1 Introduction This dissertation results from a series of straightforward questions: is Giovanni Mansueti still worth studying? Or, to phrase it differently, is there any reason to re-examine a painter who has invariably failed to captivate the interest of the general public and, above all, has been comparatively neglected by the majority of contemporary critics? In a period when monumental monographs are more than ever dedicated to the so-called great masters, or to the valuable reconstruction of the various artists that emanated from their workshops, is it really necessary to discuss the independent activity of one of those fleeting epigones? And, at last, if it is worth doing, how can we approach a painter whose oeuvre has been so bitterly mauled by art historians? Twentieth-century scholars pulled no punches in stigmatizing Mansueti’s work. The painter attracted sharp criticism mainly regarding his style which, as Lionello Venturi once claimed, led Mansueti to design “fantocci di legno che non sanno muoversi nemmeno come burattini”1. Giovan Battista Cavalcaselle and Joseph Archer Crowe raised objections to Mansueti’s artistry, defining it as “primitively stiff and conventional”, the result of an artist of “small powers” who could only rise “to any brightness of harmony or colour”2. Some decades later Raimond Van Marle did not gave Mansueti preferential treatment either, since his work, although seen as productive, was nonetheless condemned as “mediocre, unattractive and boring”3. A painter, as Fritz Heineman then argued, who though a “scolaro di Gentile Bellini” as well as influenced by his brother Giovanni, could not “nascondere la struttura legnosa delle sue figure” and “la sua mancanza di penetrazione”4. Interestingly, even Mansueti’s few supporters could not refrain from pointing up his limitations. Hans Tietze and Erica Tietze-Conrat, for example, who dedicated a separate heading to Mansueti’s drawings in which he even appeared “emancipated from Gentile” Bellini, concluded that his work was “insignificant”5. 1 Lionello Venturi, Le origini della pittura veneziana, 1300-1500, Venezia, Istituto Veneto di Arti Grafiche, 1907, pp. 345-346. 2 Giovan Battista Cavalcaselle and Joseph Archer Crowe, A History of Painting in North Italy, ed. by Tancred Borenius, vol. I, London, John Murray, 1912, pp. 223-225. 3 Raimond van Marle, The Development of the Italian School of Painting, vol. XVII, The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1935, p. 200. 4 Fritz Heinemann, Giovanni Bellini e i belliniani, Vicenza, Neri Pozza Editore, 1962, p. 247. 5 Hans Tietze and Erica Tietze-Conrat, The Drawings of the Venetian Painters in the Fifteenth and the Sixteenth Centuries, New York, Hacker Art Books, 1979, p. 189. 2 Productive but mediocre, artistically emancipated and yet minor and insignificant: a quite unfavourable label which has marred Mansueti’s reputation up to the present day. A label that, nonetheless, reckons without the evident success that he was granted by his contemporaries, having in fact been hired by some of the most prestigious institutions of his time, both religious and lay. A painter who, as Patricia Fortini Brown put it, “produced more paintings for scuole that any other artist of his time, with the exception of Carpaccio”6. This moves the discussion to why a re-evaluation of Mansueti is timely, even further than has been already outlined. In fact, a few additional questions present themselves: how was it that a minor painter such as Mansueti could contribute so substantially to the emergence, development and final efflorescence of Venice’s narrative painting? And, concurrently, how could such a seemingly insignificant painter become, pace the twentieth-century criticism, one of the leading exponents of the Venetian Orientalist Mode? If boring and mediocre, how is it possible that in his time Mansueti’s pictures adorned high altars and private chapels, the meeting halls and altars of Scuole Grandi and Piccole, as well as the walls of state offices? A concise account of Mansueti’s artistic affiliations and major commissions might help to highlight the paradox of criticism too concerned with stylistic analysis to notice the painter’s real achievements. After having completed his apprenticeship, probably at the Ducal Palace alongside Gentile and Giovanni Bellini7, by the end of the 1480s Mansueti was eventually able to establish his own workshop in “confinio sacti juliani” possibly favoured by a lucrative marriage to Laura Longini8. Although formally emancipated, an attractive Bellinesque style continued to characterize his work. This first drew the notice of Giorgio Vasari9, and subsequently 6 Patricia Fortini Brown, Venetian Narrative Painting in the Age of Carpaccio, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1988, p. 64. 7 Peter Humfrey, Pittura e devozione: la tradizione narrativa quattrocentesca, in La pittura nel Veneto. Il Quattrocento, vol. I, Milano, Electa, 1989, p. 316; Jennifer Fletcher, I Bellini, in La Bottega dell’Artista tra Medioevo e Rinascimento, a cura di Roberto Cassanelli, Milano, Jaca Book, 1998, pp. 131-153, especially pp. 143-144; Gabriele Matino, “Gentile Bellini, Giovanni Mansueti e il Riconoscimento del miracolo della reliquia della Croce al ponte di San Lio: chiarimenti e proposte”, Venezia Cinquecento, 20 (2010), p. 18. 