Le stimmate di san francesco bellini biography

Marilyn Aronberg Lavin no. 85 2022 ep rin t© IR SA Bellini’s Frick Saint Francis and the Source of the Absent Side Wound In the third quarter of the fifteenth century it would be rare, if not unheard of, to find a painting the subject of which is obscure. It is a wonder, then, why it has been so difficult, and why there is so much speculation about, the subject of Giovanni Bellini’s painting known as Saint Francis in the Desert [Figs 1, 2], a work generally dated c. 1476–1478, and commissioned by a prominent Venetian citizen Zuan Giacomo Michiel.1 Is it a representation of the Stigmatization of Francis, which occurred at La Verna in Tuscany, or is it not? If not, why not? It is missing two major attributes: a Crucifix held by a six-winged Seraph emitting rays that burn the stigmata onto the body of Francis, and the company of Saint Leo who is traditionally present in such scenes. If not a stigmatization, then what? Is it possible that the painting has no subject? Quite unlikely. Even so, we must ask why it is so difficult to come up with the ‘right’ answer. Moreover, it is difficult to find another painting of the same size (124.6 × 142 cm) and format of this work; it is on wood and is a horizontal rectangle, wider than it is high. It is one continuous spatial ambient not divided into sections by internal framing. It is like the recently introduced altarpiece form, la pala2, but with the wrong orientation and somewhat smaller than most.3 So what type of painting is this; what was its purpose; did it have a purpose? Another oddity. Looking back across decades of his public artistic activity, Giovanni Bellini was famously described as being accustomed ‘as he says, always to roam at his will in paintings’ Marilyn Aronberg Lavin (‘sempre vagare nella pittura’).4 On this account should we not be ready to accept a certain amount of ‘roaming around’ in whatever subject he presented, as well as i

Giovanni Bellini, St Francis in the Desert, c. 1476-78, Frick Collection, New York.

The sun is still shining outside my window, as it is in this fabulous painting. It captures that wonderful sense of release you get when you’ve been cooped up inside all day, and finally step out into the fresh air, take a deep breath, and enjoy the world around you. This is how I feel each day as I head out for my daily walk, especially when the sky is blue, and particularly now that the traffic has dropped and the air is wonderfully clear.  St Francis has stepped barefoot into the light, holds his arms out as if to embrace it fully, and looks up to the sky.

He is not so very far away from civilisation: there is a walled town on the next hill, just on the other side of a river, but he is in a deserted place. On retreat from the world, he has constructed a study from the trunks of three types of tree – the colour of each is different – and a vine, which meanders upwards and forms a canopy of leaves over the top. A plank of wood projects from a low garden wall as a seat, and a lectern has been constructed with minimum care for joinery: a few 2x2s nailed together at right angles.  On the desk is a book, and a skull. Like any scholar of his day, St Francis meditates on death. But here, now, he is glorying in life.

There are signs of life throughout the painting. His raised garden bed grows medicinal plants. Behind the bench you can see iris leaves, and then the tall, pointed Great Mullein – or Aaron’s Rod (Verbascum thapsus – thanks, as ever, to the Ecologist) among others. There is also a fig tree starting to grow in the foreground, and plantains are taking root in the bare earth.

In the middle distance you can see a donkey, and a grey heron, ever vigilant. Just beyond them is a shepherd – the only other human in the painting – leading his flock just this side of the river. And most charming of all, underneath Francis’s right hand – a small rabbit, pokin

Preface

Carolyn C. Wilson, Introduction: Giovanni Bellini, an Art ‘More Human and More Divine’

Colin Eisler, Giovanni Bellini’s Iris and Autopsia’s Stylistic Role

Amy N. Worthen, An Inconvenient Text: The Supplementum Chronicarum as a Source for Information about Gentile and Giovanni Bellini

Paul Hills, Vesting the Body of Christ

Brigit Blass-Simmen, ‘Qualche lontani’: Distance and Transcendence in the Art of Giovanni Bellini

Rosella Lauber, ‘Finito et ricercato mirabilmente’. Per nuovi contributi sul San Francesco nel deserto di Giovanni Bellini, ora nella Frick Collection di New York

Mauro Di Vito, ‘Per lo quale ennallumini la nocte’. Il verbasco fiorito del San Francesco che riceve le stimmate di Giovanni Bellini alla Frick Collection ed altri appunti di storia naturale

Elizabeth Perkins, Giovanni Bellini, Antonello da Messina, and the ‘Signs of Men’s Character’

Eveline Baseggio Omiccioli, A New Interpretation of Jacometto’s ‘Most Perfect Work’: Parallels in Portraits by Giovanni Bellini and Leonardo da Vinci

Karolina Zgraja, A Contribution to the Study of Giovanni Bellini’s Drawings and Underdrawings

Antonio Mazzotta. A Portrait of Gabriele Veneto and Some Reflections on Giovanni Bellini’s Portraiture around 1500

Catarina Schmidt Arcangeli, Giovanni Bellini’s Private Devotional Images: A Boom around 1500

Costanza Barbieri, ‘Apparò i primi principi da Giovan Bellino allora vecchio’. Questioni aperte sulla formazione di Sebastiano

Beverly Louise Brown, Poetry in Motion: Bellini, Titian, and the all’antica Relief

Patricia Meilman, Always a Challenge: Bellini, Titian, and Some Portraits of Women

Peter Humfrey, The Reception of Giovanni Bellini in Britain (c. 1500–1900)

Selected Bibliography

Index

Color Plates

Roman Catholic church in Venice, Italy

San Francesco della Vigna is a Roman Catholic church in the Sestiere of Castello in Venice, northern Italy.

History

Along with Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, this is one of two Franciscan churches in Venice. The site, originally a vineyard (vigna), was donated by Marco Ziani in 1253 for construction of the monastery. A tiny chapel already on the site recalled the spot where an angel supposedly had pronounced Pax tibi Marce, evangelista meus to the shipwrecked Saint Mark, patron of Venice.

The first church at the site was a triple-naveGothic church by Marino da Pisa. A monastery housed the Frati Minori dell'Osservanza, while the Conventuali occupied the Frari across town. By the 16th century, the church building was in need of repair. Two main impulses led to the reconstruction of this church; one was the reform sweeping the order of the Franciscan Observants, and the other was the wishes of Doge Andrea Gritti, whose family palace neighboured the church. In 1534, this Doge laid the foundation stone for the new church. The nave was roofed over by 1554.

Exterior

The church was designed in sober Renaissance style by Jacopo Sansovino in 1554, with the advice of the Franciscan friar, Fra Francesco Zorzi. Fra Zorzi based the sizing of the various elements on the number three, because of its association with the Trinity: the nave should be nine paces wide and 27 paces long, each side chapel three paces wide. However the white marble façade (1564-1570) was not based on Sansovino's designs, but instead was a product of an Andrea Palladio. It is thought that the patrician Daniele Barbaro lobbied for the commission to be switched from Sansovino to Palladio in 1562, convincing the then Patriarch, Giovanni Grimani.

Palladio addressed the challenge of linking the central nave with the side aisles in the façade in an innovative manner. The Corinthian columns in both the center and the sid