Venice Renaissance Art History

From the book jacket: "A fresh re-examination of Artemisia Gentileschi, the most famous woman artist of the pre-modern era.  This book newly situates her art in relation to her literary contemporaries, women who, like Artemisia, challenged misogyny and provided a critical counterpoint to the dominant masculine voice."

A number of longstanding questions have surrounded the early life of the fifteenth-century Venetian artist Giovanni Bellini (d. 1516), generally believed to have been the son of Jacopo Bellini (ca. 1400–70/71) and the younger brother of Gentile Bellini (1429/35–1507). The artist’s year of birth and the legitimacy of his birth have been the subjects of debate for well over a century. By reevaluating Bellini-related legal documents under the relevant fifteenth-century Venetian civil laws, this article makes a case that Giovanni Bellini was not Jacopo Bellini’s son, but rather his half-brother, and that they were both sons of Nicol
o Bellini; that Giovanni was therefore Gentile Bellini’s uncle rather than his brother; and that he was born legitimate between the late summer of 1424 and 13 September 1428, several years earlier than the birth year of ca. 1435 (or later) favored by many contemporary Bellini specialists. The ramifications of situating Bellini’s birth year in the mid- to late 1420s are then considered.

Here the text is based on the famous Fatih Sultan Mehmed portrait by Gentile Bellini. But also it includes other works of Gentile Bellini and his families. 

If you want to deliver whole work, please contact me via email: ozgurkocaci@gmail.com.

L’obiettivo di questo contributo è quello di riconsiderare alcuni aspetti propri della pittura religiosa di Tiziano nel sesto decennio, interpretandoli alla luce di un dialogo mai interrotto con Roma e soprattutto con la maniera di Raffaello e Michelangelo. È attraverso le esperienze maturate in questi anni, in cui si compie il secondo soggiorno augustano del 1550-1551, che il Vecellio con un estremo sforzo di sintesi tra forma e colore intuisce la via per chiudere la “provvidenziale” (Pallucchini 1981) partita con la cultura centroitaliana.
A partire dall’individuazione di nuove fonti di riferimento desunte dalla scultura antica e moderna, in particolare dei Lombardo, ma anche dalla circolazione di stampe e disegni, il contributo analizza alcune opere destinate alla Spagna e all’Italia, che il maestro stesso definisce “devotissime”. Tra queste, il Peccato originale e la Santa Margherita del Prado, o ancora il Cristo risorto appare alla Madre della chiesa Parrocchiale di Medole, un dipinto generalmente costretto ai margini della storiografia tizianesca per le sue drammatiche vicende conservative, ma in realtà emblematico di questo momento di inquietudine formale, passeggero, ma allo stesso tempo capace di traghettare il maestro nella sua ultima stagione.

Between the end of the XVI and the beginning of the XVII centuries, a new pictorial category made its appearance: That of the copy after the great masters. The success of this category during the XVII century, which was not limited to the Venetian market, runs parallel to the “canonization process” of the so-called “great masters” (Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese). The merchandising opportunities offered through the commercialization of such copies were intuited already towards the end of the preceding century. In order to operate successfully on the market, it was necessary to perpetuate and “re-affirm” the manner of the “great masters”. In this context, new types of professional figures in this branch made their appearance, such as the one of the painter/merchant, whose fortune depended on a capillary network of contacts of various kinds

Villa Grimani Molin, today Avezzù, is a prestigious noble rural residence adorned with a precious, yet peculiar fresco program. Many attempts have been made to decipher these frescoes, though with very meagre results, mainly because of the absence of basic archival documentation regarding the identities of the architect, the painter and even the main patron responsible for the commission of the villa and its decoration. In order to overcome this barrier, the topic is approached according to the principals of Microhistory, by means of a preliminary, exhaustive documentary reconstruction that surpasses the common archival boundaries of the art and architecture historian. This approach has enabled to answer most of the preliminary questions, providing the essential cultural foundations for the iconographic study of the frescoes, on which the book is centered. The detailed analysis of every scene creates a vivid reconstruction of the cosmological philosophy of the villa’s family members, characterized by an extremely erudite and fascinating syncretic attitude, seeking to unify multiple world-views into one universal form of wisdom, encompassing paganism, Judaism, Catholicism, heretic thought and esotericism. Beyond the presentation of a single case study and its original iconographic discoveries, the book hopes to inspire art and architecture historians how to approach their objects of study when the more standard channels are not able to provide enough background information regarding their origins or function.

