THE EARLY VENETIAN PAINTERS(ITALIAN PAINTING)

THE EARLY VENETIAN PAINTERS: Painting began at Venice with the fabrication of mosaics and ornamental altar-pieces of rich gold stucco-work. The "Greek manner"—that is, the Byzantine—was practised early in the fifteenth century by Jacobello del Fiore and Semitecolo, but it did not last long. Instead of lingering for a hundred years, as at Florence, it died a natural death in the first half of the fifteenth century. Gentile da Fabriano, who was at Venice about 1420, painting in the Ducal Palace with Pisano as his assistant, may have brought this about. He taught there in Venice,paintings for sale, was the master of Jacopo Bellini, and if not the teacher then the influencer of the Vivarinis of Murano. There were two of the Vivarinis in the early times, so far as can be made out, Antonio Vivarini (?-1470) andBartolommeo Vivarini (fl. 1450-1499), who worked with Johannes Alemannus, a painter of supposed German birth and training. They all signed themselves from Murano (an outlying Ve netian island), where they were producing church altars and ornaments with some Paduan influence showing in their work. They made up the Muranese school, though this school was not strongly marked apart either in characteristics or subjects from the Venetian school, of which it was, in fact, a part. art oil painting for sale

FIG. 36.—CARPACCIO. PRESENTATION (DETAIL). VENICE ACAD.

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Bartolommeo was the best of the group, and contended long time in rivalry with the Bellinis at Venice, but toward 1470 he fell away and died comparatively forgotten. Luigi Vivarini (fl. 1461-1503) was the latest of this family, and with his death the history of the Muranese merges into the Venetian school proper, except as it continues to appear in some pupils and followers. Of these latter Carlo Crivelli(1430? 1493?) was the only one of much mark. He apparently gathered his art from many sources—ornament and color from the Vivarini, a lean and withered type from the early Paduans under Squarcione,oil painting on canvas, architecture from Mantegna, and a rather repulsive sentiment from the same school. His faces were contorted and sulky, his hands and feet stringy, his drawing rather bad; but he had a transparent color, beautiful ornamentation and not a little tragic power. reproduction oil paintings uk
Venetian art practically dates from the Bellinis. They did not begin where the Vivarini left off. The two families of painters seem to have started about the same time, worked along together from like inspirations, and in somewhat of a similar manner as regards the early men. Jacopo Bellini (1400?-1464?) was the pupil of Gentile da Fabriano, and a painter of considerable rank. His son, Gentile Bellini(1426?-1507), was likewise a painter of ability, and an extremely interesting one on account of his Venetian subjects painted with much open-air effect and knowledge of light and atmosphere. The younger son, Giovanni Bellini (1428?-1516), was the greatest of the family and the true founder of the Venetian school. oil paintings on canvas

About the middle of the fifteenth century the Bellini family lived at Padua and came in contact with the classic-realistic art of Mantegna. In fact, Mantegna married Giovanni Bellini's sister, and there was a mingling of family as well as of art. There was an influence upon Mantegna of Venetian color, and upon the Bellinis of Paduan line. The latter showed in Giovanni Bellini's early work, which was rather hard, angular in drapery,cheap oil paintings on canvas, and anatomical in the joints, hands, and feet; but as the century drew to a close this melted away into the growing splendor of Venetian color. Giovanni Bellini lived into the sixteenth century, but never quite attained the rank of a High Renaissance painter. He had religious feeling,oil paintings wholesale, earnestness, honesty, simplicity, character, force, knowledge; but not the full complement of brilliancy and painter's power. He went beyond all his contemporaries in technical strength and color-harmony, and was in fact the epoch-making man of early Venice. Some of his pictures, like the S. Zaccaria Madonna, will compare favorably with any work of any age, and his landscape backgrounds (see the St. Peter Martyr in the National Gallery, London) were rather wonderful for the period in which they were produced. dafen oil painting village