Venetian Altarpieces 1460-1505 - Literature review Example

Venetian Altarpieces 1460-1505 Introduction Venice during the Renaissance, according to Rosand (1982) was unique among the Italian Renaissance cities, such as Florence and Rome. This was because the city had a “special relationship to the sea.”1 And this special relationship to the sea was made manifest in all aspects of Venetian culture, according to Skira (1956).2 It also influenced Venice’s mercantile activities, which also exposed the city to other cultures, such as the Islamic culture and the Byzantines, both of which influenced the artistic endeavors of the city.3 Moreover, the Venetian government was righteous and became a model for other countries. The government was marked by stability, according to Rosand (1982),4 unlike Florence, which was marked more by rebellion and individuality. The city was also the only city in Italy who was enjoying, during this period, internal peace.5 Other Italian cities were living through war, and this was shown through their work.6 These differences in the cities of Italy was reflected in the artistic differences of Venice and Florence and Rome. Florence was marked by competition and individualism. On the other hand, the Venetian artists, according to Rosand (1982) were dutiful state servants.7 The artists who labored in Venice were part of a communal enterprise, and the painters and artists were often members of the same family, who worked in workshops, and their legacy often extended down through generations. The artists worked together in the style of the master, and the individual was not as important – the young artists did not have room for originality, but, rather, had to follow the lead of the master. Moreover, the institutional conservatism of the city was what allowed the intergenerational families to thrive as artists over successive generations. Berenson (1894) also states that the internal peace of Venice was shown in the artistry, as the citizens of this city were able to live in comfort and ease, and that they were the first “really modern people in Europe.”8 It is in this backdrop that the famous masters constructed altarpieces for the Venetian churches. According to Rosand (1982), altarpieces are panel paintings which are bounded by a frame, which provides the spatial layering. 9The frame is the barrier between the spectator and the image. The paintings themselves interpose themselves between the architecture and the observer, with the plane falling away and yielding to a new illusion. The altarpieces, according to Rosand (1982), were constructed with Florentine principles of perspective construction, and rigorous play with the picture plane.10 This essay will examine the Venetian altarpieces in more detail, and will explain them altarpieces themselves in greater detail. Included in this essay will be a special look at some of the great altarpieces of Giovanni Bellini, as well as some of the other Italian artists during this period, including Vivarini, Giorgione, and Cima. The Commissioning of Altarpieces The altarpieces were often funded by the affluent Venetians, therefore the altarpieces, like the chapels that house them, were often meant as a celebration of the affluence and rank of these families.11 Seidel (1994) states that such patronage could be a family’s way of regaining prominence after it has returned from exile, or could be a way to celebrate enormous prosperity for the family.12 Humfrey (1994) states that, for instance, Jacopo Bellini’s altarpiece Annunciation was commissioned by the widow of Gattamelata, Giacoma da Leonessa. De Leonessa was closely associated with Donatello and was a patron of Mantegna. As such, she was at the forefront of the Renaissance art in Northeastern Italy, and she wanted her altarpieces to be as up to date as these other pieces. This meant that Jacopo Bellini would have had specific terms for his commission to construct the Annuciation.13 Rubin (1994) states that the subject of the painting was not usually left to the artist, but, rather, was decided by the patrons before the artist even begun working.14 The subject was decided before the artist was even chosen. The patrons would usually decide what it was that they were trying to convey, and calculated their needs and budget for the work accordingly. The patrons then set out to find a master to carry out their designs. The wills, bequests and donations for these altarpieces usually stipulated that the paintings be carried out by a famous or skilled master. The painter could, however, embellish the painting as he saw as being necessary – for instance, the painter, such as Perugino, would add angels, ornaments and extra heads. However, these artists were not inventing, so much as they were ornamenting or filling in the blanks for the patrons.15 It was all very workmanlike, according to Muraro (1994),16 in that the artist or the artist’s house would sign a detailed contract that would dictate which patron saints would be depicted, the time that would be allotted for the painting to be completed, the day for delivery of the painting, the information about arbitration in cases of dispute, and the forms of payment. The invention, which would be the finding of the subjects, as opposed to filling in the blanks for the