File:The Venetian School of Painting (1912) (14597543007).jpg

Identifier: venetianschoolof1912phil (find matches)
Title: The Venetian School of Painting
Year: 1912 (1910s)
Authors: Phillipps, Evelyn March, d. 1915
Subjects: Painting Painters
Publisher: London : Macmillan and Co., limited
Contributing Library: Boston Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston Public Library

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sweetness in the expression,better modelling in the figures, and a slenderer,more graceful outline than the earlier anconaecan show. Only five years after this ancona atMontefiorentino, with its stiff rows of isolatedsaints, we have the altarpiece in the Academyof 1480, which was painted for a church inTreviso, and here a great change is immediatelyapparent. The antiquated division into panelshas disappeared, nothing is left of the artificial,Squarcionesque decorations, the attitudes aresimple, and the scene is a united one. TheMadonnas outstretched hand, the suggestion of Ecce Agnus Dei,* makes an appeal whichdraws the attention of all the saints to one point,and it is made plain that the one idea pervadesthe entire assembly. The curtain, whichsymbolises the sanctuary, still hangs behind thethrone, but the gold background is abandoned.Alvise has not indeed, as yet, imagined any land-scape or constructed an interior, but he lightensthe effect by two arched windows which let in the 60
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^ ooo o WU w ALVISE VIVARINI sky. The forms are characteristic of his idea ofdrawing the human figure ; they have the longthighs with the knees low down, which weare accustomed to find, and he constructs avery fine and sharply contrasted scheme of lightand shade. There is no trace of the statuesquePaduan draperies. The Virgins brocadedmantle is simply draped, and the robes of thesaints hang in long straight folds. No doubtAlvise, though nominally the rival of the Bellini,has more affinity with them, particularly withGiovanni, than with the Paduan artists, and astime goes on it is evident that he paints withmany glances at what they were doing. In thealtarpiece in Berlin he constructs an elaboratecupola above the Virgin, such as Bellini wasalready using. His saints are full of movement.In the end he begins to attitudinise and to dis-play those artificial graces which were presentlyaccentuated by Lotto. In 1488 the two Bellini had for some timebeen employed in the Sala del Gran Consigli

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