拍品專文
The present painting, which has been surprisingly neglected in the literature on Giovanni Bellini, was accepted as being 'in great part' autograph by Berenson, loc. cit. Fritz Heinemann, loc. cit., who only knew the picture from a photograph, thought it was by Marco Basaiti, but did not explain why it had a cartellino signed IOANNES BELLINVS. Art historians are perhaps inordinately fond of discerning hands in what renaissance artists would have regarded as a collaborative enterprise. However, for once there do seem to be good grounds for believing that two hands are at work on this particular panel, with the donor portrait being by an as yet unidentified associate of the master.
The group of the Virgin and Child is known in a number of versions by artists from the circle of Giovanni Bellini, such as Francesco Bissolo and Bartolomeo Veneto (Warsaw, op. cit., pp. 84-6, figs. 1-4), but this is without question the most distinguished treatment both in terms of its handling and in such details as the Virgin's jewelled headdress. It is also the only one that makes sense in narrative terms. In this picture, the Virgin looks down protectively at her Son, while He looks down to His left at the kneeling donor. By contrast, in the majority of the other variants, which show the Madonna and Child alone, Christ's sideways glance is devoid of meaning. Even in the picture by Francesco Bissolo in the National Gallery in London, which shows the Virgin and Child flanked by saints and kneeling donors on both sides, the male donor is all but ignored. Clearly the motif appealed to a number of artists around Giovanni, and they were willing to employ it in spite of the oddity of the end result.
From the start of his career, probably in the 1460s, Giovanni Bellini produced a steady stream of Madonnas for private devotion alongside his altarpieces and other large-scale public commissions. A number of them are signed, but only a very few are dated, with the result that their exact chronology is not easy to establish. There can be no doubt, however, that the present picture is later in date than the Madonna degli Alberetti of 1487 (Venice, Accademia) on the one hand, and ealier than the Madonna and Child with Saints and a Donor of 1507 in San Francesco della Vigna in Venice and the Madonna and Child of 1510 in the Brera in Milan, on the other. Comparisons with Bellini's altarpieces, furthermore, would tend to support a date in the 1490s, when he was arguably at the height of his powers. Even in the next decade, Albrecht Dürer wrote home from Venice to his friend Willibald Pirckheimer in Nuremberg in 1506 of Giovanni Bellini that 'he is very old and still the best in painting'.
The group of the Virgin and Child is known in a number of versions by artists from the circle of Giovanni Bellini, such as Francesco Bissolo and Bartolomeo Veneto (Warsaw, op. cit., pp. 84-6, figs. 1-4), but this is without question the most distinguished treatment both in terms of its handling and in such details as the Virgin's jewelled headdress. It is also the only one that makes sense in narrative terms. In this picture, the Virgin looks down protectively at her Son, while He looks down to His left at the kneeling donor. By contrast, in the majority of the other variants, which show the Madonna and Child alone, Christ's sideways glance is devoid of meaning. Even in the picture by Francesco Bissolo in the National Gallery in London, which shows the Virgin and Child flanked by saints and kneeling donors on both sides, the male donor is all but ignored. Clearly the motif appealed to a number of artists around Giovanni, and they were willing to employ it in spite of the oddity of the end result.
From the start of his career, probably in the 1460s, Giovanni Bellini produced a steady stream of Madonnas for private devotion alongside his altarpieces and other large-scale public commissions. A number of them are signed, but only a very few are dated, with the result that their exact chronology is not easy to establish. There can be no doubt, however, that the present picture is later in date than the Madonna degli Alberetti of 1487 (Venice, Accademia) on the one hand, and ealier than the Madonna and Child with Saints and a Donor of 1507 in San Francesco della Vigna in Venice and the Madonna and Child of 1510 in the Brera in Milan, on the other. Comparisons with Bellini's altarpieces, furthermore, would tend to support a date in the 1490s, when he was arguably at the height of his powers. Even in the next decade, Albrecht Dürer wrote home from Venice to his friend Willibald Pirckheimer in Nuremberg in 1506 of Giovanni Bellini that 'he is very old and still the best in painting'.