Loredan’s portrait is an innovative painting combining the ideas of the Tuscan and Northern European art. These influences are reflected in the portrait as a whole and can be detected in the treatment of the Doge’s vestments.
The 15th century Venetian painting was a fusion of Byzantine and the International Gothic style. Northern art had an impact on Venice from the late 15thC as a by-product of increased levels of trade between Venice and the north. When Venice became the centre of the printing technology, the Venetians became acquainted with Italian and Northern art through the publication of prints.
Italian Influence
Bellini came into contact with new artistic concepts originating in Tuscany through his father Jacopo Bellini who had been exploring perspective and spatial illusion in his paintings. In the Doge’s portrait we can see that Giovanni certainly used the three dimensional modelling as we feel that we can walk around the figure.
In a more traditional representation of the Doge Giovanni Mocenigo painted by Giovanni’s brother Gentile Bellini, the doge is portrayed in a more schematic manner. The predecessor of Leonardo Loredan, Mocenigo is shown in sharp profile, his status enhanced by the background covered entirely with gold. In terms of modelling, the transition between shaded and highlighted areas is much less subtle than in Loredan’s portrait.
Venetian Influence
The Doge Loredan’s portrait, however, is essentially a Venetian painting. It has been recognized that while Florentine art was preoccupied with form and design, Venetian painters, in contrast, found inspiration in the atmospheric effects particular to their city.
Qualities such as flickering light and sensuous colours resulted in emotionally expressive effects and these were often rendered through painterly brushwork. So it could be said that the Venetian painters were interested in the surface aspects of painting.
Northern European Influence
The naturalistic effects the Venetians were interested in were improved by a new technique pioneered by Jan van Eyck in the North, oil paint. Oil paint was an ideal medium for achieving such naturalistic effects as it enabled the artist to render textures, depth, luminosity and transparency of layers which in turn increased realistic representation.
Bellini mastered oil paint completely. He could reproduce the effects of light on different surfaces using the northern technical innovation while fulfilling expectations of the Venetian taste for sensuousness of rich mterials.
Fusion of Byzantine, Italian and Northern Influences in the Portrait of Leonardo Loredan
Loredan's ducal portrait is a work of art that carries this cross-cultural eclecticism. Bellini skills are noticable in the treatment of the Doge’s garments. He successfully achieved the illusion of shiny fabric and its folds despite of the departure from the tarditional use of gold leaf in representing gold thread of the fabric. Instead, he employed the technique of impasto in certain areas in order to depict the effects of light falling on the garments so that the clothes appear convincing in terms of texture and modelling. This is evident both in the mantle and the cap.
Giovanni’s achievement lies in that he was able to capture the texture of the silk damask fabric in oil paint alone. Thus Giovanni Bellini represents a synthesis between Tuscan and Northern European 15th century art.
Sources:
- Monnas, Lisa: Merchants, Princes and Painters: Silk Fabrics in Italian and Northern Paintings 1300-1550, Yale University Press 2008
- Woods Kim W, Richardson Carol M, Lymberopoulou Angeliki: Viewing Renaissance Art, Yale University Press 2007
- Welch, Evelyn: Art in Renaissance Italy 1350-1500, Oxford University Press 1997
- Molá, Luca: The Silk Industry of Renaissance Venice
- Owen Hughes, Diane: Sumptuary Law and Social Relations in Renaissance Italy, in The Italian Renaissance, edited by Paul Findlen
- Duits, Rembrandt: Figured Riches: The Value of Gold Brocades in Fifteenth-Century Florentine Painting, in Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Insitutes, Vol. 62 (1999), pp. 60-92
Zuzana Minarikova - I live in London and work in publishing in Bloomsbury which is an exciting part of London, full of museums, galleries, bookshops and ...
