Original subtitles

Good morning.

Like many artists who achieve a long life, who live to an advanced age and continue to paint or make art,

Giovanni Bellini developed a very distinctive old age style.

Probably it would be better, more correct to say an old age manner.

It's not so much how he paints it as the mood that he projects.

And that old age manner was, in a word, serenity.

The serenity of Giovanni Bellini's late work is astonishing.

You're looking at a devotional painting of the Madonna and Child flanked by the Magdalene and St. Catherine.

Painted probably about 1500 today in the Academia Gallery in Venice.

It's typical of much of the work after 1500 by Bellini.

It's deceptively simple.

It shows three half-length women disposed symmetrically and placed against a dark background, an impenetrable dark background,

while they are subtly illuminated from the left side.

This, by the way, is a very remarkably wide canvas, I think, in proportion to its height.

And this leads or aids in the serenity, the effect of serenity that the painting has.

There is a sense of mystery in the painting as well.

And that mystery that seems to emanate from it is somewhat reminiscent of Leonardo da Vinci's art.

And provides a possible date for the picture because Leonardo visited Venice in March of 1500.

He and Bellini would surely have met, and he may well have seen at that time art that Leonardo had with him.

The painting holds the eye, and it stirs our imagination through an aura of what I would describe as spiritual restraint.

There is another aspect here.

We've seen it once in Bellini, at least, and that was in the Pietà.

And we will see it again.

And it's striking.

None of the figures look at us or at each other.

And that sense of isolation that results from those figures not really making eye contact.

It is not quite true.

Of course, the saint on the left looks down at the Christ child, but there is no eye contact.

There is a sense of each of these figures in their own space, in a way, and in their own sanctity.

Giovanni Bellini painted many portraits, and they are fine portraits.

He was an excellent portrait artist.

One, I think most people would agree, outshines them all.

It is the portrait of the Doge Leonardo Loredan, painted in Venice at the beginning of the 16th century, in 151, though not dated.

It is in London today in the National Gallery.

It is so noble, so persuasive, so hypnotic in its effect, that when seen in person, it's apt to make the viewer think that this painting has never been surpassed in portraiture.

In October, 151, the Doge had just been installed in the position that he would then occupy for almost 20 years, and this portrait must have recorded his accession to the ducal throne.

Descriptively, as a record of the facts of the sitter's face, it's superbly painted.

Every detail proclaims its veracity.

We don't have to see another portrait to compare with it.

We know this is the way he looked.

Rectitude and reason in a perfect balance, an ideal balance, shine from this face.

Those qualities are perfectly expressed through the design, a firm design, a design completely controlled.

That total design, the shapes and positioning of the shapes, not only of the head and the torso, but of costume folds and facial creases.

Look here, for instance, in the tunic.

This curve, it's a pattern on the embroidered tunic.

Look at this, and then look at the curve of the creases in his face, of the folds of his face, echoing that beautifully.

The patterns of the embroidery, the fall of the shadow, everything in that design is revealed to the viewer by a light.

That is, one wants to describe it by itself and say, well, it's Bellini's light, of course.

It's so crystalline, so clear.

And when I say revealed, I mean revealed.

The light literally makes known, discloses the sitter, the costume, the character, the purity, the clarity of that revelatory light seems to somehow equate with moral clarity, intellectual clarity.

This portrait glows with inner, as well as outer light.

And I have to say that for some who stand in front of this painting, myself included, in front of the painting, it is for that moment the summation of the art of portraiture.

And I wish I could transport each of you magically to be in front of it now.

Now, also in London's National Gallery, where, by the way, there is an extraordinary collection of Bellini's paintings,

is this painting of, again, the turn of the century, the Madonna of the Meadow.

So, I'll talk about it in a moment, in detail, but in Bellini's late Madonnas, whether with the child or with the dead Christ,

the landscape of the terra firma underscores the emotion of the subject with unfailing aptness.

Where the early Madonnas were sparing in their use of the landscape or used black backgrounds, which we saw as well,

these late Madonnas, presenting the Christ child or bearing the dead son, are now often set in front of a full, meaningful landscape.

While still placed directly in front of us, even cropped at the bottom as here to pull them closer to us, visually,

these images are infused with the poetry of the landscape.

