Lot Essay
COMPARATIVE LITERATURE:
R. Ghiotto and T. Pignatti, L'opera completa di Giovanni Bellini, Milan (Classici dell'Arte, no. 28), 1969
This highly emotional carving is indebted to imagery that was common in Northeastern Italy. Giovanni Bellini treated the subject of the Piet several times. His most famous picture from the 1460s, showing the Virgin Mary almost kissing Christ, from the left is the source for their relationship here, though St. John turns his head away in horror, and the whole group is shown as though behind a low wall, and not a sarcophagus (Milan, Brera - Ghiotto and Pignatti, op. cit., pls. ii-iv, p. 88, no. 27).
In terms of sculpture, Bellini's compositions were combined, varied upon and disseminated far and wide by means of plaquettes cast in bronze by artists such as Moderno (Galeazzo Mondella, 1467-1528) who was based in Verona (see Douglas Lewis, 'The plaquettes of "Moderno" and his followers,' in Studies in the History of Art, 22, Italian Plaquettes, Washington, DC, 1989, p. 131). The carver of this relief must have been familiar with one or more of these prototypes.
R. Ghiotto and T. Pignatti, L'opera completa di Giovanni Bellini, Milan (Classici dell'Arte, no. 28), 1969
This highly emotional carving is indebted to imagery that was common in Northeastern Italy. Giovanni Bellini treated the subject of the Piet several times. His most famous picture from the 1460s, showing the Virgin Mary almost kissing Christ, from the left is the source for their relationship here, though St. John turns his head away in horror, and the whole group is shown as though behind a low wall, and not a sarcophagus (Milan, Brera - Ghiotto and Pignatti, op. cit., pls. ii-iv, p. 88, no. 27).
In terms of sculpture, Bellini's compositions were combined, varied upon and disseminated far and wide by means of plaquettes cast in bronze by artists such as Moderno (Galeazzo Mondella, 1467-1528) who was based in Verona (see Douglas Lewis, 'The plaquettes of "Moderno" and his followers,' in Studies in the History of Art, 22, Italian Plaquettes, Washington, DC, 1989, p. 131). The carver of this relief must have been familiar with one or more of these prototypes.