Il testo aggiorna e integra, con inediti contributi storico-iconografici, un precedente studio edito in ambito universitario e citato nel sito del British Museum di Londra, a cui appartiene la preziosa xilografia d’inizio Cinquecento analizzata, conosciuta esclusivamente in questa unica copia.
È stata, inoltre, individuata l’esatta datazione del soggetto rappresentato nell’opera, che si configura come il primo esempio di un accertato avvenimento storico veneziano, direttamente documentato in una iconografia coeva: un concettualmente modernissimo “reportage” visivo, totalmente ignorato negli scritti sull’area di Rialto e, soltanto successivamente al primo citato studio, superficialmente ricordato, con omissioni oppure palesi sviste, nelle pubblicazioni trattanti la storia l’evoluzione del Bucintoro.
Un’opera anonima che necessariamente dovrebbe affiancare, per non minore importanza storica, pur in ambiti diversi, la pianta prospettica di Jacopo de’ Barbari e i “teleri” dei celeberrimi pittori coevi, che hanno raffigurato e celebrato la città lagunare con rinnovato spirito rinascimentale.

The text updates and integrates, with unpublished historical-iconographic contributions, a previous study published in the university context and cited in the site of the British Museum in London, to which belongs the precious early sixteenth century woodblock analyzed, known exclusively in this single copy.
The exact dating of the subject represented in the work was also identified, which takes the form of the first example of an established Venetian historical event, directly documented in a coeval iconography: a conceptually modern visual "reportage", totally ignored in the writings on the Rialto area and, only after the first mentioned study, superficially recalled, with omissions or obvious oversights, in the publications dealing with history the evolution of the Bucintoro.
An anonymous work that should necessarily, alongside not less historical importance, even in different spheres, the perspective plan of Jacopo de ’Barbari and the“ teleri ”of the famous coeval painters, who depicted and celebrated the lagoon city with a renewed Renaissance spirit.

In 1491, Giorgio Spavento, architect (proto) of San Marco, Venice, remodeled the portal of the church of Santi Filippo e Giacomo. He added a lunette to the façade, in which he placed three statues – a Madonna and Child, Saint Joseph and one of the three Wise Men from the East in a kneeling posture. A drawing of the lunette made in 1759 by the draughtsman and painter Jan van Grevenbroeck records the presence of the statues there. In the nineteenth century, the façade of the church was altered and the lunette removed. The article explores the evidence concerning the lunette of Santi Filippo e Giacomo and the interpretations of the Gothic sculptures dating from more than two centuries earlier that were placed inside it. The statues, now considered among the masterpieces of Venetian Gothic sculpture, were originally carved for a large cycle dedicated to the Nativity of Christ, designed in the mid-thirteenth century for the chancel screen of the Basilica of San Marco. The date and the circumstances that led to the cycle being broken up and the chancel screen dismantled are unknown. The rood screen that is currently in place was carved in 1394 by the sculptors Jacobello and Pierpaolo dalle Masegne. This little-known case study offers a rare and intriguing example of a Gothic set repurposed by shifting its iconographic meaning without erasing it entirely. As the lunette of Santi Filippo e Giacomo exemplifies, once statues were taken out of the context they had been carved for originally, their iconographic meaning was open to reinterpretation. Even though it was driven by pragmatic intentions (in this case, to redesign an ancient monastic façade in keeping with a newly fashionable late fifteenth-century style), repurposing statues led to semantic shifts that made them appear enigmatic, if not downright bewildering, to those who looked at them at a later time.

Short historical reconstruction of life and work of the Bassano family, incl. Francesco Sr., Jacopo, Giambattista Sr., Francesco Jr., Giambattista Jr., Leandro and Girolamo.

Unpublished materials include:
- Birth records of Jacopo's children: Francesco Alessandro, Francesco Giambattista, Giambattista, Leandro, Girolamo
- The Penitent Magdalen (Accademia Carrara, Bergamo), correctly attributed to Francesco Bassano

A lecture by Monica Centanni and Michela Maguolo.
Welcome by Giuseppe D’Acunto (Director of Teaching and Learning, Iuav)
and Fernanda De Maio (English MA Course Leader, Iuav).
Introduction by James Campbell (Head of the Department of Architecture,
University of Cambridge).
The event is organised by Enrico Brondelli di Brondello and Francesca Romana Dell’Aglio and hosted to welcome the students of the Department of Architecture at the University of Cambridge.

