THE DEVELOPMENT OF LANDSCAPE IN VENETIAN RENAISSANCE PAINTING 1450 - 1540 by WARREN DAVID TRESIDDER B. A. , University of New South Wales, 1964 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in the Department of FINE ARTS We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA August, 1968 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and Study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the Head of my Department or by his representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thes.is for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Department of The University of British Columbia Vancouver 8, Canada ABSTRACT The landscape in Venetian Renaissance painting makes its first important appearance in the Sketch-books of Jacopo Bellini. These landscapes depend little on the observation of nature. They are not drawings done from life, but imaginary landscapes which show that Jacopo was far more interested in creating form and space than in giving the landscape a particular mood. The landscapes of Giovanni Bellini are far more dependent on the observation of natural phenomena than those of Jacopo. Giovanni's landscapes usually depict the undulating and broken 0 topography of the Veneto, but he did not paint particular views of this area. There is always much evidence of man's activity in Giovanni's landscapes. In these paintings the human figures are sometimes small, but never insignificant. The relationship of figures to the landscape is of great importance to the formal design, the emotional appeal and the spiritual significance of the whole. The dominant mood of Giovanni Bellini's landscapes is that of quiet r eligosity. From whom Giovanni learnt the use of the oil technique could not be accurately determined, but the fact that he did adopt the oil medium was of great importance to the development of Venetian landscape painting, as it enabled painters to capture the subtleties of light, colour and texture in their paintings. The landscapes of Giorgione are dependent upon the technical achievements of Giovanni Bellini, but while Bellini's landscapes are predominantly religious in character, those of Giorgione were closely connected with the new humanist culture of early sixteenth century Venice. Giorgione sought a direct and sensuous portrayal of man and nature in gentle and harmonious union. His landscapes appear to be physically softer than those of Bellini and he devoted greater attention to atmosphere. The forms in a Giorgione landscape are less precisely defined than those of a Bellini work, and contours are often blurred as Giorgione was concerned with painting a general visual impression. Nature in a Giorgione landscape is tamed and ordered, but seldom cultivated as his landscapes are primarily Arcadian. Despite the fact that Titian came from a mountainous region, his early landscapes are not mountainous but Giorgionesque. While Titian's early frescoes in Padua show a more active and dramatic relationship between man and nature, than was shown by either Giovanni Bellini or Giorgione, they are unlike his other early landscapes. After Giorgione's death Titian painted many bucolic landscapes in the manner of Giorgione. With the mythological paintings done for Alfonso, Duke of Ferrara, Titian's forms become more plastic and assertive, and his landscapes more joyous and Pandean in mood. While Titian made less use of landforms as a compositional device, he exploited clouds and foliage to a far greater degree. His use of foliage as a means of expression, to amplify and intensify the human action of the painting, reached its fullest development in the Murder of St. Peter Martyr. Titian's mountain landscapes, wilder than anything in previous Venetian painting, represent one climax in the development of Venetian landscape painting, at the same time that he was reworking idyllic Giorgionesque motifs in his Venus del Par do. As far as is known, not one of the Venetian Renaissance painters painted a landscape as an end in itself. That development took place in the seventeenth century. It was the Venetian Renaissance painters who played the major role in the process which led to its acceptance as a legitimate mode of artistic expression. TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE Chapter I The Landscapes of Jacopo Bellini 1 Chapter II The Landscapes of Giovanni Bellini 12 Chapter III The Landscapes of Giorgione 45 Chapter IV The Landscapes of Titian 84 Chapter V Conclusion 127 Chapter I Footnotes 137 Chapter II Footnotes 140 Chapter III Footnotes 145 Chapter IV Footnotes 151 Chapter V Footnotes 156 BIBLIOGRAPHY 158 .CHAPTER ONE THE LANDSCAPES OF JACOPO BELLINI Venetian Renaissance painting begins with the Sketch• books of Jacopo