BELLINI's FRARI ALTARPIECE

BELLINI'S FRARI ALTARPIECE 

The only painting Giovanni Bellini ever did for the large Franciscan church in Venice, the Frari,
was an altarpiece designed and carried out between 1485 and 1488. The artist signed and dated
the work 1488 in a faux-marble step on the Virgin's throne. 
 

                                                                 JOANNES BELLINUS
                         
                                                                                   F.   (Fecit in Latin: made this)

                                                                                1488

He made this triptych for the sacristy of the Frari, and even designed the frame which he extended into a trompe l'oeil within the painting by incorporating fictive pilasters with the same capitals as those carved on the actual frame.

The capitals of the pilasters, both painted and plastered on wood, are delicate Ionic capitals with florettes inside the horns of the Ionic order and flowers and foliate designs that resemble some
Corinthian capital acanthus plants.

By painting the faux pilasters behind the saints on both sides, the artist makes it appear as if the space of the altar is extended into rooms that house the saints. The mirroring of the actual pilasters on the frame in the painted pilasters behind makes the viewer believe the artist's pictorial measuring. He seduces the viewer into thinking an actual space exists behind the frame that encompasses the four saints.

Also between the actual frame pilasters and the painted ones, he paints slivers of outdoor scenery,

 


with blue sky, plants, and hills beyond, as though these fictive rooms open up to the outside world. In presenting these slivers of outdoor space he gives the viewer the sensation of a whole world beyond the world of the altarpiece. 

The four saints are closest to that real world,
 

 while the Madonna and Child inhabit
 a gilded world of a Byzantine apse of a Venetian church
that encloses the holy figures in the center in a gold-leaf reference to heaven above the Madonna's head. Natural light still falls on the Madonna and the child's body, as well as the legs of the angels
(see the shadow on the step to the right of the left angel.) By including natural light, too, the artist
shows us a sacred conversation where the saints share the same air and light as the Madonna.

Much about the meaning of this altarpiece was mysterious until Rona Goffen, an art historian
who taught at Rutgers University, discovered in archival work that the altarpiece stood in the sacristy over the floor tomb of Franceschina Tron, the wife of Pietro Pesaro. (Rona Goffen, Piety and Patronage in Renaissance Venice, Yale, 1986.)The personal nature of the commission from Bellini then became clear. The saints could be identified as the name saints of four members of the Pesaro family: Niccolo, Pietro, Marco, and Benedetto.

These are Franceschina's three sons and her husband presented by their substitute saints to the Madonna and Child. From the viewer's left first is Niccolo, the oldest son of Franceschina and Pietro.  He is presented as San Niccolo, the Bishop saint from Bari; he wears bishop's robes and holds a staff. Next to him and behind is St. Peter (Pietro) who has a longer beard to denote the older age of the father of the boys; he carries a book, presumably opened to the Acts, where one could read stories of St. Peter. Then on the right side of the altarpiece stand St. Mark (Marco) with dark hair and beard and Saint Benedict (Benedetto), who looks out at the viewer. Saint Benedict was not technically a bishop though here he holds the pastoral staff, but he directed a monastic order at Monte Cassino that was copied all over Europe so he is thought to be worthy of a bishopric. He carries a book which is his own personal Bible open to a page of Ecclesiasticus, Chapter 24, one of the Apochrypha. (See the next blog entry on the page of this book.)

 

Into the sacred space Bellini has painted a father, Peter, and his three sons by Franceschina: Nicholas, Mark, and Benedict. Whether the saintly figures correspond to the sons' ages and portraits is unclear because Marco looks much like Saint Mark in many Venetian altarpieces since he was the patron saint of Venice. Benedetto appears as Benedict is often portrayed, with white mustache and beard, but the fact that his book is prominently held out so the viewer can see one page of it and the fact that here the saint looks out and connects with the viewer, makes Benedict's figure more imposing and important. Niccolo looks over to his brother (not at the Madonna, as Goffen would have it) while the other two look down, so the viewer focuses most on Benedict in the group of four. And Benedetto Pesaro was the more important figure in his family, even more important than his cousin, Jacopo Pesaro, whose altarpiece Titian painted years later (See a previous blog entry.) Benedetto Pesaro was the Captain General of the entire Venetian navy, and his tomb monument frames the entry door to this sacristy in the Frari:

In his sculpted tomb monument Benedetto is presented as a Christian crusader knight between the two naked deities on pedestals, Neptune, god of the sea on the left, and Mars, god of war, on the right and Mary and child above. The two major places he captured in his sea battles, Lefkada and Cefalonia, are depicted in plaques beneath him in marble inlay.

(Tomb designed by the Bregno brothers and sculptures by Baccio di Montelupo, 1503.)

But wait, he isn't made Captain General of the navy until 1500, and the battles take place between 1499 and 1503. (As a side note, he joined with his cousin, Jacopo Pesaro, and helped him win the

Battle of Santa Maura in 1502.) So the Bellini altarpiece predates his military successes. But in 1488 he was already an imposing figure in the family and must have intended for his own tomb monument to go outside the door to the Bellini altarpiece room, so his serious face addressing the viewer in Bellini's altarpiece speaks to his ambition and force within this branch of the Pesaro family even before he was made Captain General.

His desire to protect the room housing his mother's tomb is clear in the forceful monument guarding the door.

Did he also pay for Bellini's altarpiece as a tribute to his own mother, Franceschina Tron? She dies in

1478, ten years before the altarpiece's date; her husband, Pietro, had died in 1468, ten years before Franceschina, so by 1488 Benedetto would have been 55, of the age to think about his parents' death in relation to his own. (Average life expectancy in the period is 30 years.) Bellini's altarpiece is placed directly in line with his mother's tomb, not his father's or his own. This placement would suggest that Bellini's sweet figures of the Madonna and Child at the center of this altarpiece take on the roles of Mamma and figlio for the woman buried beneath them and for the sons painted on the altar.

Then the Latin inscription written above the head of the Madonna becomes a personal homage to Benedetto's mother:

    

IANUA CERTA POLI DUC MENTEM DIRIGE VITAM: QUAE PERAGAM COMMISSA TUAE SINT OMNIA CURAE ("Certain gate of heaven, guide [my] mind, direct [my] life: may everything I do be entrusted to your care")

The Madonna is prayed to and through her, the actual mother of these boys and the wife of this father.

The musical angels playing guitar and flute point their instruments to the marble containing the
signature of the artist. Bellini is the one making the music for the family, and through his illusions of real saints standing in real air in rooms that elide with the room of the holy mother, he is the one recreating for the survivors the beauty they found in the presence of this mother. The sweet sounds of the guitar and flute fill the air around the men in the reminder of their unified life before their mother's death in 1478.

Hard to see in photographs but, also, everything about this painting glows and radiates golden light.

Bellini's light provides an aura of good will around the saints who probably knew they weren't
always saints for their good mother. And the gilded apse is a heavenly tribute to an earthly
maternity.

  And sometimes gilt speaks louder than words.