Titian painted Christ with the Coin for Alfonso d'Este around 1516. The painting served as the cover piece for a collection of ancient coins and has been read as a commentary on politics and taxation. Instead, this article reveals how the painting reconfigured Alfonso's interaction with ancient coins, transforming the everyday activity of the collector into an occasion of spiritual reformation. Reading numismatic antiquarianism against the exegetical tradition that accrued around the Gospel pericope (Matthew 22:21) reveals the painting as the nexus of two regimes of virtue — one Christian, one classical — both of which turn upon coins as manifold objects.

[the full article in http://www.engramma.it/eOS/index.php?id_articolo=3579]

Around 1515, Titian (Tiziano Vecellio) was called by Alfonso d'Este to complete his “Camerino delle pitture”: Titian found the cycle begun by Giovanni Bellini with the so-called Feast of the Gods – a painting that Titian himself retouched heavily to satisfy the client's tastes. The other three paintings in the series were inspired, in varying degrees, by the text of Imagines by Philostratus that Demetrius Mosco had recently vulgarised for Alfonso's sister, Isabella.

Titian drew inspiration from the ekphrasis of ancient paintings and yet interpreted them freely, going as far as inventing, for the image that concludes the cycle The Bacchanal of the Andrians (1523-1524), the figure of sleeping maenad that had as its model a statue that just recently had entered the collection of Julius II: the Vatican Ariadne. It should be noted, however, that at the time, the sculpture was identified as Cleopatra. But Titian, with brilliant artistic intuition, sees in that Sleeping Beauty the bacchante par excellence, Dionysus’ bride: Ariadne.

The essay also presents, in an Appendix, the excerpts from Imagines by Philostratus ((I.24 ΑΝΔΡΙΟΙ, I.6 ΕΡΩΤΕΣ, I.16 ΑΡΙΑΔΝΗ), which inspired the painter for the cycle: a Greek text, with Italian translation and the vulgarisation by Demetrio Mosco that Alfonso (and therefore Titian) had at his disposal.

Il pittore Melchiorre Galluzzi era finora noto solamente per due pale d’altare, firmate e datate: un Battesimo di Cristo del 1586 conservato a Veronella e un’Annunciazione del 1596 custodita presso il Museo Civico “Ala Ponzone” di Cremona. La mancanza di dati biografici e di contesto aveva pertanto indotto gli studiosi che si sono occupati di questo artista ad avanzare ipotesi spesso discordanti sulla sua formazione e interpretazioni eterogenee sul suo stile. Il ritrovamento di cinque lettere autografe di Melchiorre Galluzzi tra le carte Serego della Biblioteca Civica di Verona, ricche di dati autobiografici, e il contestuale rinvenimento di altre inedite carte d’archivio a Verona e a Cremona consente oggi di tracciare un primo profilo di questo artista. Egli nacque a Cologna Veneta da una famiglia di notai intorno alla metà del Cinquecento, si formò a Venezia nell’ambito dei cantieri delle Scuole Grandi e in particolare a contatto con Alessandro Vittoria e Giulio Licinio, coi quali risulta in rapporto di consuetudine e amicizia nei documenti degli anni ’80, e quindi si trasferì a Cremona nell’ultimo decennio del XVI secolo. Nella città lombarda, tramite le raccomandazioni dei Serego, suoi committenti veronesi, fu protetto da importanti famiglie come i Cavalcabò e i Trecchi.

Die Zeichenkunst gehörte in der Frühen Neuzeit zu einer grundlegenden künstlerischen Arbeitspraxis. Seit dem 16. Jahrhundert begannen in Italien zunehmend auch Kunstliebhaber damit, sich das Zeichnen anzueignen. Nanobashvili stellt erstmals in der Studie die Lerntechniken von Künstlern und Dilettanti gegenüber. Auf diesem Weg werden entscheidende Erkenntnisse zur Kunsttheorie und Zeichenpraxis in den Jahren von 1560 bis 1630 erlangt. Dies erlaubt eine Neubewertung von Alessandro Alloris Ragionamenti delle regole del disegno, der Carracci-Akademie in Bologna sowie der Praxis des Aktzeichnens, ausgehend von den Werkstattbeständen des venezianischen Künstlers Filippo Esengren.


