Review 2016 IN THIS ISSUE Celebrating the art of Giovanni Bellini Conservation at the National Gallery Shakespeare in Art Georgia O’Keeffe Restoration of S. Maria Antiqua in Rome London Art History Society: Paul Nash: was he a surrealist? Programme 2016-2017 London Art History Society Review 2016 Contents From the Editor 3 ‘Very old, but still the best in painting’: We have marked two special celebrations this year: the celebrating the Art of Giovanni Bellini five-hundredth anniversary of the death of Giovanni Bellini with an appreciation by the curator responsible for Caroline Campbell fifteenth-century Italian painting at the National Gallery, Caroline Campbell; and the four-hundredth anniversary 5 Shakespeare in Art of William Shakespeare’s death with a look at how his plays inspired artists of the eighteenth and nineteenth Robin Simon centuries by Robin Simon, who has written extensively on eighteenth-century art and the theatre. 8 Buried treasure exposed: the riches of Another notable event this year has been the opening S. Maria Antiqua in the Roman Forum of the early Christian church of S. Maria Antiqua in Rome, recounted by Eileen Rubery, who has studied its ancient Eileen Rubery frescoes. David Boyd Haycock questions whether or not Paul Nash was a surrealist in the light of this autumn’s 10 Paul Nash: was he a surrealist? exhibition at Tate Britain. The pioneering of scientific David Boyd Haycock methods of picture restoration at the National Gallery in the Second World War is described by Morwenna Blewett, a paintings conservator at the Gallery. 12 Conservation at the National Gallery And finally, we mark a major retrospective of the work and the Second World War of American artist Georgia O’Keeffe at Tate Modern this Morwenna Blewett summer. I would like to express my appreciation to our contributors for such interesting articles, to the National 14 Georgia O’Keeffe Gallery, the Tate and other organisations for their help, Tanya Barson and to my colleagues on the Editorial Panel. 16 London Art History Society: Barrie MacDonald Programme 2016-2017 Views expressed are not necessarily those of the editor or London Art History Society Review: ISSN 2059-8718 the editorial panel. Every effort has been made to trace and Our website, www.londonarthistorysociety.org.uk, includes our acknowledge copyright of illustrations used. programme of activities and past issues of the Review London Art History Society affiliated to Birkbeck Art History Society, and formerly known as ULEMHAS President: William Vaughan; Vice Presidents: Clare Ford-Wille, John McNeill Committee The Review Editorial Panel Chairman & Treasurer ............................. John Dunlop Editor ...................................................... Barrie MacDonald Deputy Chairman ..................................... Anne Scott Deputy Editor .......................................... Patricia Braun Secretary ................................................. Rosemary Clarke Secretary ................................................. Rosemary Clarke Members ................................................. Jacqueline Leigh Membership Secretary ............................. Edward Cox ................................................................ Liz Newlands Lecture Programme Organiser ................ Sue Anstruther ................................................................ John Peacock Short Courses Coordinator ...................... Jacqueline Leigh Study Events Coordinator ........................ Maggie Stockton Contacts Study Tours Coordinator ......................... Michael Pearson Enquiries about membership should be addressed to Edward Cox: Donations Administrator ......................... Robert Gwynne 30 King Henry’s Road, London NW3 3RP, or Webmaster .............................................. Dr Andrew Gray email: [email protected]. Editor, Review ......................................... Barrie MacDonald General enquiries, comments and suggestions should be sent to the Birkbeck Liaison ...................................... Sue Stern Chairman, John Dunlop: email: [email protected]; Members ................................................. Malcolm Armstrong or to Rosemary Clarke: 11 Granville Road, London N22 5LP, or ................................................................ Lois Garnier email: [email protected]. ................................................................ Susan Nettle Comments about the Review should be addressed to the Editor: ................................................................ Daphne Taylor email: [email protected]. FRONT COVER: Giovanni Bellini, Doge Leonardo Loredan, 1501-2. Oil on poplar, 61.6 x 45.1 cm. © The National Gallery, London 2 London Art History Society Review 2016 ‘Very old, but still the best in painting’1: celebrating the art of Giovanni Bellini Caroline Campbell n 29th November 1516, the Venetian diarist Marin Sanudo Fig. 1: (1466-1536) marked the death of Giovanni Bellini, ‘the Jacopo Bellini, Ogreat painter’.2 Now, in the five-hundredth anniversary The Flagellation, year of his death, Bellini’s life and work still remain worthy of c.1450. celebration. Bellini was, by any account, one of the greatest Leadpoint on painters of his day. But – unlike many of his contemporaries, parchment, including his brother Gentile – his fame has not merely endured 426 x 286 mm. but greatly increased in the half-millennium since his death. © Musée du His works are to be found in every major museum devoted to Louvre, Paris European art, where they are much admired by visitors, who revere his use of colour, and ability to convey powerful emotion in straightforwardly-visual terms. Yet who was Giovanni Bellini, and why is he an artist who continues to appeal to the art lover of the twenty-first century? Bellini, like the diarist who recorded his death, was first and foremost a Venetian. He lived as a citizen of Venice, although exactly when he was born and to whom has for long been a subject of debate. The fact that he is not mentioned in the 1471 will of Anna Rinversi, the wife of Jacopo Bellini (Giovanni’s presumed father) and that the art historian Giorgio Vasari referred to Jacopo’s daughter Nicolosa (who married Andrea Mantegna) as the ‘sister of Gentile’, not Giovanni, has given rise to the suggestion that Giovanni was illegitimate. Most recently, him as one of the transformative designers of the Renaissance. the art historian Daniel Maze has argued that Giovanni was not These volumes, which functioned as compendia of ideas for the Jacopo’s son, but his younger brother, and that he was born artist and his workshop, show complicated narrative scenes, as early as the middle years of the 1420s.3 It is unlikely that such as The Flagellation (Fig. 1), placed within yet more complex we will ever fully know the answer: the documentary record is architectural and landscape settings. They are unlike anything incomplete regarding many details of the artist’s life and work. else to be found in fifteenth-century art, and access to these However, in many ways, Giovanni’s actual parentage does precious works was strictly limited to the Bellini brothers and not matter as much as it might when considering his artistic their associates. It is likely that Gentile took the book now in the formation and development. What does matter – and what is Louvre with him to Constantinople, where he was sent by the incontrovertible – is that Jacopo Bellini brought him up and Venetian Republic in response to Sultan Mehmed II’s request for trained him, in conjunction with his son Gentile; that Giovanni a good painter; the second book he bequeathed to Giovanni, his and Gentile considered themselves as brothers; and that both ‘dearest brother’ on condition that the latter completed Gentile’s saw Jacopo as their father, in artistic as well as personal terms. painting of Saint Mark Preaching in a Square in Alexandria Whenever and to whomever Giovanni Bellini was born, he in Egypt (today in the Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan) for the trained in Venice, with Jacopo Bellini. Giovanni seems to have confraternity dedicated to Mark, Venice’s patron saint. left Venice and its immediate environs very rarely – perhaps only Giovanni’s closest relationship seems to have been with his once – and his art is fundamentally rooted in the island city and brother, Gentile, and they often worked together, as Gentile’s the landscape immediately visible from it. Apart from Venice will suggests. Both were adept in the architectural design which itself, the other constant in Giovanni’s life and art was his family: dominated in Jacopo’s books of drawings – essential for the sorts Jacopo, Gentile, his presumed brother-in-law Andrea Mantegna, of narrative paintings which provided much of their income and and those friends and associates connected to the Bellini clan. their work. Sadly, the most important of these pictorial cycles, Giovanni Bellini’s works are imbued with reverence and those in the Doge’s Palace, were destroyed in a disastrous fire in respect for the talents of his probable father, Jacopo. Jacopo is 1577. We still have some sense of Giovanni and Gentile’s skills one of the most important yet under-appreciated artists of the in group portraiture from the monumental canvases they painted fifteenth century, perhaps because very few of his paintings for a number of Venice’s Scuole, or lay confraternities (bodies survive. The two books of drawings by