Bellini at the Academia

So, the trip is over and we're back in the United States, catching up on sleep :). But, seeing as how we had a lot to do in Italy, we're catching up on all the things we had to say too. Our last stop of the trip was in Venice, home of the Academia museum. Works by one of the artist's I had studied, Gentile Bellini, were located in the museum, but it was his brother's work that caught my attention. Seeing the work of Giovanni Bellini, the better known of the two brothers, though surpassed in some respects by the brother-in-law, Andrea Mantegna, was more impressive in person than reading about it in a textbook. Giovanni painted a considerable number of Madonnas with child (surprise, surprise), but his works exhibit a new focus on the background landscape. Often, the subject is slightly off-center, revealing the background landscape behind a curtain. His painting are colorful with rich blues, greens, and reds. I think it was actually the distinct coloring and the softness of the brushstrokes that caught my attention and made me recognize the works as distinctly Bellini without reading the name cards (I guess that studying paid off)! I even spent a little bit of time in the museum trying to spot a Bellini and then see if I was correct. After realizing I could recognize a work as similar to Giovanni Bellini's without necessarily having seen it before i started thinking about what it was that was so distinctive to catch my attention. I think it was the soft and gentle expressions on the figures combined with the rich coloring. Although I had read about his characteristic gentle quality in the textbook, it wasn't until I saw the works in person that I realized this was one of the uniting themes in his body of work; I previously mistook gentleness to mean weakness rather than the rich yet quiet emotion able to coexist with the rich colors and life-filled faces.  

-Abbie