patrons, came to play a decisive part in the Venetian altarpieces in the third quarter of the fifteenth century, which is the period concerned in this particular essay. During this period, according to Rubin (1994),17 the artists found their topics, as opposed to the patrons dictating what the topics would be. This gave rise to the idea that the paintings might not be pleasing to the majority of people, and that the paintings would be more emblematic of the artists’ own ideas than they would be emblematic of the ideas of the patrons. For example, Rubin (1994) notes that Bronzino’s Harrowing of Hell was not devotional so much as opinionated.18 This resulted in the Council of Trent and the Counter-Reformation to reaffirm that the altarpieces were to be strictly devotional and didactic. Moreover, as Hare (1912)19 notes, the patrons often did not have any love for sacred subjects, therefore they would reject the paintings regarding the sacred subjects, in favour of paganism. Paganism had a revival towards the close of the fifteenth century, as the Renaissance revived it in the train of learning. Titian, who was the pupil of Giovanni Bellini, and his successor, for instance, painted pagan goddess and Christian Deities alike. This was for the pleasure of the patrons, such as the Duke of Ferrara. However, in the case of Bellini, he followed his conscience, according to Hare (1912).20 This means that Bellini made his paintings not for the patrons, but for himself – he did not “make any concessions to the pagan spirit,”21 (p. 31) with the exception of a painting of the Bacchanals, which he painted for the Duke of Ferrara. Origins of Venetian Altarpieces Humfrey (1994) explains that the Venetian altarpieces were not merely paintings, but, rather, were paintings that were associated with carvings, which, in turn, were integrated with the architecture around these pieces.22 The Venetian altarpiece, according to Humfrey (1994),23 was invented by the architect Brunelleschi, who wanted to harmoniously integrate the architecture and the decoration of churches. The first recognizable altarpiece was designed by Fra Filippo Lippi, which was commissioned for San Lorenzo during the lifetime of Brunelleschi. In Venice, however, according to Humfrey (1994), the first piece that showed all the characteristics of the Renaissance pala – “the unified field, the convincing evocation of space and volume, the classicizing frame”24 – was Giovanni Bellini’s St. Catherine of Siena altarpiece, which was commission around 1470. This piece was commissioned for a church which was Gothic, not Renaissance-style, and it would be a full decade before Bellini constructed an altarpiece for a church which was in the style of the Italian Renaissance. The altar panels were not just assembled by the artists themselves. According to Huse and Walters (1990),25 the Venetian altar pieces were the jobs of multiple artisans. As an example, Cima da Conegliano’s Baptism of Christ was created by seven artisans – a sculptor would provide the frame, the mason would install it, and the gilder would embellish it. A carpenter would prepare the picture panel, a different painter from the master painter would provide the frieze around the picture frame, and a glazier would alter the windows so that the lighting would be improved. Moreover, as noted above, the master painters often had assistants, and the quality would often be different from one aspect of a painting to another. Robertson (1968) states that this is the case with the panels of St. Augustine and St. Benedict at Zagreb – the side panels appeared to have been done by an assistant to Giovanni Bellini, as their quality is different from the middle panels in both.26 Description of the Venetian Altarpieces Altarpieces were often covered in curtain, covers and shutters.27 The altarpieces were considered to be sacra conversazione, which means an exchange of words, and this is evoked through the relation of the viewer to the people depicted (Huse and Wolters, 1990).28 As noted in the introduction, the altarpieces incorporated principles which were new to Venice, and brought forth by Giovanni Bellini, as explained below. These principles originated in Florence, where the artists were competitive and were not as beholden to the donors and the government as the Venetian artists were. Rosand (1982) states that two such altarpieces that incorporated these new styles were Cima da Conegliano’s Incredulity of St. Thomas and Marco Basait’s Agony in the Garden.29 Cima’s Incredulity of St. Thomas shifts the court schema off the sacra conversazione into lateral motion. Marco Basati’s altarpiece from San Giobbe, the Agony in the Garden, shows a landscape that assumes the setting for Christ’s prayer, and the architecture of this piece comes between the audience and the Gethsemane scene, serving as both an aperture onto the landscape and as a mediating space in front of it. The attendant saints in this altarpiece “participate in the pictorial illusion, even as they stratify the space of that illusion into a hierarchy of differentiated levels.”30 The altarpieces were often in the form of triptychs, which means three panels which are separated by the frames, the middle panel typically being taller than the side panels, but the panels are interrelated and