This landscape moves back from the extraordinary triangular group of the Madonna.

The triangular shape of the Madonna fills virtually the whole foreground and places the triangular group of the mother and child

in front of a landscape that has a prominent hill town in the background.

This, I don't know that it's been identified, but this is identifiable generically as the Veneto, the mainland belonging to Venice.

This is recognizable territory to the original viewers of this painting.

In the nearer landscape, livestock is being tended.

You can see, at this point, on both sides of the Madonna, livestock tended, farming going forward,

while this timeless biblical event that dominates the picture goes unnoticed in the foreground.

Mary sits upon the ground, a Madonna of humility, as Raphael's Alba Madonna was.

But the most notable feature of the figure group is the pose of the child, unmistakably suggesting death and therefore foreshadowing the passion to come.

Death is also evoked by a vulture in the barren trees at the left.

The expressive clouds that move across the sky, clouds which just once they capture your eye, this trail of clouds, are hypnotic, I think,

and to me at least they recall Wordsworth, trailing clouds of glory do we come from God who is our home.

There is a super-reality to those clouds, which is hard to tear your eyes from, makes it hard to tear your eyes away from them.

The Pietà, painted about 15.5, is, as it were, the inevitable sequel to the painting we just looked at.

The one predicting the death in the Nativity and now the dead Christ.

Again, in a landscape.

The landscape is more barren, and except for the symbolic enclosure of fresh green vegetation close behind, just behind the mother and son,

the rest of the landscape is pushed back.

It doesn't enter easily.

It is backdrop, and yet quite prominent when you examine the three hills or rises in the back.

The numerous architectural features, and there are many, retreat to some degree into this distant landscape, and yet, this is very specific architecture.

It has been identified, I'm not going to give you chapter and verse, but the architecture has been seen as a synthesis,

an imaginative bringing together of various ecclesiastical buildings which are recognizable that are to be found in at least three different places,

in Vicenza, in Cividale, and in Ravenna, three cities in three different directions from Venice,

which not only indicates that he's inventing, as it were, in the studio, which we understand, this is not a painting of reality, quote-unquote,

but it also demonstrates that he had either made or otherwise owned drawings of these places, of the architectural features,

and was using them specifically for such landscape compositions in the backgrounds of figure compositions.

If it needed stressing, and I don't think it does by now,

Giovanni Bellini is indisputably the great, the first great Venetian landscape painter,

even though landscape remains in the background, not the main subject, as it would remain for some time in the history of art.

The long, horizontal body of Christ in this painting would seem impossible for the Madonna to support,

but just as in the preceding painting, she's seated low on the ground, and her robe spreads out to receive the body,

and look at the beautiful contrast of the colors, this brilliant, saturated blue on our left,

and the deeper purplish blue on the right-hand side.

Gorgeous colors, which are also treated structurally, they're not just surface.

All of this is modeled in such a way, and constructed in such a way, that it supports this broken body of Christ,

supported on the right, his head, only by her hand under his neck.

Painful to look at, because there is a broken and intentionally awkward quality to some of this.

The curve of his right arm leads down to this almost spasmodic right hand.

This hands, again, in Bellini, are always so extraordinary,

and just looking at the two hands of Christ, and the two hands, one particular, the left hand of the Madonna,

you see their expressiveness and their place as accents in the composition.

I'm suddenly looking at her head and the way it bends down from the hill behind,

as though the hill were pushing it down slightly.

The whole image is a bleak image, despite the brilliant color of the Madonna's costume.

It's bleak, and it's pitiless.

This Madonna and Child, a little later, 1510, it's actually dated 1510, rare in Bellini's work.

It is in the Brera, the museum in Milan.

It is a Madonna and Child that still utilizes compositional ideas that he had developed 20 years earlier.

It is, however, very different in one way.

Its horizontal format is unlike any of the earlier Madonnas.

They were all verticals, and now he allows himself to spread it out,

to relax, as it were, the format, to turn it into a true triptych.

One writer said that it's a sacred conversation from which the saints have departed.

There's room for them, but they're not there.

But he's opened it up, and in their place, as it were,

he allows the landscape to speak more fully.

