Bellini's St Francis: A Renaissance masterpiece

Associated media

Alexander Adams reports on a major painting currently the subject of an exhibition at the Frick Gallery, New York

In a New Light: Giovanni Bellini’s St Francis in the Desert by Susannah Rutherglen and Charlotte Hale

Even before the painting called St Francis in the Desert by Giovanni Bellini (c.1435–1516) was added by Henry Frick to the collection of Old Masters residing in his grand New York townhouse, it was an acknowledged masterpiece – even if commentators were not in agreement as to what was actually happening in the painting. The painting shows the saint dressed in the simple habit of the Franciscans, the penitent order of mendicant friars that the saint founded. He stands barefoot outside a cave. In the rocky yet fertile landscape is a distant walled city. The saint’s arms are akimbo and he is gazing rapturously into the sky. On his hands and bare feet are the marks of stigmata, which legend has it he received from a floating apparition of Christ on the Cross, whilst on solitary retreat. What has puzzled writers is the absence of the conventional accompanying imagery for such a scene. In the Bellini’s painting here is no vision of Christ and a lack of rays of light to inflict the sacred wounds.

By the time Frick acquired it in 1915, the picture was acclaimed as a milestone in Italian painting and commonly described as the first landscape painting in Italian Renaissance art. Painting in about 1476–8, Bellini took the precision and attention to topography that was common to contemporary Netherlandish painting and used it to evoke the Veneto landscape. The Swiss painter Konrad Witz and the Van Eyck brothers had already painted the Alps many years earlier. The Italians were relative latecomers to the landscape as a substantial subject for art. 

St Francis is a fine example of Bellini’s skill in modelling, his fidelity of description and the richness of his colour, all of which decisively influenced the Venetian artists who followed (some of whom he, or his brother Gentile, trained): namely Giorgione,  Titian,   Tintoretto and Veronese.  Bellini’s reputation was soon eclipsed by Titian, which is rather unfair considering his brilliant synthesizing of Flemish detail, Florentine draughtsmanship and Venetian colour. The exhibition’s catalogue includes an illustration of an amazing, lesser-known Jan Van Eyck  painting (Stigmatization of St Francis (c.1430–2)) that Bellini probably saw in Venice in 1471.  

There are essays on the provenance of St Francis, which was in private Italian collections until 1812, when it entered a French collection. Later it was to pass through a series of private collections in England. Several times the National Gallery in London turned down opportunities to buy it before it made its way to Colnaghi, the London dealer of Old Masters. Apparently, Frick only bought the panel, which he did not much like, because he received a written statement from the art historian Bernard Berenson (1865–1959) attesting that St Francis was a bona fide masterpiece.

The catalogue contains a technical analysis of the materials, technique and condition of the painting. It gives us a good impression of the painting as a physical object. St Francis is an oil painting on poplar panel in relatively good condition, 124.6 x 142cm. It was probably commissioned by a rich Venetian patron who used it for private contemplation in his home. There is evidence that the painting was originally larger and that a topmost part of the painting was cut off. Did that section include a seraph or vision of Christ? There are no ancient written sources which mention one, which does not exclude the possibility. Forensic analysis suggests that the section removed was only a sliver of sky – not enough to have contained another figure. This omission is something that makes Bellini’s painting iconographically unusual.

Multiple detail photographs, infrared reflectograms, X-radiographs and comparative figures allow us to look at and into the painting. It seems that Bellini adopted the advanced approach of making a very thorough underdrawing but modifying the painting whilst in progress by adding elements. This is in contrast to the primitive tempera approach of Bellini’s apprenticeship years, which demanded a composition be laid out carefully in advance and executed in a completely undeviating manner.

There is an essay by Joseph Godla and Denise Allen on how Bellini applied Alberti’s theories about the use of perspective, complete with thorough diagrams. The discussion covers Giovanni Bellini and his father Jacopo’s painting and should prove instructive for anyone studying applications of perspective in Renaissance art. Another essay provides background on the Franciscan order and literary sources that may have guided the painter.

This book will be of interest to anyone researching Bellini and the Venetian Renaissance as it contains a lot of original research, albeit presented in an accessible manner. It is certainly not a starting place for novices. St Francis is not permitted to travel for exhibition, so if you cannot visit the painting in New York, this is the closest you will get to this painting. Any comprehensive library on Venetian painting should have a copy of this volume. 

The book has one regrettable shortcoming. The publishers have committed an error by producing this volume in sans-serif typeface. There is a pervasive fear among book designers that serif type appears old-fashioned. It does not matter whether it looks old-fashioned or not; when it comes to substantial amounts of text, it is legibility that counts. Sans-serif type is substantially less readable over long passages. The serif (the little extension attached to the ends of upright strokes in characters) guides the eye and allows it to flow along the line of a sentence. Although sans-serif characters appear clear when one glances at the page quickly, the characters are actually less legible when reading because the eye catches on the unadorned upright strokes. This makes reading large blocks of sans-serif text more tiring and slow, and requiring more rests than reading serif type.

Let’s hope that the next Frick publication can match sumptuous art with a typeface that is gentler on the eye.  

In a New Light: Giovanni Bellini’s St Francis in the Desert by Susannah Rutherglen and Charlotte Hale is published by The Frick Collection/GILES, 2015. 232pp.,  fully illustrated £35.00/$55.00 (hbk). ISBN 9 781 907 804 397