form the painting as a whole.31 The altarpiece itself was constructed on an iconic spatial mode, which was vertical, frontal and centralized, although an artist could alter this spatial construct, and determine the construction by the horizontal, as opposed to the vertical.32 For example, while the altarpieces that feature the Madonna and Child, or the adult Christ, tend to have central figures – the Madonna and Child or the adult Christ were always in the direct center of the plane – other paintings which do not feature the Madonna and Child or the adult Christ were not so constrained. For instance, Sebastiano del Piombo’s San Giovanni Crisostomo Altarpiece does not feature neither the Madonna and Child nor the adult Christ, so the figures are decentralized, and the composition is less hierarchical than the compositions that feature the central holy figures. The figures in this painting are more democratically positioned than the other paintings featuring the central holy figures, and the field is less vertical than those other paintings. The architectural massing for this painting is also asymmetrical, which undermines the profile view of the writing saint in this portrait. 33 The altarpieces had a particular problem, according to Goffen (1986),34 and that was how to represent natural light and open air inside a church. The church is an interior, yet the natural sunlight would be appropriate to the Virgin. Piero della Francesca depicted a church which was completely closed, but flooded within sunlight from a concealed source. Antonello da Messina also created a church with flooded sunlight, in his Saint Cassiano altarpiece, although it was not certain if the church was an open-air church or, as with Francesca, his church and a closed interior. Giovanni Bellini first approached the problem in his Madonna for the Dominican church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo, and painted a church without walls. In the Frari triptych, which is explained more fully below, Bellini further solved the problem by depicting a church whose side walls were opened to the views of sky and landscape, which gave a raison d’etre for the sunlight which illuminated the church interior. 35 Giovanni Bellini Giovanni Bellini, according to Pignatti (1979),36 was born in Venice in 1426, and was the son of Jacobo and the brother of Gentile, and his father, Jacopo, had a Gothic style. Bellini was considered, by Albrecht Durer, as “the best painter in Venice” (Beck, 1981, p. 241).37 Bellini formed a personal style of his own in the 1450s and the 1460s. His special focus, according to Pignatti (1979), was the Madonna and Child, and he “invented a type of Madonna and Child of great formal beauty and human sentiment that has become almost synonymous with his name.”38 Bellini was the first artist who made the theme of Madonna and Child the central focus of his altarpieces, and the development of Bellini’s personal style, according to Pignatti (1979), is exemplified by the some three score representations of this theme.39 While his themes were overtly religious, Fleming (1982) argues that Bellini’s real interest was in painting landscapes and “the world of scientifically or emotionally observed nature.”40 Bellini softened the surfaces, which had a flattening effect, and he found that oil paintings allowed him to have greater subtlety of tonal transition and depth of color than with tempera painting, and this enabled him to evoke a much wider range of surface textures.41 Bellini, according to Rosand (1982), was one of the first Venetian artists to employ the basic principles that were underlying in Florentine compositions, including rigorous plays with picture planes and plane which would sacrifice reality to theoretical suppositions of intersected pyramids of vision, and a tangible opacity.42 Such principles were seen in Florentine artist Masaccio’s Trinity. Before Bellini, these principles were seen in Venice, but only in drawings, and Bellini was the artist who brought these artistic principles to the monumental paintings. This action on Bellini’s part, according to Rosand (1982), was what changed every single Venetian altarpiece.43 Bellini was very influential on the artists that came after him, such as Giorgione, who only has five paintings to his name, who, like Bellini, used colour and light to illuminate his paintings. Bellini, and his predecessor Giorgione, showed that “painting was more than drawing plus colouring. It was an art with its own secret laws and devices.”44 Rosand (1982) states that Bellini’s altarpieces were enclosed with richly ornamented architectural frames, and that the frames were continued in the image itself. The altarpieces diverged from the Florentine predecessors because they were Byzantine and they recreated “the deep chiaroscuro experience of the church of San Marco itself.”45 The first altarpieces that incorporated the principles seen in Masaccio’s Trinity were Bellini’s altarpiece in SS Giovanni e Paolo, which was destroyed in the nineteenth century, and was a sacre conversazioni of the vertical format with an enthroned Madonna. Since this work was destroyed, Rosand (1982) states that the earliest extant Venetian altarpiece that incorporated the Florentine principles exemplified in Masaccio’s Trinity is