''E' troppo buio!'' It's too dark, said the elderly ladies to each other, then to me, then to the museum guard at the recently-opened exhibition at the Scuderie del Quirinale. Indeed the galleries were densely dark, intentionally submerged in quasi-blackness with bright lights only on the works themselves, which were deeply set into crimson red walls. The paintings glowed by comparison.
The paintings are the work of the famous and much sought-after Venetian Renaissance painter Giovanni Bellini. The exhibition was curated by Mauro Lucco and Giovanni C.F. Villa who have brought together a very impressive sample of the artists painting, retrieving celebrated panels and canvases from collections around Europe and the United States to dazzle Rome with more than ten rooms of paintings.
Giovanni Bellini (Venice 1435-40 – 1516) was the son of the painter Jacopo Bellini and an unknown mother. His stepbrother Gentile Bellini was likewise a painter, though evidently the legitimate offspring of Jacopo's marriage. All three artists worked together; in 1483 they were named the official painters of the Republic of Venice. The reputation of Giovanni (also called ''Giambellino'') has surpassed that of the others. We generally attribute his fame—a fame he enjoyed in his lifetime—to a few particular characteristics that the exhibition aims to demonstrate. These include the soft modeling of his figures with warm light and rich tonal coloring, their delicate expressiveness (in particular the Madonna and Child images), and landscape spaces that ostensibly surround the figures with an airy, luminous naturalism that is both spiritual and real.
Before looking at the works themselves to consider whether, in fact, we can see these qualities, I return first to the display itself. Why bother about the display? You might be asking yourself, isn't it simply the setting, which maybe just sets the mood? Or maybe it's in fashion these days to display art in the dark like this? It was similar in the exhibition of Sebastiano del Piombo, after all. The answer is that display is always part of the story that an exhibition tells about an artist's life or career, or about a certain time, or style. The display creates subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle ideas about the meaning of the art, and it conditions how that art is perceived. Here are a few suggestions to consider for the Bellini exhibition.
First, we see only the paintings. It is too dark to see anything else. Even the other people in the room are reduced to shadowy outlines. This focuses our attention quite effectively. Even more, it emphasizes the act of looking at the paintings, of contemplating the images. On the one hand, I like very much that the act of looking itself is foregrounded and forced into a conscious process. This is so different from the inattentive manner in which we normally use our vision, and from how visual imagery is otherwise consumed in our contemporary world. For me, such concentration is worth all the tripping over one's neighbors that naturally ensues.
On the other hand, we are not simply urged to studious inspection, we are also led to see the art as its own explanation. ''Just look'' the curators seem to suggest. The paintings are reduced (or elevated) to their pictorial qualities alone. The glowing image in the dark room also invites—even insists on—comparisons between one work and another, as they jump out at us while all intervening space and other distractions recede. Comparing picture to picture is necessarily an exercise in connoisseurship. That is, evaluating the relative merits of form, the style, identifying characteristic traces of the artists hand, or influences of another artist, etc. Or, if you didn't happen to read up ahead of time on the artist's relationship to various other masters of his day, and you are unprepared to decipher arcane symbols on your own, then you are left to appreciate beauty. The paintings become simply objects of beauty. Certainly an important goal of most all art before the era of Modernism was to be beautiful. But, it was never the only point. Here the recourse to beauty is exaggerated by the total lack of wall text to explain things like the commission, the symbolism, or other bits of information that might help place the work historically and/or art-historically. While text can often over-determine the meaning of the art, a few hints are rarely amiss. To this probable end each visitor is given a little booklet with general descriptions of each room. But forget about trying to see these relatively vague notes while at the exhibition.
The more important implication of the display, in my opinion, is that the paintings were never meant to be viewed (by the patron, artist or the population at large) in such a void. Arguably, as the paintings are mostly altarpieces or large public commissions, there would be no good way to reproduce the original context in an exhibition. That is always an issue, but here the real problem lies in the total disembodiment of the viewer. That same darkness that obscures everything but the painting, disorients us and negates our presence to a considerable extent. Rather than the normal experience of standing in front of paintings, it seems instead as if the paintings simply appear. Our physical relationship to the work is obscured, if not nullified. This is a particular problem because a Renaissance painting is, practically by definition, designed to create a relationship between the human spectator and the holy figures within the painting. The relationship is profoundly material, using the illusion of three-dimensional space that is fictionally continuous with (and mathematically organized around) the placement of the viewer. Tactile values are cultivated, atmosphere is attempted, and human emotions play across the faces of the divine figures. Indeed, these are the very characteristics in which Bellini is thought to excel. Yet, strangely disembodied as we are, the sense of tangible proximity to the pictorial figures is diminished, if not negated. To my mind this creates a viewing context that is fundamentally contrary to the historical meaning and significance of the Renaissance cultivation of naturalism.
