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Jacopo Bellini

Madonna of Humility, Jacopo Bellini

Jacopo Bellini (c. 1400 – c. 1470) was one of the founders of the Renaissance style of painting in Venice and northern Italy. His sons Gentile and Giovanni Bellini, and his son-in-law Andrea Mantegna, were also famous painters.

Few of Bellini's paintings still exist, but his surviving sketch-books (one in the British Museum and one in the Louvre) show an interest in landscape and elaborate architectural design. His surviving works show how he accommodated linear perspective to the decorative patterns and rich colors of Venetian painting. He is one of the earliest well known artists of the Venetian Renaissance, mixing both Gothic influences and Italian Renaissance styles.

Biography

Jacopo Bellini was born in Venice in the year 1400. His father Nicolleto Bellini was a smith, whose wife Franceschina gave birth to Jacopo. Jacopo became a pupil of painter Gentile da Fabriano, who met Bellini when he was in Venice. Between 1411 and 1412 Jacopo was in Foligno, where with Gentile he worked on the Palazzo Trinci frescoes. In 1423 Bellini was in Florence, where he became acquainted with the works of Brunelleschi, Donatello, Masolino da Panicale and Masaccio. In 1424 he opened a workshop in Venice, which he ran until he died. By 1429, Jacopo Bellini got married to his wife Anna and settled in Venice with her. Between 1429 and 1431, she had two sons, Gentile the elder and Giovanni the younger, who both collaborated with their father and went on to become artists themselves. Anna also had a daughter named Nicolosia, who married Italian painter Andrea Mantegna in 1453.

During his adulthood, Bellini was a part of the St John the Evangelist mutual aid society, and he made several pieces about the Life of the Virgin for the society, which have been lost. Around the 1460s, Bellini sojourned in Padua several times. Here he trained his son-in-law Andrea Mantegna in perspective and classicist themes. He also painted multiple pieces, including portraits and an altarpiece, which are now lost. Italian engineer and theorist Giovanni Fontana showed Bellini a treatise on perspective.

Jacopo Bellini's last known documents trace back to August 1470. The next year, in November of 1471, he was mentioned by his wife Anna as dead.

Paintings

Annunciation (1444), Jacopo Bellini

Many of his works, including the enormous Crucifixion in the cathedral of Verona (1436), have disappeared. A significant portion of the surviving pieces of Bellini's work are Madonnas. From c. 1430 is the panel with Madonna and Child, in the Accademia Carrara, which shows a similarity to the pieces of his teacher, Gentile da Fabriano. In 1441, at Ferrara, where he was at the service of Leonello d'Este together with Leon Battista Alberti, he executed a portrait of that Marquess, now lost. This lost portrait was painted in a competition with Pisanello, another Renaissance painter. Bellini's portrait won this competition, but Pisanello's is the only one that still survives. Of this period survives the Madonna dell'Umiltà, commissioned by one of the brothers of Leonello.

Gentile da Fabriano's influence can be seen in much of Bellini's work, such as his Annunciation (1444). The International Gothic style of his former trainer can be found in the coloring of the painting. The scene of the piece is very dark, with the exception of the gold of Gabriel and Mary's robes. The use of one point perspective with the drapes in the background also shows Bellini's interest in space within the painting. The technique, Florentine in origin, came into Bellini's skillset through his interactions with courtiers in the northern Italian city of Ferrara. This study of perspective is also shown extensively in his sketchbooks.

Jacopo collaborated with his sons on multiple paintings, including an altarpiece for a chapel in the Santo in Padua. During his late career, Bellini spent much of his time creating grand narrative paintings for places like the Scuola di San Marco. These paintings, like much of Bellini's oeuvre, have been lost. A ruined Crucifix in the Museum of Verona and an Annunciation in the church of Sant'Alessandro of Brescia have survived. Later he contributed with works now lost to the Venetian churches of San Giovanni Evangelista (1452) and St. Mark (1466). From 1459 is a Madonna with Blessing Child in the Gallerie dell'Accademia.

Books of Drawings

The Nativity, Jacopo Bellini, Sketchbook at the Louvre Museum

Since much of Jacopo Bellini's oeuvre has been lost, he is often remembered for his two sketchbooks, currently stored in the Louvre and the British Museum. Within these two volumes, there are 220 drawings. The purpose of these books have been somewhat of a mystery, as it is uncommon for an artist of this period to have put such elaborate drawings in a personal reference book. In the past, there has been some scholarly debate about the origins and organization of the sketchbooks, about which one was created first, and whether or not the books are their original format. It is likely that these books are the original format that these drawings appeared in, and were drawn sequentially. Research has also shown that the Paris sketchbook was created before the London sketchbook, the former being from between the 1430s and the 1450s, and the latter from the 1450s to the 1460s.

Flagellation, Jacopo Bellini, Sketchbook at the Louvre Museum

The drawings within the sketchbooks show the various aspects of Bellini's style. Once again, there is clear influence of the International Gothic on his drawings, particularly in the architectures of the scenes he presents. There is also a significant amount of influence from antiquity, with classical elements and themes present in several pages of the books. There are about five pages in each book with entirely empty circles, which were used as references to the shapes of coins from the Roman Empire. Similarly, there are a couple pages devoted to Roman gravestones and epitaphs. There are several pages with textile patterns and animals in different positions. This interest in the small details of antiquity help Bellini place his paintings in the past, in an attempt to create a more accurate recreation of the period. He was inspired by the manuscripts of antiquarians like Ciraco d'Ancona, who would catalog real antiquities, including classical monuments and ruins. Bellini was also inspired by Biblical stories and concepts, and drawings of these scenes are frequent in the sketchbooks. Among many Biblical stories in the books, there is Christ Carrying the Cross, the Crucifixtion, and the Nativity.

The sketchbooks also illustrate Bellini's interest in space and perspective. His use of perspective is diverse, employing several types of perspective throughout the sketchbooks. His use of single-point perspective can be seen in Flagellation, which places Christ right at the center of the composition. Bellini is leading the viewers eye towards the center point of the drawing, which can be seen in the lines on the floor that angle towards Christ. His use of space can be seen in the several landscape drawings, in which he places a large amount of space above the mountains and hills. In drawings like these, Bellini purposefully hides the vanishing point, and replaces that with a vast blank space into which the entire scene vanishes. This can be seen in his drawing of the Crucifixtion, in which there is a significant open space above the crucified Christ. In some of his drawings, Bellini places small figures within these spaces, giving the scene an even greater sense of space. This can be seen in the drawing The Beheading of St John the Baptist, in which the subject matter is hidden among several smaller gatherings of animals and people within the complex architectural scene that Bellini constructs. This piece also shows more of Bellini's perspective work, with the objects of the scene being drawn into a single, larger vanishing area. Bellini has also been noted as using perspective in an experimental way, applying perspective to the narratives of drawings and grounding these religious scenes in a more secular reality.

Sources

• C. Eisler, The genius of Jacopo Bellini: the complete paintings and drawings (London, The British Museum Press, 1989)

External links

• Italian Paintings, Venetian School, a collection catalog containing information about Bellini and his works (see index; plate 9).