Bellini’s San Giobbe Altarpiece.46 The San Giobbe Altarpiece, according to Rosand (1982),47 features a St. Francis who displays a stigmata, and features a paneling behind the Virgin’s throne which is modeled on the revetment of the Venice ducal chapel. It also features the gold mosaics of the semidome, which glows “above the lower darkness and gather[s] into itself the golden bosses in the coffers of the barrel vault.”48 This semidome, according to Rosand (1982), is what sets the overall tone for this altarpiece, and “invites us into a new world, promising to take use beyond the commensurability of mere architecture to a higher level of transcendence.”49 This altarpiece, like the altarpiece in San Zaccaria, guides the eye towards the enthroned Virgin and Child, which is set before the viewer and audience with “ceremonial precision.”50 Another of Bellini’s altarpieces is his triptych in the Santa Maria Gloriosa de Frari. According to Goffen (1986),51 this altarpiece features the Madonna beneath the mosaic in the central triptych panel, with the child on her lap. They are flanked on either side by patron saints of the Pesaro - Nicholas and Peter are on their right, while Benedict and Mark are on her left. The figures are in an ecclesiastical setting, and the apse of a barrel-vaulted church is represented by the framing of this altarpiece. The altarpiece is framed by gilded wood, and is decorated with the same “motifs as the illusionistic architecture within the painting.”52 Therefore, the frame itself both terminates the fictive architecture within the painting, and is also the plan where the sacred and mundane worlds meet. Thus, according to Goffen (1986), the painting looks like a plane where the audience may enter and greet the saints and the Holy Figures.53 Bellini also, according to Goffen (1986), established continuity between heaven and earth, as the frame exists in both realms, while there is also a separation between the two realms. This is accomplished by the positioning of the altarpiece, which was above the heads of the worshiper – this forces the worshiper to look up at the figures, which would suggest that they are heavenly, while also giving the illusion that the worshiper could enter the realm and greet the figures individually.54 Goffen (1986) also states that the altarpiece featured brilliant colors of red, yellow and brown, along with harmonies of red, black and white.55 Giovanni Battista Cima Giovanni Battista Cima, according to Pignatti (1979),56 was the alternative to Bellini, although he was less sophisticated, and younger than Bellini. His paintings featured more of a rustic feel than the other painters in the Byzantium-Florentine style. He was influenced by Bellini, as the Bellini altarpieces were a source of fascination with him, and the “limpid, crystalline”57 style of Antonello da Messina was also a source of inspiration. For an example of his rustic tendencies in his paintings, Cima’s Madonna and Child in a Landscape, portrays the Virgin as a peasant mother with a healthy son. In the background there is both a rustic monastery and a many-towered castle. Bellini’s work is more successful than Cima’s altarpiece of the Madonna and Child in a Landscape. Cima’s work is suffused with light and brilliant colour, yet the main characters in this painting are not as lifelike and realistic and Bellini’s altarworks. The background to the Madonna and Child in this work is crude and it is difficult to discern what is in the background. In other words, the details in this painting are lacking, although the Madonna and Child are beautifully rendered, even if they are not entirely realistic looking. In contrast, there is not a detail in Bellini’s paintings that is not completely realistic. Turning to the Zaccaria piece, Madonna with Saints, explained more below, there is not a single detail that is useless or not exquisitely rendered. In contrast, the background to the Cima piece shows clouds that do not look like clouds, a castle that looks sloppy, and a church that is not rendered in fine detail. Bellini also mastered the art of the three-dimensional painting, and this is another aspect that is lacking in the Cima work. The portrait therefore looks flat, whereas Bellini’s altarpieces are brought to life by the realism, the fine detail, and the three-dimensional style of Bellini’s paintings. Antonio Vivarini According to Humfrey (1994), Antonio Vivarini was among the first Venetian artists, along with Jacopo Bellini, to break with the Gothic style of art.58 Vivarini departed from such Gothic contemporaries as Giambono, with his interest in painting three-dimensional space by showing receding orthogonals and classicizing architecture. The altarpiece The Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints is one such work that shows the principles by which Vivarini made his compositions. This is a collaboration between himself and his brother-in-law, Giovanni d’Alemagna, and it is one of the earliest Venetian paintings on canvas. The three panels are considered to be one unified space, and the sacra conversazione is set inside a walled garden, which alludes to the Virgin’s purity. The painting is significantly different than that of Bellini, however, and is suffocated, because of the abundant use of the color gold