8 G. Matino (2010), pp. 18-19, 33 note 53. On the Longinis and their intimate relations with both Giovanni and Vittore Mansueti see: Fabio Agostini, “Giovanni Mansueti: la vita, la famiglia, l’eredità”, Venezia Cinquecento, 22 (2013), pp. 6-11. 9 Giorgio Vasari, Le Vite de’ più eccellenti pittori scultori ed architettori, a cura di Gaetano Milanesi, vol. III, Firenze, Sansoni Editore, 1878, p. 648. 3 modern critics often concentrated on the identification of Mansueti’s artistic borrowings from the work of Gentile and Giovanni Bellini10, not to mention the influence that artists such as Vittore Carpaccio and Cima da Conegliano are believed to have exerted on him11. According to this literature, Mansueti emerges as a versatile artist who, as it has been argued, “had the ability to discern the best element for the required genre”12. His debut as an independent master can be dated to around 1492, when he completed the Allegorical Representation of the Trinity for the church of Santa Maria Assunta dei Crociferi (fig. 1)13. Already by the turn of the 1490s Mansueti’s workshop must have been exceptionally busy. Between 1494 and 1496 he joined Gentile Bellini, Vittore Carpaccio, Benedetto Diana, Lazzaro Bastiani and Pietro Perugino at the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista, for which he painted the Miracle of San Lio (fig. 2) and the Healing of Niccolò Benvegnudo’s Daughter (1506; fig. 3)14. Between the 10 Giannantonio Moschini, Giovanni Bellini e i pittori contemporanei, Venice, G. Orlandelli, 1834, pp. 60-70; Lionello Venturi (1907), pp. 345-346; Roger Fry, “Exhibition of Pictures of the Early Venetian School at the Burlington Fine Arts Club-II”, The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, 21 (1912), pp. 47-48; Tancred Borenius, “The Venetian School in the Grand- Ducal Collection, Oldenburg”, The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, 23 (April 1913), pp. 25-27, 30-31, 35; Adolfo Venturi, Storia dell’arte italiana, vol. VII, tome 4, Milano, Hoepli, 1915, pp. 558-562; G.B. Cavalcaselle and J.A. Crowe (1912), pp. 222-226; R. van Marle (1935), p. 193; Tancred Borenius, “Among the Belliniani”, The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, 74 (1939), pp. 12-23; Sandra Marconi, “La pala del Mansueti a Zianigo”, Arte Veneta, II (1948), p. 150; Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance, vol. I, London, The Phaidon Press, 1957, p. 108; F. Heinemann (1962), pp. 247-49; Fritz Heinemann, “Spaetwerke des Giovanni Mansueti”, Arte Veneta, XVI (1965), pp. 150-152; Sanda Miller, “Giovanni Mansueti a Little Master of the Venetian Quattrocento”, Revue romaine d’historie de l’art, XV (1978), pp. 77-115; Gothic to Renaissance. European Painting 1300-1600, ed. by Peter Humfrey, London-New York, Colnaghi, 1988, p. 94; Annalisa Perissa Torrini, “Una Trinità di Giovanni Mansueti”, Arte Veneta, XLV (1993), pp. 108-111; Stéphane Loire, Un tableau de Mansueti conserve a La Celle Saint-Cloud, in Homage à Michel Laclote, Milano, Electa, 1994, pp. 317-323; J. Fletcher (1998), pp. 131-153; Peter Humfrey, “Giovanni Mansueti”, in La pittura nel Veneto. Il Cinquecento, a cura di Mauro Lucco, vol. 3, Milano, Skira, 1999, p. 1305; Andrea De Lillo, “Giovanni Mansueti”, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. LXIX, Roma, Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 2008, p. 160; G. Matino (2010), pp 5-34; F. Agostini (2013), pp. 5-44. 11 Anton Maria Zanetti, Descrizione di tutte le pubbliche pitture della città di Venezia e delle Isole circonvincine, MDCCXXXIII (reprint, Sala Bolognese, Arnaldo Forni Editore, 1980), p. 18; Pompeo Molmenti and Gustav Ludwig, The Life and Works of Vittorio Carpaccio, London, John Murray, 1907; S. Miller (1978), p. 102; The Early Venetian Paintings in Holland, Maarssen, John Benjamins Publishing, 1978, pp. 106-109. 12 S. Miller (1978), p. 102. 13 Francesco Sansovino, in his Venetia Città Nobilissima et Singolare, In Venetia, appresso Iacomo Sansovino, MDLXXXI, f. 61r, saw in that church a “Crocifisso di Sagrestia fu di Giovanni Mansueti”. An excellent analysis of the painting is provided by Martin Davies, National Gallery Catalogue. The Earlier Italian Schools, Second Edition (revised), London, printed for the Trustees, 1961, pp. 326-328. 14 G.B. Cavalcaselle and J.A. Crowe (1912), pp. 222-226; Sandra Moschini Marconi, Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia, vol. I, Roma, Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato, 1955, pp. 134, 137; S. Miller (1978), p. 81; Fiorenzo Canuti, Il Perugino, Siena, La Diana, 1931, vol. I, p. 121, vol. II, 4 execution of the two teleri Mansueti also signed the Arrest of St Mark for the chapel of the Guild of the Silk-Weavers at the Crociferi (1499; fig. 4), where he collaborated with Cima da Conegliano, Lattanzio da Rimini and a further unknown painter15.