It is very interesting to compare it with the Madonna of the Trees in his work.

You put them side by side.

The earlier Madonna of the Trees of 1487.

It is quite clear that there's a strong similarity between the two,

and yet it's as though he simply unfurled the sides of the canvas a little further

to give him a horizontal composition.

And instead of two trees, which are tightly confined,

as in the Madonna of the Trees on the right-hand side,

it opens up to allow two trees with more space

and with a great deal of activity in that landscape as well.

The landscape wings flanking the Madonna and child are not only more spacious,

they are more expressive in the later painting.

On the one hand, the animated contour of the Virgin's robes,

and again, look at that blue.

It's astounding.

And the green of the cloth of honor behind her.

And the white-pink or white-rose robe of the Madonna.

If you look at the contour of this blue outer garment,

it is not only expressive in itself,

but it ties the figure compositionally to the landscape behind.

It relates to the hills, to the hill which emerges on both sides

from behind the cloth of honor.

And there is a kind of echo of it or prefiguration of it

in the expressive and beautifully drawn contour of the costume.

On the other hand,

these sacred personages remain resolutely separate from the world.

They're seated in front of their cloth of honor.

They're seated immediately in front of us

in that almost non-space between the green cloth and the picture surface.

The brilliant colors are distributed evenly

in the foreground and in the background.

The blue of the sky is very near the blue of the robe.

The green that is in the cloth

can also be found in places in the landscape.

The landscape supports and completes the composition.

There are horizontals where they're needed.

For instance, look at the line of the field across here,

the demarcation of the field.

A very necessary horizontal compositionally

to band the whole of the composition together

as well as to help us step back in space.

The curves that echo the Madonna and her costume.

The vertical trees on both sides.

By the way, it's signed.

It's signed over here on this stone at the left

which looks somewhat like a tombstone

on the left-hand side of the picture.

The world goes on about its business again

as it did in the painting we were looking at earlier.

The farmers and so forth in the background are still there.

Here we have two people talking by a tree.

I can't determine whether it's a man and a woman or two men

but it's an animated conversation at the left-hand side

and a horseman is to be found over on the right-hand side

and there's a workman here nearer in the foreground

or a farmer with some animals at his feet or in front of him.

Again, they're unaware of this drama of salvation

and it reminds one as a parallel in a sense

to W. H. Auden's famous poem about Bruegel's painting

The Fall of Icarus

and Icarus falls from the sky, the ship sails on

and he says a ship which must have seen something remarkable

a young man fall from the sky had somewhere to go

and went on about its business.

I paraphrase, but that's precisely what happens here.

Precisely, we have a world of work

and the daily things that continue

and this solemn religious image in the foreground.

Bellini's altarpieces are crowned

by the San Zaccaria altarpiece of 15.5.

This is an enthroned Madonna with four saints

that is still in its place in situ

in the church from which it takes its name.

The church, San Zaccaria,

is one of the most venerable in the city.

It was founded in the 9th century

and it once owned land that extended

into the present Piazza San Marco.

The altar for which Bellini painted this masterpiece

is on the left wall of the broad church.

The amplitude of the four saints

that flank in this sacred conversation

that flank the Madonna and child

is reinforced by the studied symmetry

of the composition.

Giovanni has, in one sense,

cast a glance back at Byzantine symmetry

and once more,

as he did in the San Jobe altarpiece,

he closes the pictorial space

with a half-dome Byzantine mosaic.

Again, a reference perhaps to San Marco,

but certainly to the Byzantine background of the city.

It should be noted that the painting

has been cut down somewhat at the top,

which qualifies the illusionistic effect

of the architecture,

but it is still a powerful continuation.

St. Peter and St. Zaccaria

are placed frontally at opposite sides,

St. Peter on the left,

St. Zaccaria here on the right,

in front of painted pilasters,

but the pilasters in front of them are real.

Those are the altar.

So he's taken,

and this is all real architecture

as you follow up across the arch.

This is the architecture of the arch,

which comes down, as it were,

on the altar table,

or just behind it,

and then the painted space is behind that.

But the eye is hard put in a reproduction

to tell that there is any difference

between the two.