208 Seiten, 160 Farb- und 43 S/W-Abbildungen, Hardcover
ISBN 978-3-7319-0612-4

Online: https://doi.org/10.11588/arthistoricum.1051

--

In the early modern period drawing was one of the main working practices of artists. Since the 16th century more and more dilettanti showed interest for learn drawing. For the first time Nanobashvili opposes learning techniques of artists and dilettanti, by which she can shed new light on drawing practices and theoretical questions. This approach allows a new understanding of Alessandro Alloris Ragionamenti delle regole del disegno, the Carracci-academy in Bologna, as well as the life drawing by examining an informal circle of venetian artist Filippo Esengren.

Online: https://doi.org/10.11588/arthistoricum.1051

-

The article puts forward a new reading of a stone high relief in the Church of San Michele Arcangelo, in the homonymous district on the outskirts of Verona. Brought to the public’s attention on the pages of this magazine a few years ago and attributed on that occasion to the Florentine sculptor Nanni di Bartolo, known as Il Rosso, the relief displays stylistic features that suggest an alternative and more fitting attribution. The study in fact connects the artwork to the prolific workshop of the Caronesi Masters active in the second quarter of the 15th century in many areas of Northern Italy, from the Veneto to Lombardy, with some episodes even in Liguria.

Some female images of the Early Cinquecento Venice have been subject to various interpretations. On the one hand the physical appearance of pictures as Titian's Flora or La Bella, has led some researchers to consider them the materialization of Beauty itself. On the other hand others specialists have interpreted their own specific iconography as images of young brides, mostly portraits, but eluding their appearance considered pretty. In this article the semantic of the represented feminine beauty will be detailed as a key part of the virtue's message of a perfect wife's portrait.

Il Centro Studi RiVe, costituitosi presso il Dipartimento di Filosofia e Beni Culturali dell'Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, ha come campo d'indagine privilegiato la cultura figurativa del Rinascimento veneziano secondo un approccio interdisciplinare. Tra le sue attività, RiVe organizza un seminario annuale con ospiti internazionali, dedicato per il 2020-2021 al tema di "Venezia e l'altro. Immagini, Saperi, Contesti". Aperto a studiosi, studenti e a chi si interessa di Rinascimento veneziano, il seminario di RiVe è un luogo di scambio e dialogo, in cui si propongono ricerche inedite o appena concluse.

Identificazione topografica e descrizione delle trasformazioni di un ambiente urbano raffigurato in un noto disegno d’archivio del XVI secolo, sito compreso nella antica parrocchia di San Polo a Venezia; datazione della costruzione di due edifici con quattro case d’affitto e del vicino palazzo sul Canal Grande della famiglia patrizia Zane.

Individuazione della reale collocazione topografica di un affresco perduto di Andrea Schiavone a Venezia su palazzo Zane Giustinian Donà Dubois, costruito dal procuratore e capitano da mar Girolamo Zane sul Canal Grande; opera che si crede invece realizzata su palazzo Querini Tiepolo Passi, anch’esso situato lungo il Canal Grande, in parrocchia di San Polo.

Osservazioni su una bombarda raffigurata in un bassorilievo lapideo situato presso le cinquecentesche case dei Bombardieri a Venezia.

Studio sulle uniche, effettive case cinquecentesche della Scuola di Santa Barbara dei Bombardieri veneziani nell’antica parrocchia di Santa Ternita, tra le quali fu per breve tempo insediata la sede della confraternita, in attesa della ricostruzione dell’edificio situato presso la chiesa Santa Maria Formosa.

Identification of topographic location and description of the transformation of an urban environment depicted in a well known drawing of archive (sixteenth century), a site included in the ancient parish of San Polo in Venice; dating of the construction of two houses with four apartments for rent and near palace on bank of the Grand Canal of the patrician family Zane.

Individuation of real topographical location of a lost fresco by Andrea Schiavone in Venice on Zane Giustinian Donà Dubois palace, built by procuratore and capitano da mar Girolamo Zane on bank of the Grand Canal; work that is believed instead be on palazzo Querini Tiepolo Passi, it also located along the Grand Canal, in the parish of San Polo.

Remarks on a bombard represented in a stone bas-relief located at the sixteenth-century houses of Bombardieri in Venice.

Study on the unique, actual houses sixteenth of the School of Santa Barbara of Venetians Bombardieri (gunners) in the ancient parish of Santa Ternita, among which was briefly established the seat of the confraternity, pending the reconstruction of the building located near Church of Santa Maria Formosa.