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Giovanni BELLINI (known in Venice in 1459 - Venice, 1516)
Crucifixion
c. 1465
© Musée du Louvre/A. Dequier - M. Bard
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Giovanni BELLINI (known in Venice in 1459 - Venice, 1516)
Crucifixion
c. 1465
Oil on wood
H. 71 cm; W. 63 cm
Acquired 1970
R.F. 1970-39
Paintings
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| Cécile Maisonneuve, Dominique Thiébaut |
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Crucifixion |
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In this highly charged vision of the Crucifixion Giovanni Bellini seems to be cutting free of the influence, so marked in his early work, of his brother-in-law Andrea Mantegna. Here a personal, thoroughly lyrical style is apparent in the delicate handling of the light and the harmonious blending of figures and landscape.
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The Crucifixion
Set on a domed mound, the Cross stands out against a landscape that includes, on the right, the ramparts of a city. The dead Christ is flanked by his mother and St John. On the left, the Virgin in her blue cloak is shown full face, one arm extended with the hand open. On the right St John is turned towards Christ, hands clasped; his mouth is slightly open, as if in a sigh.
Bellini and Mantegna
This work shows a Giovanni Bellini still indebted to the pictorial language of his brother-in-law Andrea Mantegna (1431-1506). Echoes are to be found in the domed shape of the mound on which the Cross is raised - as in the Mantegna Crucifixion in the Louvre - and even more so in the clinging folds and wrinkles of the garments. Nonetheless Bellini seems to have emancipated himself from the kind of imitation of Mantegna that led him, in about 1460, to create his own version (now in the Pinacoteca Querini Stampalia, Venice) of the latter's Presentation in the Temple (Gemäldegalerie, Berlin). Here we see the artist distancing himself from this influence in a gentler, more integrated treatment of landscape and, especially, in the dramatic handling of the light radiating from Christ's body.
A lyrical high point
Gradually relinquishing Mantegna's classicism, Bellini achieves here a "lyrical high point" as he sets out down the path that will lead him, around 1470, to the intensely poetic Pietà now in the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan. The Louvre Crucifixion is dated to between 1465-70, also the period of the great St. Vincent Ferrar Polyptych in the Basilica dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo, Venice.
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Paintings : 
