GIOVANNI BELLINI
Giovanni Bellini (c . 1430-1516) is the author of some of the
most exquisite of Renaissance paintings. He is, in a sense, the
painter s painter, who had a long career, like his pupil, Titian,
in painting. He influenced many artists, among them Titian,
Giorgione, Vecchio, Sebastiano del Piombo, and Albrecht Durer. His
influences include Andreas Mantegna, his father, Jacopo Bellini,
Antonello, and Donatello.
Bellini does everything in his paintings that Renaissance
painters are supposed to do: he painted beautiful pictures,
devotional images, of the Madonna, Christ and various saints; he
painted mythological scenes, and scenes from history; he refined
and defined Early Renaissance space, bringing it into the High
Renaissance; he inaugurated a new feeling for landscape; he
remained true to the sacred and emotional aspects of painting to
the end of his career; he developed the various formats of
Renaissance painting - the small, private devotional pictures, the
large, public altarpieces, a host of secular portraits and
large-scale friezes.
One might see Bellini as supremely a high Renaissance artist,
especially in his later altarpieces, where his sense of space seems
in tune with Titian or Raphael. Bellini s style is very sweet. His
paintings are full of a love for painting, and a love for his
subjects. The ambiguities in his works do not arise from his
intentions, which are, as with so many Renaissance painters, to be
as exalting as possible. So his Madonnas and saints are lovingly
painted.
There is an undeniable sensuality in Giovanni Bellini s art.
Central to his art is his sensuality. It is the same with the art
of Leonardo, Caravaggio, Titian, Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Rubens.
The sensuality of the paintings themselves, as objects, is crucial
to their evaluation aesthetically. Bellini is a sensual painter -
not simply in his treatment of eroticism, or in the eroticism of
his forms, but also because he painted self-consciously erotic
subjects. He painted female nudes: the Woman with a Mirror (in
Vienna), in The Feast of the Gods (in Washington) and in the
restollo of Truth (in Venice).
Giovanni Bellini s sacred art is as erotic as his secular art,
as with many a painter. Indeed, one might say that some of Bellini
s Christian paintings are more erotic than his paintings of
mythological or historical subjects. His Pietas, for instance, with
that lovingly described dead, nude Christ, may be seen as more
erotic than the Classical scenes. The eroticism of art depends a
lot on the viewer s response. And on painterly surface and
technique.
General
Imprint: |
Crescent Moon Publishing
|
Country of origin: |
United Kingdom |
Release date: |
March 2008 |
First published: |
March 2008 |
Authors: |
Julia Davis
|
Dimensions: |
234 x 156 x 6mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Paperback - Trade
|
Pages: |
124 |
Edition: |
2nd ed. |
ISBN-13: |
978-1-86171-164-9 |
Categories: |
Books >
Arts & Architecture >
The arts: general issues >
General
|
LSN: |
1-86171-164-6 |
Barcode: |
9781861711649 |
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