JANUARY 19, 2012
ARTS & CULTURE B1 - B3
SPORTS B4
CLASSIFIEDS B5
PUZZLES B6
ARTS & CULTURE B7
ART MARKETPLACE B8
Venetian Art Exhibit Portrays Evolution of Renaissance Painting
THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART
BY BETSY KIM
NEW YORK—The eye-opening
aspect of one of the current exhibits at the Metropolitan Museum
of Art does not lie in the beauty
and perfection of the paintings.
Instead, carefully selected and
arranged pieces allow visitors to
witness the striking evolution of
Renaissance painting.
Bartolomeo Vivarini’s “Death of
the Virgin” (1485) boldly experiments with perspectives. Painted
as an altarpiece for a chapel in the
Certosa at Padua, Italy, it presents
a traditionally pious scene.
On a throne, Christ holds a
miniature Virgin Mary, which
represents her soul to be carried
to heaven by eight angels. Eleven
apostles surround Mary’s body
lying in state. They gaze up at the
spiritual figures.
Foreshortening is a technique
to create an illusion of depth in
two dimensions. Objects closer
to the viewer appear larger, and
images recede into the distance.
In Bartolomeo’s painting, with
exaggerated foreshortening, the
apostles’ faces appear squished
in cartoon-like distortions. Starkly
outlined figures, painted in bright
tempera, add to the vivid but
slightly crude result.
Depth and perspectives are
hallmark innovations of Renaissance art. Paintings, such as
Bartolomeo’s remind us that
these kinds of advances did not
occur overnight. Bartolomeo was
influenced by artists like Andrea
Mantegna, a painter well-known
for experimenting with creative
perspectives.
The Metropolitan Museum of
Art’s exhibit, Art in Renaissance
Venice, 1400–1515, benchmarks
these types of developments, leading to the High Renaissance. The
44 drawings and paintings embody
the influences in Venice of artists
from Florence, Padua, and other
Italian cities, according to Alison
Nogueira, the assistant curator
in the Robert Lehman Collection
who organized the exhibit.
Artists traveled to Venice to work
on commissions, including at the
Doge’s Palace, the symbolic seat of
Venetian power. The confluence of
artists fertilized change.
Influential Artist Families
Although they were both powerful
families in the art world, the Bellinis historically overshadowed the
Vivarinis (Bartolomeo’s origin).
“Jacopo Bellini is often called the
father of painting,” Nogueira said.
“He was the father of Giovanni and
Gentile, who were both extremely
successful. But also philosophically, he was the founder of a new
school of painting that introduced
the Renaissance style.”
The Bellini family ran the most
successful painting workshop in
Venice, Nogueira said. Art historian Giorgio Vasari, in “The Lives
of the Artists,” noted that Jacopo
convinced his daughter, Nicolosia, to marry Mantegna. Giovanni
and his brother-in-law, Mantegna,
THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART
Giovanni Bellini (1430–1516), son of groundbreaking painter
Jacobo Bellini (1400–1470), learned painting in his father’s
workshop in Venice and Padua, Italy. His early works clearly show
his father’s influence. “Madonna Adoring the Sleeping Child,”
early 1460s, by Giovanni Bellini, tempera on wood.
THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART
In an eye-opening series, the Met currently presents several paintings of the Madonna and Child
motif to illustrate the evolution of early Renaissance art toward more vivid composition. “Madonna
and Child,” circa 1470, by Giovanni Bellini, tempera, oil, and gold on wood.
learned from one another and
widely influenced artists throughout the region.
Jacopo Bellini is
often called the
father of painting.
Alison Nogueira
Jacopo initiated the half-length
Madonna sitting behind a ledge.
Unlike a life-size model, the waistup Madonna provided a close-up,
intimate relationship with the
viewer. This perspective suited
well the Bellinis’ commissioned
paintings for private devotional
uses. The painting's information
card notes that the window-like
frame of the parapet referenced
the Virgin as the “window of heaven” through which God shed light
on the world.
The exhibit’s sequence of Jacopo’s
“Madonna and Child” followed by
Giovanni’s three paintings of the
same subject directly illustrates
developments in Renaissance art.
Jacopo’s painting (circa 1440s)
evokes Byzantine icons. Flat, gold
halos circle faces with aquiline
noses. Christ sits in a full-frontal
position.
Giovanni’s “Madonna Adoring
the Sleeping Child” (1460s) bears
strong resemblance to his father’s
work, from the painted arched
top to the face of the Madonna.