and the excessive ornamentation.59 Compared to the Bellini altarpieces, this piece is flat and one-dimensional, as the painting did not use the Florentine principles used by Bellini. Moreover, the painting does not have the naturalistic light that Bellini’s altarpieces did, and the detail of the figures is not as stark as that of Bellini’s. In contrast, Bellini’s altarpainting, which also depicts the Madonna with the Saints, called Madonna with Saints and is displayed in the Saint Zaccaria, Venice, completed 1505, is full of life, where the Vivarini painting was flat. As Gombrich (1989)60 notes, the approach to colour in this painting is very different from other artists, including Vivarini. Where the Vivarini depiction of the Madonna and Saints was almost garishly coloured, thus making the painting not realistic, the Zaccaria piece has muted colours – the colours in this painting are mellow and rich. The painting seems warm, as opposed to cold and flat, as the Vivarini portrait seemed. The dome above the Virgin is three-dimensional. The background in the Vivarini portrait was two-dimensional. The portrait shows the Virgin and child in the center, surrounded by St. Peter, St. Catherine, St. Lucy and St. Jerome. As Gombrich (1989) notes, “many Madonnas with saints have been painted before and after, in Italy and elsewhere, but few were ever conceived with such a dignity and repose.”61 Gombrich (1989) also notes that Bellini instinctively knew how to bring the saints to life – to make them look real, yet not taking away their holy character and dignity. The characters look real, unlike the characters in the Vivarini portrait, yet they also seemed to belong to another world, a more dreamy, serene and beautiful world.62 A world with warm and supernatural light. Conclusion The Venetian altarpieces were important, not just for the religious significance, but also because they represented the donors and the patrons who commissioned them. Wealthy families often commissioned these altarpieces for a variety of reasons, and the art reflected these reasons. Some wealthy families needed to re-acquire standing after being exiled; others wanted the pieces to be a celebration of their family. The painters in Venice would perform the work with guided principles, although this changed towards the end of the 15th Century, as artists were given more leeway for their creations. Bellini was the most important artist to emerge from the latter half of the 15th Century. He incorporated the ideas that were brewing in Florence, as his paintings were life-like, and used muted colouring to create a realistic effect. He also mastered the art of making his portraits three-dimensional – one could look at Bellini’s paintings, and imagine that one could step right into that painting and greet the people. This was not the case with the prior artists, who tended to paint portraits that were flat, and suffused with bright colours, therefore were not realistic. Or other artists who did not paint the details in their paintings with the same care as the central figures. Bellini painted every detail to be life-like, and his use of light and dimensions are astounding. His influence could be seen in the Venetian painters who came after him, such as Titian and Giorgione. As such, Bellini truly lived up to the billing of being the greatest Venetian artist of that time. Bibliography Beck, J. (1981) Italian Renaissance Painting. London: Harper & Row, Publishers. Berenson, B. (1894) Venetian Painters of the Renaissance. London: GP Putnam’s Sons. Berenson, B. (1952) The Italian Painters of the Renaissance. New York: Phaidon Publishers, Inc. Brown, P. (1997) Art and Life in Renaissance Venice. New York, NY: Harry Abrams, Inc. Dutton, P. (1977) Italian Renaissance Painting from Masaccio to Titian. Oxford: Phaidon. Fleming, J. (1982) From Bonaventure to Bellini. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Goffen, R. (1986) Piety and Patronage in Renaissance Venice. London: Yale University Press. Gombrich, E.H. (1989) The Story of Art. New York: Phaidon Ltd. Hare, G. (1912) Bellini. London: T.C. & E.C. Jack. Humfrey, P. (1995) Painting in Renaissance Venice. 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(1994) The social status of patronage and its impact on pictorial language in fifteenth-century Siena. In Borsook, E. & Gioffredi, F. (1994) Italian Altarpieces 1250-1550. Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 121-139. Humfrey, P. (1994) The Bellini, the Vivarini, and the Beginnings of the Renaissance Altarpiece in Venice. In Borsook, E. & Gioffredi, F. (1994) Italian Altarpieces 1250-1550. Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 139-158. Pignatti, T. (1979) The Golden Century of Venetian Painting. Los Angeles, CA: Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Rubin, P. (1994) Commission and design in central Italian Altarpieces c. 1450-1550. In Borsook, E. & Gioffredi, F. (1994) Italian Altarpieces 1250-1550. Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 139-158. Rosand, D. (1982) Painting in Cinquecento Venice: Titian, Veronese and Tintoretto. London: Yale University Press. Zeri, F. & Gardner, E. (1980) Italian Paintings: Sienese and Central Italian Schools. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Read More