The Pietà by Giovanni Bellini

Venetian painting owes an immense debt to Giovanni Bellini (c. 1430 – 1516 AD).  Not only was he the teacher of Giorgione and Titian, Bellini’s sensuous and atmospheric painting style colored the work of all the subsequent Venetian masters of the 16th century. Bellini’s figures have a grace and dignity lacking in earlier Venetian art: their emotions seem real and profound. He was also one of my favorite painter of mysterious and evocative backgrounds.

Pietà (Giovanni Beliini, 1505, oil on wood)

Here is an exquisite Pietà by Bellini which highlights his artistic mastery. Fields of exquisite flowers (of many species and types) lead the eye back to winding roads and sinuous city walls. Looming across the entire background is Jerusalem, mysterious and lovely (and looking suspiciously like a Renaissance Italian city-state). Beyond the holy city, great mountains and cliffs march off into the horizon. Yet all of the beauty of the background is still. The roads are empty. Jerusalem seems deserted. In the foreground, Mary stares at the dead body of her son with desolate eyes. The savior is dead and the whole world has literally stopped.

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Pieta by Carlo Crivelli

Here is a dramatic and visceral Pieta painted by Carlo Crivelli in 1476 for the church of San Domenico at Ascoli Piceno in the Marches.  The Metropolitan Museum of Art has an interactive web gallery which allows the viewer to magnify this painting in order to see fine details.  Notice how the crown of thorns has sunk its infected barbs into Christ’s head and how intricately Crivelli has rendered the veins of the figures’ hands.