And I want you to look at the light,

the beautiful, beautiful light

that falls from the left

between, through this arcade,

between those two sets of pilasters,

through the arcade,

which is defined right at this point.

And lights St. Peter

on the proper right side of his head,

floods this side of the niche with light,

but leaving this properly in shadow.

And St. Zaccaria is partly shadowed as well

on the right side of his face.

Behind them, the female saints face the throne

in pure profile,

and none of the figures look at one another.

Again, they're isolated.

I want to say isolated in air

because of the atmospheric feeling,

the ambient air that one feels here

is so powerful, so convincing

that you see them standing in light-filled air.

The throne is quite simple.

We've seen some that were very high

and some that were very elaborate.

This is not too elevated.

It's very architectonic in its construction.

There's only one musical angel.

Again, there's a kind of

paring down to essentials.

One musical angel in the foreground,

and the only figure there

who looks at us, by the way,

is the musical angel.

The viewpoint, however, is curious,

the perspective, because it's ideal.

That is, it's not a logical continuation

of the space you stand at in the church.

The altarpiece, the bottom of it,

is perhaps five feet above floor level.

And then that means

that the heads of those saints

are another five feet up from that.

But our viewpoint, I think,

is directly at the young angel.

You might think it's a little bit higher,

but not much, surely.

Basically, I think this is about our viewpoint,

and that is higher than the natural,

the actual viewpoint from the church floor.

So he creates a kind of ideal space

and architectural perspective.

At the top of the throne, by the way,

this sculptured head at the top,

it's God the Father.

He makes it a sculptural or architectural object.

Bellini unites the architecture of the altar

with the painting,

and he unites both with the natural light

that falls into the church

from a window on the facade to our left.

The door of the church, as you look at this,

is to your left.

This is on the side wall, the north wall,

and to the left is the door,

and it's a very high wall,

and there are windows there.

And I have been in that church

when the light actually falling

from that window

coincided exactly

with the light painted into the painting,

the angle of it

and the intensity of it.

It was painted for that spot

and almost for a time of day.

He appropriates the architecture of the altar

for his painted space,

but goes that one huge step further

by painting the fall,

the angle of the actual light

from the western window

onto his painting,

into his painting, in fact.

The entire altarpiece,

look at it,

look at how it embraces you.

The entire altarpiece

seems to enfold space

in an enveloping embrace

while at the same time

projecting an inescapable aura

of meditation,

trance-like meditation.

The resultant nobility,

the ineffable tranquility

of this painting

is beyond praise

and it is perhaps

the first absolute masterpiece

of the Venetian High Renaissance.

The last painting

that I'll show you

in this lecture,

The Feast of the Gods,

is a switch,

a great switch

from what we've seen

in Bellini's work.

The Feast of the Gods

is signed and dated 1514.

It belongs to the National Gallery

in Washington.

Bellini was a gifted teacher

with gifted pupils,

including Giorgione and Titian,

and in the last years

of his long life,

he found himself

in competition

with his own pupils.

Alfonso d'Este,

the Duke of Ferrara,

intended to gather

in one room,

which he called

the Alabaster Chamber,

paintings by the finest living Italian artists.

He was frustrated

in his specific intentions

as regarded the artists,

but he nonetheless ended up

with a Bellini and three Titians.

Not too bad.

Bellini's Feast of the Gods

was painted for this room,

painted near the end

of Bellini's life

when he completed

this remarkable mythological painting,

and it was the first

to be completed

for the Duke's project.

The Feast of the Gods

combines wit,

sleepy sensuality,

the beauty of nature,

all in the transformation

of a rather lusty tale

from Ovid

into a poetic reverie.

Bellini chose,

or more correctly,

he was surely assigned

his subject

from Ovid's Fausti,

a subject that involved

the Olympian gods

drowsing after reveling.

Gods are so human.

The story told by Ovid

was intended to explain

an annual sacrifice

of an ass

to the god Priapus.

Let me identify the figures.

There are certainly

enough of them,

and it's one of the things

that sets this apart

from the other paintings,

late paintings of Bellini,

is the crowd.

The figures from the left,

I'll just identify some,

the satyr here,

with his back to us.

Next to him,

but crouching down,

the child in blue

with a wreath of grape leaves

in his hair

is the child Bacchus,

and he is drawing wine

from this vat.