Bellini. * In them we see evidence of an enquir• ing and fertile mind wrestling with two of the great problems which occupied painters of the fifteenth century: the depiction of convincing and rationally controlled forms and spaces and at• tempts to resolve these into a single harmony. In the sketch- 2 books there are no rapid sketches done from nature. In fact they have much in common with the pattern books of the Middle Ages in that they are collections of motifs and compositions which could be used later, either by the artist or members of his studio. In some ways the drawings resemble those of Pisanello in the number of courtly scenes, the prevalence of horses, the profile portrait, and especially the drawings of lions and lionesses. But his range of subjects is more extensive than that of Pisanello. In his figure groups he often includes peasants whereas costume design which 2 so occupied Pisanello has little attraction for him. Studies for traditional religious compositions and numerous versions of men fighting dragons take the place of Pisanello's animal studies. But what is completely foreign to Pisannelo's art are Jacopo1 s archi• tectural fantasies and landscape compositions. It is clear that Jacopo was much concerned with the re• presentations of landscape and sometimes this interest outweighs his interest in the human content of the scene. The broad, bare plains depicted in the sketch-books do not appear to be very hospitable places: "sempre liscio e come se coperto di neve" (al- 3 ways bare and as if covered with snow). The fantastically shaped mountains, bare and sterile, reinforce this feeling of aridity. Only on rare occasions do trees soften their hard rocky forms. When hedges grow around fields they are there to define the shape of the field and help in the perspective scheme. In The Baptism 4 of Christ in the Louvre Sketch-book there is not one tree, shrub, or even tuft of grass to soften the harsh forms of the mountains and ravines. Jacopo is interested in a tree-trunk or a mountain only as a pictorial object, as something which is a form in it• self and which can help in the creation of a pictorial space. He is not concerned with drawing different species of trees - they are nearly all the same in form, and in foliage differ little from 3 hedges. Jacopo did not set out to fill the leaves of his Sketch• books with pleasant rural scenes, leafy trees or sheltered rustic retreats. The shapes, forms and spaces are what interest him. Once he has defined the banks of a stream he seldom bothers to draw the water flowing between them. These Sketch-books were not meant for general exhibi• tion. In them Jacopo Bellini was primarily concerned with solv• ing formal pictorial problems, and especially that of the repre• sentation of pictorial space in outdoor scenes. In the sketch-books drawings which face each other are s ometimes linked together to form one composition. Marcel " 5 Rothlisberger has convincingly demonstrated that Jacopo first drew the scenes on the right-hand pages (rectos) throughout the sketch-book in the British Museum and then later added the left- hand sides (versos), in some cases to create single compositions extending over both pages. The situation is not as clear in the case of the Louvre Sketch-book where there are fewer composi- tions extending over double pages. In the Crucifixion this was done by using a linear perspective scheme as a linking motif, 7 whereas in the Adoration of the Magi the mountains were merely extended into the verso. In both cases the representations were compositionally and iconographically complete without the additions. 4 There is no evidence to suggest that the rectos were planned with extension into the versos in mind. "The chief characteristic of the rectos appears to be a traditionally fixed formal scheme, that of the versos a new enlargement of space. How• ever, in the rectos we can find already, compared with previous works, that obsession with space, which made Jacopo the first Venetian to adopt Florentine perspective. The landscape drawings (unique in Venetian art of his time) show clear evidence of this aspect of our theory. Jacopo's mastery of perspective schemes nowhere ap• proached that of the Florentines, but his naive delight in con• structing rapidly diminishing architectural fantasies is reminis• cent of some of the paintings of Masolino such as The Feast of 9 Herod in the baptistry at Castiglione d' Olona. The simplest method used by Jacopo Bellini to create space in his landscapes is that borrowed from architectural per• spectives, such as those of Masolino. The rapidly receding or- thogonals give a deep but narrow pictorial space. Strong onthog- 10 anals are sometimes formed by rocks.