Mantegna & Bellini. Meister der Renaissance

by Caroline Campbell (Editor), Dagmar Korbacher (Editor), Neville Rowley (Editor)

An innovative study of the relationship between Andrea Mantegna and Giovanni Bellini, two masters of the Italian Renaissance 

Andrea Mantegna (c. 1431–1506) and Giovanni Bellini (active c. 1459; died 1516) each produced groundbreaking paintings, marked by pictorial and technical innovations, that are among the masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance. Exploring the fruitful dynamic between Mantegna’s inventive compositional approach and interest in classical antiquity and Bellini’s passion for landscape painting, this fascinating volume examines how these two artists, who were also brothers-in-law, influenced and responded to each other’s work.
 
Full of new insights and captivating juxtapositions—including comparisons of each of the artist’s depictions of the Agony in the Garden and the Presentation to the Temple—this study reveals that neither Mantegna’s nor Bellini’s achievements can be fully understood in isolation and that their continuous creative exchanges shaped the work of both.

Genres: Art

304 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2018

About the author

Caroline Campbell was born and educated in Belfast. She read Modern History at University College, Oxford, and subsequently received an MA and a PhD from the Courtauld Institute, on the iconography of 15th century Florentine cassoni. She was Print Room Supervisor in the Department of Western Art, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (1998-2000); Curatorial Assistant (2000-01) and Assistant Curator of Renaissance Paintings (2001-05) at the National Gallery, London. Caroline joined the Courtauld as Schroder Foundation Curator of Paintings in 2005.

Reviews

[Servabo]

The paradox in the art of Giovanni Bellini is that while he was one of the greatest painters of all time, whose style evolved over six decades, yet over the same period he often repeated certain motifs with slight variations, and combinations of figures, entrusting them to his workshop assistants to paint in works bearing his signature. The master's touch lies in the quality of his technique, which blends these elements into a carefully defined whole. Bellini caresses with his brush, lending vital life to flesh, shrouding and dissolving his figures and objects as they blend with light, always changing and softened, with a wealth of reflections.

For Mantegna, invention was everything, the result of a carefully devised and complex intellectual reflection; for Bellini, the magic of painting lay in certain accidental details and the atmosphere quality of a given composition. As for the expression of sentiment, or emotion, a preoccupation for both of them, Mantegna chose to do this through gesture and expression, while Bellini used the harmonious inter-relationship of figures in a specific situation to convey meaning. This sense of harmon was reached through the play of light on different surfaces to indicate the blending of colors from whole modulation harmony was produced. Harmony creates tonal painting, a glorious tradition considered to have originated in Venice, and in particular with Bellini.

[Paul]

A good read and a fine possession because of the reproductions (most of them familiar from other books) are represented here in a way enabling good comparisons of these two Renaissance masters. I particularly liked the chapter on the history of art-history: viewed from today's perspective on scientific dating-methods (like dendrology), I found it astonishing how long the intuitive hunches of one single, very young Italian historian (de Longhi) about the (indeed: unique and masterly) skills of Piero della Francesca have determined the totally flawed view in the art world about the 'limited' influence of Mantegna on the revolution in Venetian art and on Giovanni Bellini in particular.
Because the illustrations are not presented in historical order, reading this book does require a lot of page turning to find the particular art work described in the texts, but that is a small price to pay for learning more about these two painters.

[Henri Tournyol du Clos]

Brilliant exhibition.

[Michael Pennington]

A very detailed beautiful book.