua, Madonna and Allegories Louvre, Scipio Summer Autumn Nat. Gal. Lon.; Pizzoli (with Mantegna), Eremitani Padua; Marco Zoppo frescos Casa Colonna Bologna, Madonna Berlin Gal.
Veronese and Vicentine Painters—Vittore Pisano, St. Anthony and George Nat. Gal. Lon., St. George S. Anastasia Verona; Liberale da Verona, miniatures Duomo Sienna, St. Sebastian Brera Milan, Madonna Berlin Mus., other works Duomo and Gal. Verona; Bonsignori, S. Bernardino and Gal. Verona, Mantua, and Nat. Gal. Lon.; Caroto, In S. Tommaso, S. Giorgio, S. Caterina and Gal. Verona, Dresden and Frankfort Gals.; Montagna, Madonnas Brera, Venice Acad., Bergamo, Berlin, Nat. Gal. Lon., Louvre.
Venetians—Jacobello del Fiore and Semitecolo, all attributions doubtful; Antonio Vivarini and Johannes Alemannus, together altar-pieces Venice Acad., S. Zaccaria Venice; Antonio alone, Adoration of Kings Berlin Gal.; Bartolommeo Vivarini, Madonna Bologna Gal. (with Antonio), altar-pieces SS. Giovanni e Paolo, Frari, Venice; Luigi Vivarini, Madonna Berlin Gal., Frari and Acad. Venice; Carlo Crivelli, Madonnas and altar-pieces Brera, Nat. Gal. Lon., Lateran, Berlin Gals.; Jacopo Bellini, Crucifixion Verona Gal., Sketch-book Brit. Mus.; Gentile Bellini, Organ Doors S. Marco, Procession and Miracle of Cross Acad. Venice, St. Mark Brera; Giovanni Bellini, many pictures in European galleries, Acad., Frari, S. Zaccaria SS. Giovanni e Paolo Venice; Carpaccio, Presentation and Ursula pictures Acad., St. George and St. Jerome S. Giorgio da Schiavone Venice, St. Stephen Berlin Gal.; Cima, altar-pieces S. Maria dell Orte, S. Giovanni in Bragora, Acad. Venice, Louvre, Berlin, Dresden, Munich, Vienna, and other galleries; Catena, Altar-pieces S. Simeone, S. M. Mater Domini, SS. Giovanni e Paolo, Acad. Venice, Dresden, and in Nat. Gal. Lon. (the Warrior and Horse attributed to "School of Bellini"); Basaiti, Venice Acad. Nat. Gal. Lon., Vienna, and Berlin Gals.; Previtali, altar-pieces S. Spirito Bergamo, Brera, Berlin, and Dresden Gals., Nat. Gal. Lon., Venice Acad.; Bissolo, Resurrection Berlin Gal., S. Caterina Venice Acad.; Rondinelli, two pictures Palazzo Doria Rome, Holy Family (No. 6) Louvre (attributed to Giovanni Bellini); Diana, Altar-pieces Venice Acad.; Mansueti, large pictures Venice Acad.; Antonella da Messina, Portraits Louvre, Berlin and Nat. Gal. Lon., Crucifixion Antwerp Mus.