But, enough floating around in the dark, let us re-ground ourselves some specific paintings. One of the most remarkable pictures, The Pesaro Altarpiece, c. 1475, occupies the first wall of the exhibition and introduces Bellini at his mature phase. The seven-meter high altarpiece that depicts a coronation of the Virgin with Saints has been interpreted as a politico-religious commission honoring the Sforza family who were then the rulers of Pesaro. Like so many Renaissance compositions, it is rigidly organized and symmetrical with clear geometric patterns in both the architectural setting and in the placement of the figures. Notably, however, Bellini combined the sharpness and angularity of the design with a ''new'' softness in the light and in the forms—the heads in particular. There seems to be a warm glow to the figures and to the atmosphere.
The so-called picture within the picture is another fascinating element of the altarpiece. You'll notice that the high back of the throne where Mary and Jesus sit is a large open square containing a view of a background landscape, a second painting inside the painting. To me this seems like an intentional accentuation of the pictorial fiction that there is a three-dimensional second world within the frame. The frame of the altarpiece is mimicked as the ''frame'' of the landscape and with each of these framings the space inside practically makes a demonstration of pictorial one-point perspective—the perspective system that was so important to Italian Renaissance painting. The altarpiece as a whole also takes the form of a painting, as opposed to the form of architecture, which was common. And, with the inner picture serving as the throne for the coronation (seemingly substituting itself for halos as well), the altarpiece suggests very grand claims for the role of painting as religious object. Surmounting the whole construction is the Vatican's Pieta'. More on this panel later.
With this grand achievement at the opening, some slight backtracking follows, as the next few rooms present Bellini's earlier work. Though the arrangement is not rigidly chronological, simultaneously introducing some of the artist's principal themes, the first rooms offer a sense of his youthful work. Notably, from the beginning, we can see an accomplished treatment of the faces that seems to surpass that of the figures. The heads may be well-modeled while the bodies are a bit weak. I was surprised nonetheless to find neither a strong sense of design in the compositions nor an overly deft arrangement of volumes evident in his early career. As I moved through the rooms, my surprise continued. Some paintings possessed all the softness and warmth, rich color and luminous quality that we expect of Bellini—even after seeing only the Pesaro Altarpiece and works such as the Sacra Conversazione Dolfin, 1507 and SS Agostino e Benedetto, c. 1480-85. Others, by contrast, seemed almost rough and bit awkward. For example, the important commission for the Venetian Doge Agostino Barbarigo in 1488, the Barbarigo Altarpiece appears a bit clumsy, even though it contains a fresh landscape background. The exhibition notes loosely imply that Bellini had an ''official'' style, which might explain the more stilted feel of this work. Also, other scholars suggest hypotheses such as the involvement of assistants on this piece, or possibly a damaging early restoration.
Was Bellini an inconsistent painter, I began to wonder? The quality of his pictures struck me as quite uneven. I tried to determine whether the works were simply in various states of conservation, or whether, for instance, the oils differed from the tempera paintings. But, however much a painting's condition might account for some things, it cannot explain elements such as composition, proportions and the overall treatment of the figure in space, and as a part of a surface design or pattern. Some of the paintings—from the mature phases—lacked facility in this regard.
In a great many of the works on display, we see a half-length, frieze-like arrangement. Bellini often placed his Madonnas or his Lamentations as if in a compressed, narrow stage. Even where a large landscape opens beyond, the figures sit close to the picture plane. Often this form lends a kind of freedom to the figures themselves—as if the compositional constraint can barely constrain their flexible movement. For example, if we take pictures such as the Uffizzi Compianto sul Cristo Morto, 1485 where such a frieze-like composition is used, we will see Bellini as a master of subtle spatial tensions in the figure placement and gesture, and of virtuoso use of light and shade. (The curatorial notes say that it is an unfinished work and shows Bellini's method of complete graphic elaboration that underlay the color. Other sources refer to this as a chiaroscuro—intentionally a work done only in light and shade.) The same compositional richness is beautifully demonstrated in the top panel of the Pesaro Altarpiece at the beginning of the exhibition, and it is well represented also by the Sacra Conversazione Renier, displayed across the room from the Compianto Yet this compositional type, which the exhibition teaches us to associate with Bellini, does not ensure that the figural element of the painting will indeed be so sophisticated every time. There are some oddly stiff and graceless Madonnas that we encounter in the various rooms. It is nearly impossible to believe, for instance, that the Sacra Conversazione Vernon, 1505 could have been painted by the same master of the Uffizzi Compianto. It is a disaster of awkwardness and disproportion. Though none of the odd lapses in quality are as drastic as this one, there are several that leave me in doubt as to whether they are perhaps the work of the bottega, with the signature of the master. Certainly if this were the case, it would in no way diminish the exhibition. But, with so much emphasis on connoisseurship, there ought to be some explanation for such differences in quality.
Moving through the exhibition is thus an odd experience of disorientation on various levels. There is beauty to be sure. It is one of themes of the exhibition. The warm glowing light shines out of many pictures. Yet in many regards, we are left too much in the dark.
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