The Cambridge Companion to Giovanni Bellini (review)

The Cambridge Companion to Giovanni Bellini provides a useful introduction to issues in Bellini scholarship from the final decades of the twentieth century. Although the reader must refer elsewhere for color reproductions of Bellini's paintings — the illustrations in the Cambridge volume are, lamentably, printed in black and white — the twelve essays that make up the volume are true to the book's primary aim: "to compliment the standard monographs by Robertson, Goffen, and Tempestini" (8). Organized thematically rather than chronologically, the essays assess how the visual and literary culture of the fifteenth century shaped Bellini's oeuvre (J. Fletcher, K. Christiansen, M. Lucco, D. Pincus, D. Howard, A. Gentili, P. Hills), evaluate sixteenth-century responses to Bellini's painting on the part of painters and poets (C. Wilson, A. Tempestini), and elucidate Bellini's painting technique and studio practices through close visual analysis and modern technology (J. Dunkerton, G. Goldner).

While the contributors vary in their approaches to specific problems in Bellini's oeuvre, an aspect that links the essays is their emphasis on the many factors that shaped his poetic painting. Bellini derived from his father and brother-in-law an interest in perspective and classicizing motifs, yet the luminosity and naturalism of his paintings — and especially his use of oil paint — owed much to his exposure to Flemish devotional images and portraits so popular among collectors in and outside of Venice. Using archival documents to reconstruct Bellini's "social world," Fletcher debunks the myth (originated by Vasari and perpetuated by Ruskin) that Bellini's humble origins and supposed piety explain his ethereal images. Bellini and his family enjoyed the heightened status of cittadini originari, and his paintings were bought and appreciated by a sophisticated circle of noble families and friends (13). Although Bellini's social relationships cannot conclusively explain his painting, as Fletcher notes, one still must question the extent to which Bellini's experimentation, echoed in the playful literary culture of his age, also responded to the tastes of his patrons. From Bellini's social world, Christiansen and Lucco turn to his artistic relationships, examining his responses to Jacopo, Gentile, and Mantegna, as well as the widely popular style of Flemish artists. Indeed, it is suggestive that Bellini's assimilation of antiquarian motifs associated with humanism and the gothic style of the northern painters reflected the interests of his patrons who, like their princely contemporaries, collected antiquities alongside Flemish tapestries and paintings by Van Eyck, Memling, and others (92, 89). Bellini's use of both southern and northern idioms is also evident in his drawing — as Goldner suggests in his essay — and even in his choice of materials, for Bellini experimented with both tempera and oil paints throughout his career, an observation that Dunkerton makes in her intriguing study of Bellini's technique.

A poet alert to his world, Bellini constantly referenced his Venetian environs to create a "transcendental vision [. . .] to be caressed by the eye in a prolonged act of reference and meditation" (153). The essays by Pincus, Howard, Gentili, and Hills focus on the symbolic potential of Bellini's fantasia, from his evocation of Lombardo stone relief, Byzantine-inspired mosaics, and marble ornament of San Marco, to his use of landscape and color. Far from having fixed meanings, Bellini's paintings wove "a collage of figurative elements deriving from different traditions and origins," thereby exciting discovery and devotion on the part of the spectator (177).

A final group of essays treats Bellini and his legacy through the eyes of his contemporaries. Wilson looks closely at Bellini's role in initiating the "modern manner" in sixteenth-century Venetian painting. Calling into question Vasari's (still widely held) assertion that Giorgione shaped the course of High Renaissance painting in Venice, Wilson reassesses the complexity, the subject matter, and the techniques that characterize Bellini's late production. Wilson's essay compliments Tempestini's study, which focuses on the dissemination of Bellini...