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The Feast of the Gods 60 review. Number 327, October 2020 I THE ART NEWSPAPER BOOKS Reviews David Alan Brown Giovanni Bellini. The Last Works Skira, 400pp, €75 (hb) Julius von Schlosser thought the most highly desirable art-history book would be a monograph based on a single work of art, emphasising the “island” nature of a masterpiece. David Alan Brown mag- nificent study of Bellini’sThe Feast of the Gods (1514) – the result of a long acquaint- ance with the painting during his more than four decades at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC – is just such a book. Despite a title that promises to look at all the late works, which he does in detail, the book continually revolves around The Feast of the Gods, and presents absolute novelties in interpretation that Computer simulation of Bellini’s The Feast of the Gods (1514) without the unsympathetic interventions by Dosso Dossi and Titian (left), and the original painting in Washington, DC will contribute to our understanding of Venetian Renaissance painting forever. Brown introduces his study with the observation that Bellini, who enjoyed longevity, had the luck or misfortune to A spotlight on ‘The Feast of the Gods’ live on into the 16th century. He implies that The Feast is a 15th-century painting More than 40 years’ study of Bellini has gone into this outstanding book. By despite its date. Brown accepts Pietro Jaynie Anderson Bembo’s characterisation of Bellini’s creative practice, as defined for Isabella Equicola, then an analysis of the classi- non-invasive multispectral scanning. painting. The new computer simulation appears to be too tight to allow for the d’Este, Marchioness of Mantua, when cal texts that reveal how Bellini departed (There is a detailed appendix explaining of The Feast of the Gods as it may have left recognition of individual hands. The Bellini insists that he will wander as he from Ovid’s text to arrive at his own defi- and illustrating the findings). We can Bellini’s workshop (without the unsym- recent (2019) discovery of a drawing by wishes (vagare alla sua voglia), thus assert- nition of the subject, presumably in con- understand more clearly, for example, pathetic additions by Dosso Dossi and Giorgione and an accompanying inscrip- ing his artistic independence to sources sultation with the patron, Alfonso d’Este, how Bellini made changes, notably to the Titian) is a revelation, showing a spiky tion shows Giorgione’s thinking in red and patrons. Here, Brown is disinter- Duke of Ferrara. Brown dedicates a fasci- position of Silvanus, as a self-correction rustic forest rather than an idyllic grove. chalk in a spiky style. It has not been ested in iconography or style, preferring nating biographical chapter to the forma- to his composition; then Brown shows An enthralling appendix defines the noticed that this Sydney drawing is very a curatorial analysis of individual works. tion of Alfonso’s taste. The literature on how Bellini made other later changes changing critical fortunes of Bellini from like the underdrawing on Bellini’s Brera He accepts Edgar Wind’s interpretation Bellini is huge, and Brown is generous in when the painting was complete, such his earliest biographers until the most Madonna (around 1510), so much so that (1948) of the subject of The Feast of the his reading of others, often bringing in as the eroticisation of the nymphs’ recent exhibitions. Brown is adamant one could argue Bellini’s very technique Gods as the rape of Lotis by Priapus, sur- ideas from previous scholars that enrich clothing, the addition of décolletage and that the fashionable concept of late could at times be imitative of Giorgione’s rounded by a group of bibulous gods and his readings of Bellini’s imagery. the suggestive positioning of Neptune’s style is irrelevant. He is similarly dis- underdrawing in the last decade of his goddesses. Brown’s writing has a medi- The Feast of the Gods has played a hand on Amphitrite’s upper thigh. missive of the constantly asserted belief life. But this is a minor quibble in what tative quality, so that the reader is per- changing role in how art-historical Brown argues (as others have before that Bellini’s later works owed much to is an outstanding contribution to the suaded to understand how Bellini read opinion evolves according to data him) that these secondary changes were Giorgione. He fails to consider what Gior- literature on Bellini, with a wealth of his sources and departed from them, and emerging from conservation, beginning made in response to Alfonso’s demands gione as a teenager in Bellini’s workshop significant observation. how he searched for compositional ideas with the classic study by John Walker and that Bellini may have travelled to may have learnt from the older artist. among illustrated editions of Ovid’s Fasti. (1956), superseded by the later analyses Ferrara after the work was completed. Brown does speculate bravely on what • Jaynie Anderson was the Herald Chair Brown takes us through the genesis of of David Bull and Joyce Plesters (1990). The volume is sumptuously illustrated a teenage Titian may have executed in of Fine Arts at the University of Melbourne Bellini’s search to understand how to rep- In this latest stage, the scientific labora- with surprising details of known works the Bellini workshop (the Prado Virgin (1997-2014) where she is now professor resent his subject, beginning with a set tory at the Washington National Gallery and important new discoveries reveal- and Child with Saints). For this reviewer, of instructions from the humanist Mario gives new information taken with ing what is beneath the surface of the the quality control in the workshop Minerva Access is the Institutional Repository of The University of Melbourne Author/s: Anderson, J Title: A Spotlight on 'The Feast of the Gods': [Review of the book Giovanni Bellini. The Last Works by David Alan Brown] Date: 2020-10-01 Citation: Anderson, J. (2020). A Spotlight on 'The Feast of the Gods': [Review of the book Giovanni Bellini. The Last Works by David Alan Brown]. The Art Newspaper, 327, pp.60-60 Persistent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11343/242481 File Description: Published version License: Unknown.
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