Curiously, I had it in my head that the Venetian artists Giovanni Bellini and Andrea Mantegna were precursors to the Renaissance giants, paving and painting the way for Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael. Yet a cursory look at dates reminds you that Bellini and Mantegna are very much contemporaries of those artists, with only Michelangelo extending his work deep into the middle of the 16th Century. Perhaps I'm too attuned to E.H. Gombrich's wonderful The Story of Art to not think of the history of painting as a straightforward and improving progression.
As it is, this exhibition at The National Gallery did not quite dazzle but it was, nevertheless, thoroughly engaging and at no point dull. The first surprise was that I began my viewing favouring the Mantegna paintings. You are certainly invited to choose sides in the very first room, where you encounter two painting that share, not only the same subject, but an almost identical composition (what a huge privilege to see these two works together; the Bellini resides at home in Venice whilst the Mantegna is usually housed in Berlin). The two versions of The Presentation at the Temple go head-to-head, and send you backwards and forwards, comparing details and making invidious value judgements. We know that Bellini's version is a clear tribute to his brother-in-law Mantegna's original, painted around five years before.
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Mantegna, The Presentation at the Temple (1455)
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| Bellini, The Presentation at the Temple (1460) |
It's a tale of two coats and two beards, those belonging to Simeon, the holy man in the temple who Jesus is to be presented to. And I come firmly down on the side of Mantegna's wonderfully intricate gown and curls. But it's Bellini who steals the drama, particularly with the figure on the far right, fixing us with that stern and penetrating gaze. Apparently this is the artist himself (with Mantegna standing just behind him). That look almost seems to be admonishing the viewer, telling you to pay attention to what's going on here. This is, remember, serious stuff, a moment where pain and suffering is prophesied, not only for Jesus, but also for Mary:
"Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against; (Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also,) that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed." (this translation lifted from the King James Bible, of course):
There's also, unintentionally, I'm certain, comedy. At the centre of both paintings we find Joseph, and his expression, particularly in the Mantegna, is that of a man who was promised the lead role in the story but is getting used to disappointment. He also bears an uncanny resemblance to a tonsured Jeremy Corbyn. Make of that what you will.
From then on, I began to favour the Bellini's. The second room revealed one of the exhibition's real stand-out paintings. Bellini's Lamentation over the Dead Christ is a glorious grisaille. The power of this painting is all about the composition, the dead Christ crowded and cramped as the mourners gather: look at the careful foreshortening of the knees that brings out a claustrophobic feel to the scene.
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| Bellini, Lamentation Over the Dead Christ (1883) |
I also fell to thinking about that absence of colour, and how our own occasional tendency to filter our own photographs into monochrome might be more than just arty vanity. The grisaille, a painting in grey monochrome, sets out to depict sculpture, to bring gravitas and permanence to an image. Perhaps when we point our own camera-phones, particularly at ourselves, we are vainly striving for our own sense of mortality.
The exhibition also featured a number of Madonnas. Did these impress? Well, in comparison to some of the other Madonnas in the National Gallery, no. Setting the bar incredibly high, my mind drifted up the stairs and fifty yards to the east, and Raphael's stunning Madonna of the Pinks. In contrast to that astonishing painting, Mantegna's Madonna and the Sleeping Child is somewhat dour, whilst Bellini's Madonna Adoring the Sleeping Child ('The Davis Madonna') and The Madonna of the Meadows both suffer from 'ugly baby syndrome'. I don't care what any aesthete says; exceptional babies should not look grumpy and middle-aged, and certainly, as in the case of 'The Davis Madonna', look like Irish actor Colm Meaney.
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Bellini, Madonna Adoring the Sleeping Child (1460)
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| Raphael, The Madonna of the Pinks (1507) |
More impressive is the
Madonna and Child with Two Saints. Bellini's oils no longer soft in tone, suddenly flood the space in the room and subdue the other works of art. But it's not just about the Virgin here (and so is it truly a Madonna?) To her left and right are the figures of St. Catherine and Mary Magdalene, bringing a sensuous warmth into the painting. In fact, it's not the Madonna that ends up holding your attention (so, no, it's not a Madonna) but rather the depiction of Mary Magdalene, auburn locks tumbling down on to her shoulders, her gaze concentrated, almost hypnotically, on Jesus. It's incredibly beautiful, the kind of artistic achievement that the Pre-Raphaelites would have killed for.
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| Bellini, Madonna and Child with Two Saints (1490) |
In that vein, it's often parts of a painting, the incidental details, that steal your attention in this
exhibition. I love the Roman soldiers
casually playing a board game beneath the three crosses in Mantegna's Crucifixion, reminding us once
again of those famous lines of W.H. Auden's about how life and 'everything turns away / quite leisurely from the disaster'. Suffering, it seems, is all too easily ignored.
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| Mantegna, Crucifixion (1459) |
Or,
staying with soldiers, a line of them in the background, led by Judas, on their
way to carry out their arrest in Bellini's The Agony in the
Garden. Incidentally, rather than finding fault or poor draughtsmanship in the strange, almost disjointed and Daliesque feel of the landscape and figures in this painting (and, indeed, many other paintings around this time), I feel it adds something dreamlike and aptly mysterious to the work. The angel and the cup above the clouds heightens that quality.
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| Bellini, The Agony in the Garden (1465) |
There is so much that is truly superb about the exhibition. And it is incredibly churlish to complain about how Bellini and Mantegna are not Raphael or Leonardo. The Victorian art critic John Ruskin would surely have taken complaints like that to task. After all, his praise for two of Bellini's Madonnas is unequivocal. Of Bellini's Venetian altar-pieces Ruskin declared that "having every quality in balance, are as far as my present knowledge extends, and as far as I can trust my judgment, the two best pictures in the world." And because, these altar-pieces, in situ in Venice, had no chance of being included in the exhibition, we do feel an absence.
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| Bellini, The San Zaccaria Altarpiece (1505) |
I've never seen those altar-pieces. I have never been to Venice – and yes, it would be wise to get a move on – but when I do those works that so impressed Ruskin mean that I will certainly be making my way to The Church of San Zaccaria and The Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari. In the meantime, I'll content myself with this well curated and engaging exhibition.
Postscript
The exhibition certainly did demand a sense of occasion, and what better way to follow it up than with the cocktail named after Bellini at Soho's fabulous Vasco and Piero's. This mixture of Prosecco and white peach puree was given the name Bellini because of its resemblance to the colour of a toga in one of his paintings. Saluti!
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