Book Review.  By Giuseppe Marasco

Bellini is one of the most celebrated and influential Italian artists. Venetian. Pioneering portrayal of natural light. Dürer thought him the best of all artists. popularizer of the “eyewitness” style.

The most famous work of his in England was the Doge Leonardo Loredan  at the National Gallery.

The past tense is used only as this sublime Madonna now competes so greatly in our imagination.

This painting had hardly ever been seen, it was an unknown masterpiece.

It is a testament to Bellini’s ability to “change skins” throughout his  career and development even at the age of over 75 when he painted it.

Bellini was extraordinarily sensitive to the new generation of High Renaissance artists, responding instantly to new ideas.

The book explains how it was kept out of the limelight when it was very clearly an autograph painting by Bellini.

Examining anew the part he played in Venetian High Renaissance painting, his influence upon and then sensitive response to, the upcoming Giorgione, Titian and Sebastiano del Piombo.  It looks in particular at the importance of the visit to Venice in 1508 of Fra Bartolomeo, a key figure in early 16^th century Florence, who came with a wealth of important new ideas to share and disseminate. His is one, in part, of the influence of inter-generation dialogues, which will seriously buck the expectations one has of how a typical chronology of influence would flow. For example Fra Bartlomeo transmitted much new knowledge from Raphael, who would visit him eagerly to learn as much exchange techniques.

Fra Bartolomeo influence on Bellini is most obviously evident in the Madonna’s – for him – comparatively oblique pose.

It is more than an enjoyable intellectual game, but an opportunity to sense how the various enquiring minds of the renaissance contributed to these individual effects. To know the mindedness and the journeys that each difference in the Dudley Madonna produces in us, and have at hand in this publication photographs which bring this out easily and clearly. One learns also, that sometimes the reason why such a trove of developments, or jewels of affect, land with one artist rather than another is much to do with the receptivity and generosity of character. So that if any great lessons are taken, it is that there is a great tie between openness, sensitivity and progress.

Perhaps, there is an element of the detective in a book like this, profoundly impressed by The Dudley Madonna. Then making the discovery, having had ones senses alerted by the unexpected. Having all ones faculties and training going. And then the hard work of proving the case. Finding the evidence that proves the case. Which incidentally helps us peer ever nearer to the mind and the working methods of a Renaissance master.

Where he demonstrates, that not only is it a genuine work by Giovanni Bellini, but that it marks a turning point in the late work of the artist.

Very exceptional reproductions. Enlargement of details, particularly of the Faces. Pays off with this book, as Bellini is so sensitive. A real insight onto the working method of Bellini.

The giant reproductions give the sense that you are looking at a James Rosenquist, pop art enlargements. That really allow you to enter the painting and be emerged in the detail and the reverberations of the colour, in the way that you naturally would be if proximate and attentively viewing the painting itself. Such is the nature of such a publication, with its multiple close-ups, and comparisons to other artists who made versions, is to become intimately acquainted with the inner working of the paintings mechanics. And to be able to relish the sophisticated advances in the visual craft. Every time you see a version of the Dudley Madonna, you appreciate the original all the more. The absences of attention, are of such instruction. Learning as much by what is not there. By realising clearly the differing effect, one can be drawn closer to the object of the painting. The development of Bellini’s different Madonna’s, show us a mind very thoughtfully producing hard-won advances. And it is this sensitivity, that the book grows in us. That helps us not only to see what advancement in learning looks like. But helps learn how little of this object to take for granted. To have the subject, of art artists development witnessed with such clarity, easily provided for us, is most humbling. And most humbling that such a great artist as Bellini at the height of his powers, would start all over again to learn from the younger generation of artists. To befriend them and give them their dues. Rather than ignore them, as many of Bellini contemporaries or  young fellow Venetian painters did.  Dürer suffered these difficulties, and found respect and friendship in Bellini. So greatly impressed was Dürer, that he remarked Bellini still burned intensely with desire to learn even at the great age of 70.

This is a delightful book. Very perfect for the Christmas Season. The size, proportions and the many enlargements of portraits means that one gains the full warmth an intimacy of the Madonna. And the other Paintings that are used to illustrate and relay the case. Of the Emerging new trends and technical discoveries in the Renaissance. one sees learns and discovers how a great painter takes on, thinks, adapts and understands these new developments. So that we can enter an appreciated, even more just what going on with these new ways of seeing that were coming about. I should make that clear point, such a cross roads moment, allows us to appreciate the visual literacy. The modes of telling, and affect. That may normally pass us by. Its is the presentation of a thinking subject, as these transformations take place in his practise (one already celebrated in his life time), that one sees what it is that has happen. one is what magic it is that has happened, with these new turns. Or better said, this deepening of the pictorial space.

Antonio Mazzotta, author of the publication, was Pidem Curatorial Assistant at the National Gallery, London, between 2008 and 2010, and curated the exhibition Titian‘s First Masterpiece: The Flight into Egypt at the National Gallery, 4 April to 19 August 2012.

NOVEMBER 2012

104 pages, paperback, 300 x 245 mm, 70 colour illustrations

ISBN 978 1 907372 46 9, Price £20, €25, $30

Published in association with Paul Holberton publishing, London,
Distributed in Continental Europe by
and in the United States and Canada by Casemate Athena www.casemateathena.com