Here is Silenus,

and Silenus is accompanied

by his ass,

who stands here

and is an important part

of the story.

Seated here

in a rather lovely

pink robe,

green,

and with a helmet

that's sort of tipped back,

he clearly has had

too much to drink,

is Mercury.

Next to Mercury,

behind him here

with white and orange,

and he is drinking,

is Jupiter.

And then there is a couple,

at least they are perceived

as a couple now,

Cybele,

kneeling here,

an earth goddess,

and Neptune beside her,

who has got a rather

indecent gesture here,

which appears to have been changed

at a later date,

not as originally painted

by Bellini,

who was a little more circumspect.

Behind them is Pan,

the nude figure here

with his pan pipes,

and then kneeling here

is Ceres,

the goddess of agriculture,

the goddess of abundance,

and she's kneeling beside Apollo,

who is also drinking

right here.

And then a pair of figures

over here.

One is Priapus,

the man who stands,

the other is Lotus.

Nymphs and satyrs

are also in the background

of this painting.

And here's the brief story.

Priapus desired Lotus.

Lotus, like the others,

had had something to drink,

was tired,

lay down,

fell asleep.

The other gods,

drowsy with wine,

also nod off.

And as they fall asleep,

Priapus begins

to draw back her gown,

at which inopportune

or opportune,

depending on the point of view,

moment the ass

brayed loudly,

waking everybody up.

Lotus jumped up,

repelled Priapus,

who ran off.

And the story, of course,

is about excess,

it's about embarrassment.

Ovid says,

the god was laughed at

by all.

And it is ribald.

It's hardly uplifting.

This is not a moral story,

though one could draw morals

from it if you chose to,

but it's not meant to.

It's a story that is meant

to entertain

and cause conversation.

I should point out

that Priapus

is in fact Priapic.

If you look at the costume

closely enough,

you will see

the fact is true.

He is aroused,

and she will be aroused

by the braying of the ass

at any moment now.

How different,

how different,

this painting is

from the gods

that Raphael painted,

from the gods

that Mantegna painted,

or Botticelli.

These gods

are rather plebeian.

They're rather

too much like us.

They're very portrait-like,

by the way.

A number of these heads

across the foreground

have very portrait-like qualities.

They've never been

successfully identified

with members of the court,

but they probably are.

At least,

I would vote on that side.

Their heads,

by the way,

are frequently too large

for their bodies,

and I think that's one thing

that points toward

their being,

actual portraits.

You know,

it is almost as though

Bellini had anticipated

Shakespeare's

Midsummer Night's Dream.

If he had been able

to be around

to do the setting for that,

it would have been,

it would have been a delight.

The painting is,

as I remarked,

one of Bellini's last works.

It's a triumph

of saturated color.

Indeed,

it's a demonstration

of what we mean

when we speak

of Venetian color.

Just look at the range

of color that is there.

It is mind-boggling.

And by the way,

the painting not too many years ago

was restored,

and the colors just sang out

again from underneath

the previous varnish.

When the Duke

was unable

to secure paintings

by Raphael,

who died,

and Fra Bartolomeo,

he finally engaged Titian

to paint the remaining three.

He had the Bellini.

Bellini died two years

after finishing it,

and Titian painted

the other three.

And we'll see two of them

in another lecture.

In order to harmonize

Bellini's Feast of the Gods

with his own three paintings,

Titian received permission

to alter the landscape background

of the Bellini,

and probably some of the details

as well,

exposing a breast

here and there,

for instance,

to make it a little more

like Ovid

and a little less proper

in the Bellini manner.

Thus, the pupil, Titian,

literally succeeded his master.

But I think you should regard

his changes

not as a criticism of Bellini,

but as an act

of practical homage,

bringing it together.

What his changes were principally

in a very different landscape background,

one which looks far more

like Titian's landscapes

than it does like Bellini's

beautiful but not so

fully developed landscapes.

When speaking of the Feast of the Gods,

music seems to offer

the appropriate analogy.

For Bellini's painting

has a deep musicality,

a richness of tone,

an orchestration of form

and narrative

that fittingly rounds out

his memorable career.

Thank you for your attention.