OK! We’ve finished our homework, so we’re ready to go inside Venice’s Gallerie dell’Accademia. But before we do, let’s briefly recap Venice’s golden age.
Let’s say we’re Venetians in the year, 1500. The rest of Europe is still bogged down in the Dark Ages, but we’re prosperous. We have leisure time. We want to learn about the world around us, figure things out, see how things work.
Thanks to our ties to Constantinople and the East, rediscovery of all things Greek is all the rage in Venice. For the first time in 1000 years, academies have been established to study art, science, and history.
Gutenberg perfected his printing press in Germany 50 years ago, but Venice has become the capital of printing. Venetian printers are producing the first small, affordable books. European artists have just learned how to paint using perspective, so paintings come to life in a whole new way.
Let’s Go Inside!
The Accademia is home to numerous paintings by the great Venetian artists. A good example is “The Procession of the True Cross,” by Gentile Bellini. At the time, no one in Europe had seen a painting remotely like this.
Artists from all over Europe came to Venice to learn the new techniques. Albrecht Dürer, still in his twenties, was already a highly regarded artist in Germany. He traveled to Venice to see what all the fuss was about. He couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw paintings being done by Venetian artists.
This was something Dürer felt he had to learn how to do. His first trip to Venice was in 1494. He stayed a year. Ten years later, he returned and stayed another year. He studied with ground-breaking Venetian artists of the day. In Dürer’s opinion, Giovanni Bellini, (Gentile’s dad), was the best of them.
Dürer and Bellini
Dürer tried to get Bellini to show him how to paint using perspective, but it’s rumored that Bellini was no pushover. A fly on the wall of Bellini’s 15th-century studio may have heard a conversation something like this…
Dürer — “Signore Bellini, you’ve got to show me how you get those people to look so real!”
Bellini — “Albrecht, my son…”
Dürer — “Please — call me Al.”
Bellini — (Sigh) “Al… There are some things in this world that a man has to figure out for himself.”
Dürer — “True. True. No doubt about it. At least show me how you get the stuff in front to look like it’s in front, and the stuff in back to look like it’s in back. OK?”
Bellini — (Sigh) “It’s complicated. Some things aren’t simple enough to be explained in a few words.”
Dürer — “No problem. I’ve got all day!”
Bellini — (Sigh) “Al — You’re a great artist. You’ll feel better about yourself if you figure it out on your own.”
Dürer — “Signore Bellini… I’m a rich man from a rich family. I could make it worth your while.”
Bellini — “Well, why didn’t you say so? See.. you start with the placement of the vanishing point. Then you want to line up your frame of reference. Like this, see? Then…”
That little episode was a bit of conjecture, but Dürer did learn a lot from Bellini and other Venetian artists. He returned to Germany to write a four-volume set on measurement and geometry.
But he didn’t stop there. He also wrote a four-volume set about human proportions and how to draw people. Before long, aided by Dürer’s books, every painter in Europe was painting like the Italians.
Back to Bellini
The Accademia has a set of Gentile Bellini’s paintings showing miracles attributed to relics stored in Venice. One of them is said to be a piece of the “True Cross.” (Taken from Constantinople during the 4th Crusade).
The story goes that a procession was transporting the relic to St. Mark’s cathedral. When they were crossing a bridge, the relic fell into the canal. People jumped in to get it, but no one could find it.
Then the main priest waded into the water and just stood there. After a few minutes, the relic came right up to him like it was a radio-controlled boat. The Church got a few converts that day, that’s for sure.
To be continued…
Note
The painting shown at the top of the post is Gentile Bellini’s “Miracle of the Cross at the Bridge of S. Lorenzo.”