Giovanni’s “Madonna and Child”
(circa 1470) uses a similar composition, but in blended tempera and
oil. This hybrid medium shows
a midway transition, pushing
through a stiff opaqueness toward
a more refined depiction of beauty
and virtue.
In the fourth piece, Giovanni
painted “Madonna and Child” (late
1480s) fully in oil. The oil paint
allowed gradients of rich colors,
luminosity, and softly modeled
features.
The work of Jacopo’s mentor,
Gentile de Fabriano, hangs in the
gallery dedicated to an earlier
period of Gothic, Venetian art. But
Nogueira noted that Fabriano’s
painting “Madonna and Child
with Angels,” even dating back to
1410, “marks an increased sense of
naturalism.”
She pointed to its drapery of
cloth and muscles on the Christ
child as examples of stylistic influences in the Bellinis’ later works.
And after all, according to Vasari,
Bellini named his son, Gentile,
after Fabriano.
The intertwining of the artists’
lives affected styles, techniques,
and ideas across time and geographic distances. This exhibit
demonstrates how painting as an
art form dynamically evolved to
reflect a civilization.
The exhibit Art in Renaissance Venice is at the Metropolitan Museum
of Art through Feb. 5.
Betsy Kim has worked as a lawyer
and a TV reporter. She is now a
writer living in New York City.
Giovanni Bellini’s works evolved not only in composition but also
in the material he used. Pure oil on wood allowed richer colors and
more luminosity, expressing more refined beauty than earlier works.
“Madonna and Child,” late 1480, by Giovanni Bellini, oil on wood.
PRESS OFFICE OF PALAZZO STROZZI IN FLORENCE
Faith and Other Factors Drove Florentine Art
Money and Beauty exhibit explains
origins of commissioned artwork
BY ANDREA LORINI
EPOCH TIMES STAFF
FLORENCE, Italy—“It is a good
thing to earn money, but even
better is knowing how to spend
it,” Giovanni Rucellai said in
1475.
As a merchant who became
a patron, he entered the city’s
history, along with some Florentine families—not for the
enormous wealth he had accu-
mulated, but for spending his
money on the arts and culture
of the Renaissance.
The art exhibit Money and
Beauty—subtitled Bankers, Botticelli, and the Bonfire of the
Vanities—in Florence’s Palazzo
Strozzi, is in its last weeks. The
exhibit tells the story of the
global banking system and how
the money overwhelmed the
society of the time, for better
or worse.
PRESS OFFICE OF PALAZZO STROZZI IN FLORENCE
An altar-piece, commissioned by Cosima de’ Medici, in one scene, shows two saints as well as St. Anthony of
Padua, pointing at the dead body of a usurer whose heart had been removed. The saint miraculously made
it appear in a casket of gold pieces, illustrating how much the usurer’s heart was attached to money. “The
Martyrdom of Saints Cosmas and Damian” and “The Miracle of St. Anthony,” by Francesco Pesellini (1422–1457).
Money and Beauty are “two
elements that seem antithetical and incompatible, but that,
ultimately, through the commission, can be reconciled,”
said Ludovica Sebregondi, art
historian and curator of the
exhibition.
Works were meticulously chosen by Sebregondi and arranged
by architect Luigi Cupellini:
coffers, bills of exchange, firstaccount records, and golden
florins, the 24-carat pure-gold
coins weighing 3.53 grams and
produced by the Mint of Florence in 1252, from where everything began.
Protestant Flanders
Paintings by Flemish masters
depicting the deeds of usurers
are centrally positioned in the
exhibit. Usurers were an entirely new figure in the European
social structure at that time. In
the paintings, their faces and
bodies are visibly warped by
their obsession with money.
In Van Reymerswaele’s “The
Usurers,” what stands out are
“the piercing hands, strong
Belgian painters depicted in strong and direct representations,
almost as a social warning, the dark sides of the banking business.
“The Moneychanger and His Wife,” circa 1540, by Marinus van
Reymerswaele (1490–1567), oil on wood.
shadows, [their] watching their
money in the middle, with
the candle half-consumed, a
symbol of vanitas, and in their
faces the personification of
that saying ‘the money is the
devil’s excrement,’” Sebregondi said, interpreting the body
language used by the Dutch
painter.
The theme of usury is also
depicted in his painting “The
Banker and His Wife.” The
moneychanger and his wife are
more beautiful than the two in
“The Usurers,” but “with their
predatory gestures, they communicate the true nature of
those who traffic with money,”
Sebregondi said.
PLEASE SEE FLORENTINE ART ON B2