Freer from the hieratic formulas which weighed so heavily on their fellow Italian artists, the Venetian masters brought more original aims into their painting. Frequent interaction with the artists of the North had made them more attentive to the beauties of nature. The new process of oil-painting supplied them with the technical resources which enabled them to express themselves with more brilliancy.
Giovanni Bellini (1430–1516), the younger son of Jacopo, had talent and an open mind and was destined to exercise great influence over the tendency of this school. His early works have more than once been mistaken for those of Mantegna, his brother-in-law. It seems, too, as though, like the latter, he was trying at that time to establish a more or less strict relationship between the characteristics of the scenes he was representing and the landscape which served him for the setting.
In The Agony in the Garden, the picturesque scenery lends great force to the expression of this pitiable subject. The artist, it is true, does not attempt to localise the episode he is treating, but the impression of sadness suggested by this rugged country is increased by one of those twilight effects which Italian painters had not hitherto attempted. In the sky, all empurpled by the setting sun, a few light clouds are just tinged with the last rays and with the dark shadows that are stealing over the country. The figure of Christ absorbed in prayer, not far away from the sleeping apostles, appears still more pitiable, deserted as he is by men, and seen with the silence falling around him.
Later on, in the works of Bellini, landscape was to have a more important place. The artist then copied nature with more scrupulous exactness, but he no longer sought in it such harmony with the character of his composition.
Andrea Mantegna, Le Parnasse (Mars and Venus), 1497.
Tempera on canvas, 159 × 192 cm.
Musée du Louvre, Paris.
Annibale Carracci, The Fishing, c.1585–1588.
Oil on canvas, 136 × 255 cm.
Musée du Louvre, Paris.
One would like to linger on these precursors and to breathe the first perfumes of nature emanating from their works, but we must carry on to the complete expansion of an art for which Bellini had prepared the way. Towards the end of his long career, the great artist, in his turn, was destined to be influenced by his two most illustrious pupils, and to follow them in paths which he had opened out to their genius.
With regards to dates, the first of these pupils was Giorgio Barbarelli da Castelfranco (1478–1510), celebrated as Giorgione. It is known that towards 1505, Giorgione, after frequenting the studio of Giovanni Bellini, painted, according to the fashion of the time, the façades of several buildings in Venice. These works prove the facility of his talent, but it is most probable that neither his taste nor his turn of mind fitted him for such tasks. It was to nature that he went from an early date for instruction, and to the last it was from nature alone that he drew his best inspirations.
The town in which he was born, Castelfranco Veneto, situated in the valley of the Musone, at about an equal distance from the Alps and from the Adriatic, adjoins one of the most picturesque parts of Italy.
The master has given exact and poetical expression to all the various beauties of this delightful country.
Giorgione was no sooner ensconced at Venice than his precocious maturity at once won public favour. There were plenty of churches to be decorated, and for a long time the walls of public buildings offered artists huge spaces on which to celebrate the glory of the city. Religious belief had lost some of its fervour, and great military feats were becoming rarer. Among literary people, those somewhat subtle pastorals, in which refined civilisations delight, had come into fashion again. The texts of the old writers, Virgil, Ovid, Theocritus and Longus, were the subject of those publications of poets like Sannazaro, who celebrated the graces of an imaginary Arcadia.
Giorgione, who was never a great scholar, was better inspired, for he went directly to nature for his subjects, and, for his own satisfaction, he gave it an ever-increasing importance in his works. He lived in Venice, but he loved to revisit the little spot where he had passed his childhood, and whenever he could spare the time he returned to his beloved horizons. He knew his native country well enough to be able to choose the subjects that were most characteristic of it. Everything there interested him. He delighted in the trees, the gaiety of the villages perched on the slopes, and the clear, rapid streamlets descending from the mountains in cascades. The painter had a special liking for these running waters. Light seemed to him, as to Leonardo, the very soul of a landscape.
Correggio (Antonio Allegri), Allegory of Vices, c.1530.
Tempera on canvas, 142 × 85.5 cm.
Musée du Louvre, Paris.
Giovanni Bellini, The Agony in the Garden, c.1465.
Egg tempera on wood, 81.3 × 127 cm.
The National Gallery, London.
Giorgione (Giorgio Barbarelli da Castelfranco), The Three Philosophers, 1508–1509.
Oil on canvas, 123.8 × 144.5 cm.
Gemäldegalerie, Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Vienna.
Usually it was the full light of day which was to be seen shining brightly in the pictures of this master. The general tone is powerful, and the breadth of execution, the richness of colour, and the splendour of all the harmonies are in accordance with the dignified rhythm of line and the beautiful proportions of the whole.
This nature exudes an impression of happiness and of poetic rusticity. Simple though they seemed, his compositions contain enigmas which have frequently exercised the intelligence of the critic and called forth the most far-fetched explanations. Let us take, for instance, the picture known as The Tempest. There is a young woman almost naked, crouching down in the grass, at the edge of a stream, giving the breast to her child. To the left, in the foreground, on the other bank of the stream, a young man is leaning on his stick. In the centre, surrounded by tall trees, is another little stream, over which is a wooden bridge, and, farther away, standing out clearly against a sombre sky, in which is the zigzag of a flash of lightning, are houses and the towers and walls of a castle. The likelihood of thunder, the two lonely human beings, one dressed and the other naked, have given rise to innumerable hypotheses, most people seeing in this composition a symbol of human life and of the unforeseen misfortunes which at any moment may burst upon it. It has also been suggested that the explanation of the subject is probably quite simple and much less subtle. If the title of the picture is correct and by comparing it with a photograph or Castelfranco, as it now is, it will be seen that the picture certainly resembles the entrance to this town. This proud-looking youth is the artist himself watching over his wife who on a sultry, stormy day, has come to retire at this spot to take a cool bath. Her little one, who has been lying on the grass, has roused up, and the mother at once appeases the child’s hunger. Charmed by this homely ideal, the artist has wished to immortalise it in this picture.
The composition of The Astronomers has given rise to interpretations still more far-fetched and complex. The various titles of The Philosophers, The Geometricians, and The Three Magi, etc., show that the subject of it has never been very clear. Nothing can be said with regard to The Pastoral Concert, one of the masterpieces of the Louvre, as this beautiful work is beyond all criticism and beyond all comprehension. How can the presence of these two nude women in the open country be explained, in company with the fine-looking, well-dressed young noble, playing his guitar whilst talking to his rustic blond-haired neighbour? With the most open effrontery, the two maidens, the one plump and massive, the other elegant and superbly beautiful, display their charms to all eyes, whilst a young herdsman, a few paces away, leads his flock along and does not appear at all astonished at