Bellini

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


Plate
I. Virgin and Child Frontispiece
In the Academy at Venice
Page
II. The Doge Loredano 14
In the National Gallery, London

III. Angel playing a Lute 24
In the Academy at Venice

IV. Madonna with the Holy Child Asleep 34
In the Academy at Venice

V. Pieta 40
In the Brera Gallery at Milan

VI. Allegory: The Barque of Love 50
In the Academy at Venice

VII. Madonna and Child 60
In the Academy at Venice

VIII. Madonna and Child 70
In the Brera Gallery at Milan




[Illustration]

INTRODUCTION


From the standpoint of the biographer, it is to be regretted that more
of the great Italian artists of the fifteenth century were not
associated with the Church. In the days of the most interesting activity
of painters and sculptors, the capacity to write was rarely met beyond
the monasteries and few people took the trouble to record any impression
of notable men in the early years of their career. We are apt to forget
that, for one artist whose name is preserved to us to-day, there are a
score of men whose work has perished, whose very names are forgotten. In
middle life, or in old age, when commissions from Popes or Emperors had
attracted the attention of the world at large to the best men of the
time, there might be some chronicler found to make passing but
invaluable reference to those of his contemporaries whose names were
common in men's mouths, but such notes were made in very haphazard
fashion, they were not necessarily accurate, and might be founded upon
personal observation or rumour, or even upon the prejudice that was
inevitable when Italy was a congerie of opposing states. Latter-day
historians grope painfully and conscientiously after the scanty records
of great painters, searching the voluminous writings of men who have
little to say, and very little authority for saying anything about the
great personalities of the art world of their time. It is not
surprising, under these circumstances, that despite much search the
record of many lives that must have been fascinating cannot be found. We
learn more of the man from his work than we can hope to learn from any
written record and, as the taste for studying pictures grows, so all the
internal evidence of a man's thought and ways of life accumulates and
the message that underlies canvas and stands revealed in colour and line
to the trained eye, is translated for the benefit of a curious
generation. We learn to know what manner of man the painter was from
the models he chose, the portraits he painted, the qualities and nature
of his landscape, the expression of his joy in light and air, his
feeling for flowers and birds. By a process of synthetical reasoning we
come to see, though it be as in a glass, darkly, the picture that every
man paints, from the years of his activity to the last year of his
sojourn among mortals--that is the portrait of himself. Doubtless we are
often misled, because as each critic, artist or layman, finds in the
picture a reflection of what he takes there, it remains difficult to
arrive at definite conclusions upon which all men can agree about any
painter. Happily the effort pleases our own generation, and as there are
many great men who flourished in the fifteenth century and have left
their pictures to be their sole monument, there is no lack of work.
Naturally in this curious and inquisitive age there are some who would
rather discover a well authenticated story about an artist's life than
an unexpected masterpiece from his hand, but then the appeal of letters
is always more widespread than that of paint. It is always pleasant to
endeavour to supply a want, but it is only fair to remember that in
writing about people whose life story was not preserved by their
contemporaries, the path is strewn with pitfalls.