The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (46 page)

(1879–1961).
British painter and designer. She married Clive
Bell
in 1907 and like him and her sister, Virginia Woolf, was a central figure of the
Bloomsbury Group
. Her early work, up to about 1910, and her paintings produced after the First World War are tasteful and fairly conventional, in the tradition of the
New English Art Club
, but in the intervening years she was briefly in the vanguard of progressive ideas in British art. At this time, stimulated by the
Post-Impressionist
exhibitions of Roger
Fry
(with whom she had an affair), she worked with bright colours and bold designs and by 1914 was painting completely abstract pictures. Her designs for Fry's
Omega Workshops
included a folding screen (V&A, London, 1913–14) clearly showing the influence of
Matisse
. From 1916—while remaining on good terms with her husband—she lived with Duncan
Grant
. Their home, Charleston Farmhouse, at Firle, Sussex, which has much painted decoration by the couple, has been restored as a Bloomsbury memorial and is open to the public.

 
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(1610–64).
Italian engraver. His delicate, mannered style was early formed on that of
Callot
and remained close to it. Most of his career was spent in his native Florence, where he worked chiefly for the Grand Duke of Tuscany, but he spent a period in Paris (1639–49), where he was patronized by Richelieu , and in 1647 visited the Netherlands, where he admired
Rembrandt's
etchings. His output as an engraver was enormous— masque-designs, battle-pieces, animals, landscapes—and he was also a prolific draughtsman.

 
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(active 1600–17).
French painter, etcher, and decorator, active in the Duchy of Lorraine. His reputation now rests on his etchings and drawings, as all his decorative work and almost all his paintings have disappeared. His highly individual style represents a last stage of the development of
Mannerist
art in Europe. Exaggerating the tradition initiated by
Parmigianino
, he expressed a personal religious mysticism through the artificial conventions of aristocratic elegance.

 
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(d. 1440/4).
Netherlandish painter from Brabant, who succeeded
Malouel
as court painter to the Duke of Burgundy at Dijon in 1415. He is documented in 1416 as completing an altarpiece left unfinished by Malouel , which can be identified as
The Martyrdom of St Denis
in the Louvre. This painting appears to be the work of two hands, and the more naturalistic, less elegant parts are given to Bellechose.

 
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Bellini
.

Family of Venetian painters who played a dominant role in the art of their city for three-quarters of a century. Jacopo (
c.
1400–70/1) was the father of Gentile and Giovanni and father-in-law of
Mantegna
. He was a pupil of
Gentile da Fabriano
, with whom he worked in Florence, and he achieved early popularity both in Venice and elsewhere. His most notable paintings have disappeared, however, and it is not easy to form an assessment from those that survive—mainly fairly simple and traditional representations of the Madonna and Child. Although he has the grace of the late
Gothic
, there is a certain dryness and stiffness in his figures. Yet he was obviously keenly alert to contemporary ideas and shared the fashionable interests in archaeology,
perspective
, and anatomy. His artistic personality is manifested best in his two surviving sketchbooks (Louvre, Paris, and BM, London), containing more than 230 drawings in all, many of them remarkable for bold perspective effects conveying an exhilarating sense of space.
Gentile
(1429?–1507) inherited his father's sketchbooks and took over as head of his studio, so he was presumably the elder son. He carried on the reputation of his father and was greatly admired in his time, but many of his major works have perished. They included erotic scenes painted for the harem of Sultan Mehmet II, when Gentile worked at the court of Constantinople in 1479–81; his portrait of Mehmet, however, survives (albeit much restored) in the National Gallery, London. The most famous of his extant works are probably the
Procession of the Relic of the True Cross
(1496) and the
Miracle at Ponte di Lorenzo
(1500), two huge canvases crowded with anecdotal detail of contemporary Venetian life. Both are in the Accademia, Venice.
Giovanni
(
c.
1430?–1516) was far and away the greatest artist of the family and during his long and prolific career he transformed Venice from an artistically provincial city into a
Renaissance
centre rivalling Florence and Rome in importance. He was trained by his father Jacopo, but the major influence on his formative years was that of his brother-in-law, Mantegna. This and Bellini's own originality are made clear by a comparison of their pictures of the
Agony in the Garden
, both painted about 1460 and both now in the National Gallery, London. The compositions are clearly related, both deriving from a drawing in one of Jacopo's sketchbooks, but there is great difference in treatment, particularly of the landscape. Mantegna's is sharp, precise, and analytical, Bellini's is lyrical and atmospheric. To Mantegna's influence was later added that of
Antonello da Messina
, who was in Venice in 1475–6. Like him, Bellini became one of the great early masters of the
oil technique
, the linear style of his early work mellowing into one of masterly breadth, initiating the characteristically Venetian conception of painting in which colour and light were the primary means of expression. Bellini was remarkably inventive
iconographically
and to the end of his long life he continued to learn from new ideas. From the year before his death dates the dreamy
Woman with a Mirror
(Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), which is strongly influenced by
Giorgione
, who predeceased him; it shows that his genius remained undiminished by advancing years, and it is easy to credit the remark made by
Dürer
on his visit to Venice in 1505–7 that although Bellini was ‘very old’ he was still ‘the best painter.’ He painted excellent portraits, of which the
Doge Leonardo Loredan
(NG, London,
c.
1501) is the best-known example, and a few mythologies and allegories, notably
The Feast of the Gods
(NG, Washington, 1514, altered after his death by
Titian
), but he was above all a religious painter. His most characteristic subject was the Madonna and Child, and only
Raphael
has rivalled his treatment of the theme, which ranges from the wistful melancholy of
The Madonna of the Meadow
(NG, London,
c.
1510), one of the most marvellous examples of his ability to bring together figures and landscape in perfect harmony, to the monumentality of the San Zaccaria Altarpiece (S. Zaccaria, Venice, 1505), perhaps the grandest of all
sacra conversazioni
. His influence on Venetian painting was enormous. He was appointed official painter to the republic in 1483, and from about that time almost all the painters who became eminent in Venice during the next generation (including Giorgione,
Sebastiano del Piombo
, and Titian) are either known to or believed to have trained in his workshop.